St. John's College Film Society
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Front of the Fisher Building, college's conference facilty which houses our cinema (their conference auditorium).
View from side of screen to booth when we arrive. Seating has to be pulled out every time we show a film. The booth is only as wide as the wall with the port glass in it.
Same view with the seating set out (300 seats). Four of six JBL surrounds visible, two more still to be installed (when college will let us put in wires).
Screen set up for showing (widescreen ratio, curtains open further for cinemascope). Screen channel speakers visible at front (JBL 3000 series), stored in cupboard behind curtain when not needed. We would love to have the speakers behind the screen, but it is up against the exterior wall so there is no chance.
The "Box office". We have a no food or drink in the auditorium, so no concession stand.
The view of the booth taken from the hallway (there isn't space inside the booth to get a good angle for a photo; could this be one of the smallest 35mm booths in use). Pair of PC speakers on top of the rectifier visible under the desk, connected to the hearing aid loop output on the sound processor to act as monitor speakers.
Philips FP20 (35mm) of unknown vintage (our records for the relevant years have been lost in the tide of student administration), 1kW lamp house bolted on the back. You can just see the projector is on wheels, it has to go in a cupboard for the vacations (it gets in the way of conference technicians).
Closer view of the film path of the projector (currently running), with widescreen lense. At the top you can see the threading instructions, needed by the large number of a amateur projectionsists we get through.
The film path, this time unthreaded. The sound reader is the kinoton reverse scan model for the fp20, but only analogue capability.
Our tower (on it's last legs and soon to be replaced, we are looking at the Kinoton SPT 5000k). Despite being labeled "Do not use me I'm bent" we use this particular top reel because it is the most servicable we have. There is just enough space to get between the back wall and the reels, to get to the soundrack and light switch.
Our head projectionsist (James, infront of the tower) demonstrating to an inexperienced projectionist how to break down a print.
The booth stock cupboard, all of our working storage space. Visible on the bottom shelf are our two lenses (widescreen and cinema scope), on the top shelf the splicer, and elsewhere, various cleaning products and spare bits of film. (We have other cupboards for long term storage, but they are in different less accesible parts of the building).
Our sound rack. It's not too big, but does the job.
A better view of the contents of the sound rack, fitted with (top to bottom): Dobly CP650SR (intend to upgrade to digital when we can), Two MXF-400 amplifiers for front channels (one channel spare), C-Audio pulse 4*300 amplifier for surrounds, and Sony CD player for non-sync.
Photograph taken with my back to the port glass on soundrack (non-operator) side of projector, this is all the space on this side of the projector. College's conference sound and video rack locked up on right and our sound rack beyond it and the back wall of the booth.
Special thanks to John Moriarty for the pics.