The Brutalist in Vistavision

[Harold Hallikainen]

Deeply curved screens absolutely suck in modern movie theater auditorium designs. That's because the projector can't be aimed in a level horizontal line at the center of the screen. You could do that in old movie theaters that had large auditoriums and gradual sloped seating areas. The projector port would be far enough above the back row of the audience. The lens still needed to be a special design in order to throw a focused and not-so-distorted image.

A modest room with stadium seating where the projector port is close to the ceiling creates a severe angle. Even if you could correct the "smile" distortion with some optical trickery you would never get the image properly focused.

I wonder if you could design an auditorium where the projector was perpendicular to the center of the screen. The booth could be under the stadium seating with an area where there is no seating directly below and in front of the projector.

[Ed Gordon]

I wonder if you could design an auditorium where the projector was perpendicular to the center of the screen. The booth could be under the stadium seating with an area where there is no seating directly below and in front of the projector.

The Coliseum theater (now closed) was built this way in 1916. The Cinerama theater in Seattle was also built this way. I believe it was required for Cinerama.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

For the uninitiated, were any production VV projectors beyond the Century's described here ever produced?
https://www.in70mm.com/presents/1954...ctor/index.htm

I had not read that article start to finish previously. A whole new mechanism in 4 weeks is crazy pants. Amusing reading it after having just shown White Christmas on DCP... which unfortunately has abandoned the original intended ratio of 1.66 from the VistaVision format. Did not know that film was the first public viewing of VistaVision.

I wonder in the modern era if you could revive VV printing with dolby digital and still have it be playable with existing equipment. Maybe DTS would be more compatible for double the film speed?

Yes, Ballantyne made some. Not sure I'd want to use one of those though as it did not frame... The Century's in the beginning had issues with the intermittent sprockets snapping the three taper pins that secured them to the intermittent shaft. Until they switched to the screw and nut type fastening for the intermittent sprockets. Century also switched to using Brenkert Intermittent's. There was also a pusher type VV projector made out of a Century. But if Editorial didn't get the tape splices just right, you had a bad pile up in just a few seconds. this is what inspired me to build one.

As far as VV Horizontal showings back in the 1950's, they ran White Christmas and Strategic Air Command horizontally. If there were others shown horizontally, I am not aware of them. They ran them at The Paramount theater in NYC, At least one theater in Hollywood, and at the State Lake in Chicago.

[Will Kutler]

John Eichoff was a VV Subject Matter Expert and built one from a Century to OEM specs. He had extensive posts and pics on FT, Facebook and YouTube. Not sure what is happening with his estate since his passing?

[Peter Mork]

Getting back on topic (yes I know, any mention of large format projection undergoes mission creep).

Watched The Brutalist today at the Coolidge Corner (Brookline, MA) and it seemed somewhat soft throughout. At the end, when the credits rolled, some parts of the screen were sharp, some were near impossible to read. Is this a print fault or did the projection need tweaking? As 35mm (4-perf) blowups go, this was not one of the better ones. Usually the Coolidge is pretty on top of focus issues. Would like to hear from people who've watched it elsewhere.

[Jim Cassedy]

Is Coolidge Corner the same as the Coolidge Center? I had heard that one of those two
venues (if they are indeed different) had a projector breakdown which caused them to
have to run a couple of shows on one projector last week. I don't mean in any way to
imply that it was anyone's fault. . it happens to the best of us. Sometimes an essential
part on even a well cared for machine just reaches the end of it's useful life.

We've been running BRUTALIST in 70mm since Christmas eve on a 47 ft wide screen,
but because of the film-maker's decision to print the VistaVision™ image @1:66 on 70mm,
the actual picture on screen is not anywhere near that wide.

As for 'softness' - I haven't noticed it on our screen, and San Francisco audiences are not
shy about complaining if they think something is not 'as it should be' (and rightfully so!)
I did get ONE complaint over the weekend that "some guy said the picture was out of focus",
but it looked OK to me when I peeked out the projection port. I tweaked the focus knob a bit
and I'm pretty sure it wound up right back where it originally was. As I said, we've been running
this print, 3 shows a day, for over two weeks, with almost every show sold out- - and that's
the only complaint I've gotten so far. (I run two of the shows, and 'the other guy" does the
other one)

Aside from the off-beat aspect ratio, the end credits illustrate another one of my pet peeves I've
had with a couple of recent film (and digital) releases: Most of the end credits on BRUTALIST
are in some incredibly small font size. I think, even on a very large screen, they're so small
that they're affected by the screen perfs, and they might even possibly be at the limits of the
resolving power of the lens. (sez "Jim the projectionist" who is not an optical engineer)

They are tiny! I saw something similar on a recent 35mm release we ran a couple of months
ago. I don't remember the title, but that movie had been shot & edited digitally, and the 35mm
was made from a digital master. I assumed that the tiny titles were loosing resolution as part
of the digtal-to-film transfer process. But later in the week, I happened to see the same credit
roll when it was playing in one of the digital auditoriums- - and they looked just as bad.

[Peter Mork]

Never heard of a Coolidge Center, certainly not in Brookline. This show today had a few changeovers, but from where I sat (relatively but not insanely close) both projectors were giving a soft image.

[Brad Miller]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but as we are handling the assembly and distribution of the prints I have ran a few of the reels to check for print issues and I assure you the prints are definitely sharp corner to corner and rock steady. The fact of the matter is that if the entire image was not in sharp focus (all 4 corners as well as the center), then that's an incorrect projector alignment setup. The lenses and gate/trap should have been shimmed if necessary to achieve even focus. Due to the subtitles in the movie, likely the projectionist had to focus on those and the rest of the image was whatever it was. Regardless, that's not the projectionist's fault. That kind of focus issue would be their projector setup and calibration not being correct from a mechanical standpoint.

Since you are in Boston, go over to the Somerville and check it out there. Even if you don't want to watch the entire movie, if you show up mid-movie and ask the manager if you could watch about 5 to 10 minutes to compare the presentation between there and the Coolidge, I'll bet they would accommodate you. The projectionists there are very picky and I can absolutely vouch every print we have shipped to them has been returned in the same "lab new" condition without so much as a hint of dust at the reel changes, and yes we DO inspect literally every single print upon return. I have never been to the Somerville, but I would love to hear your review of their actual in-theater presentation on the same 70mm feature. I figure a team with that much attention to detail in film handling would likely not permit their equipment to be out of calibration.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yeah our 35mm running experience was passable focus wise, but not perfect either... we too had to slightly compromise focus to the bottom for subtitles. I expect our units were never perfectly calibrated for out booth angle and thus we have a bit of top to bottom focus drift. We can definitely get it sharp enough no audience is going to complain and credits are readable... but as a projectionist I'll notice during crawl etc.

There are also other factors that can cause such things like the film bending (or being warped by heat) in the gate. The latter of which would be very bad, so hopefully not the cause of anything Peter saw.

Brutalist's sideways slanting credits that go edge to edge also draw extra attention to any left/right focus issues all to easily compared to most films where all that is somewhat centerline and the audience is less likely to notice anything being into unreadable territory.

[Jim Cassedy]

"Brutalist's sideways slanting credits"

I've found that standing at a 45° angle when the credits hit the screen helps get them focused right.

(just kidding, but the tiny typeface and the skewed scrolling do make for a good focus-check)

> I spotted Adam Savage from 'Mythbusters' in the lobby at one of our BRUTALIST shows
over the weekend. Their "M5 Industries" lab and studio was about a mile up the hill from my
house when I lived in that part of town a few years ago. I'd occasionally run into him and the
M-B crew grabbing lunch or groceries at the local food market. Whenever I heard a loud explosion
in my neighborhood, I'd figure it was either local fireworks or "those Mythbusters guys" up the street.
lol

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

John Eichoff was a VV Subject Matter Expert and built one from a Century to OEM specs. He had extensive posts and pics on FT, Facebook and YouTube. Not sure what is happening with his estate since his passing?

That's odd, I was to Johns theater and warehouse a bunch of times over the years. He never said anything about building a VV projector. Perhaps he did that while he was in California. The problem with building one is the need to have custom intermittent sprockets made, and doing extensive mods to the intermittent. John had some machine tools at his warehouse though, so who knows.

[Ryan Gallagher]

As rare as those VV sprockets should be, Magna-tech actually has 3 or 4 Ballantyne ones listed on Ebay right now.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw...ision+sprocket

As well as some VV Century intermittent shafts:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285966705485

And some kinda rough looking Century VV sprockets too:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285966686154

[Peter Mork]

Yeah our 35mm running experience was passable focus wise, but not perfect either... we too had to slightly compromise focus to the bottom for subtitles. I expect our units were never perfectly calibrated for out booth angle and thus we have a bit of top to bottom focus drift.

But as I understand it, projection angle, unless it's insanely steep, should not cause serious focus issues. The problem is always in the gate - if that's out of square by even a teeny bit, you can never get perfect sharpness through the whole picture. (That's the simple version anyway, there are other factors such as how the lens is mounted.)

[Peter Mork]

[QUOTE=Brad Miller;n44446]I
Since you are in Boston, go over to the Somerville and check it out there.

Um, no, not gonna do that, but the Somerville has always done a good and careful job, and their film projection on the big screen, whether it be 35 or 70mm has in my experience always been as good as it can be. The same goes for the Coolidge, or it did until now anyway. Since you say the prints of The Brutalist are not at fault, I'll pass them a note and see if they respond. (I didn't want to say anything at the time because I was on a date, and yes, my date noticed the softness too.)

(Side note: there's a lot of confusion out there about what the actual shooting format of The Brutalist is. Reviewers have claimed it was all shot in VistaVision, or 70mm, and called it "widescreen" which it isn't or at least not what I think of as wide, a.k.a. wider than 2-to-1. Wikipedia lists 16mm and 35mm as negative formats. The 16mm part I guess means the Philedelphia travelogue sequences near the start, which are either from an actual old travelogue or made to look like one. In the case of 35mm, how much if any of it was shot in a horizontal VistaVision camera seems to be a matter of who said what. Didn't someone on this thread say all the 35mm stuff was plain 4-perf framed at 1.66, which would mean practically all of the film? I have nothing against blowup prints, but that's not real VistaVision, unless that just means a certain aspect ratio these days, for those it means anything at all to.)

[Ryan Gallagher]

But as I understand it, projection angle, unless it's insanely steep, should not cause serious focus issues. The problem is always in the gate - if that's out of square by even a teeny bit, you can never get perfect sharpness through the whole picture. (That's the simple version anyway, there are other factors such as how the lens is mounted.)

That is probably true in most cinemas where the projector is at least not above the top of the screen. But at least with digital that is exactly what the horizontal and vertical front to back bore-sight adjustments are for. In film land it means shimming or adjusting the gate and lens holder to achieve the uniform focus field. We probably qualify as one of those extreme examples. Projectors are a good 20ft above the top of the screen at the top of a balcony, the first row of which is screen center... at least we also have a long throw that reduces the problem somewhat, but our film projectors could still use a little love in that department.

Speaking to the "extremeness"... our christie has periscope mirrors, and our Century JJ's pedestals sit atop custom welded additional "wedges" to give the tilt additional range beyond the pedestal factory tilt adjustments. (that or they needed to raise them slightly also to reuse the same ports when the Centuries were installed). The wedges showed up sometime after the Brenkert Supremes were removed according to historical photos. But we still use those Brenkert pedastals atop them.