In praise of (nearly extinct) big curved-screen 70mm theatres

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by MLutthans, Oct 13, 2010.

  1. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    ....and sadly now a parking lot. (I checked it out when visiting my brother in Apollo Beach, FL.)

    Nothing wrong with dissenting opinions, and I'm glad you are posting here! :)

    As far as the straight lines thing goes, I did say in an earlier post in this thread that the Cinerama Dome is flawed. Specifically, it's booth is too high. (IIRC, it's about 3 degrees off center.) That was not a problem for three-projector presentations, as each projector was only hitting about a 50-degree curve. Current 'scope and 70mm shows there are covering about a 120-degree arc, and UltraPanavision shows in the early 60s were using 146 degrees. Unless your projector is 1.) "Dead Center" and 2.) quite far away from the screen (for good focus along the curve), it's a recipe for disaster.

    I've got some photos I took that I'll try to dig up this weekend showing the "horizon sag" (smiley-face straight lines) at the dome, and it's fairly pronounced, and a very (IMO) justified gripe against the place. (....and for some reason, Cinerama, Inc., kept approving theatre designs with overly-high booths even after the switch over to 70mm, but I'll save that for another day.) Likewise, the Uptown in DC seemed to have the same problem, although to (what I perceived to be) a lesser degree. However, the problem can be greatly reduced with zero-degree projection. For instance, something like 80% of the D-150 theatres in the US were newly-built theatres (as opposed to conversions or retrofits), and the entire design was made to fit around the lens on the projector vis-a-vis the screen. It had to be zero degrees. I'm pretty sure that even the retrofits, such as the Egyptian in Hollywood, required zero degree projection angles, as evidenced by this photo (below) showing the Egyptian after conversion to D-150.
    [​IMG]


    I'm always bummed when people use "The Dome" as a reference for how bad curved-screen projection can look. There are venues out there (or at least, there WERE) that look much, much better. The Dome is just the famous one!

    Just to clarify things a bit: Todd-AO is the only process that ever tried to solve the problem of an overly-high projection booth, which is often the main culprit for the image distortion. (See here for evidence, including some of my own 70mm print footage.) Cinerama made some prints that rectified (or attempted to rectify) horizontal (not vertical) stretching that would occur on the outer edges of the screen when showing UltraPanavision titles, and D-150 used custom-ground projection lenses and a slightly modified film area (they avoided the extreme top and bottom in the center of the image) to work around the fact that the throw was a greater distance to the center than to the edges of the image.

    Big flat screens are great, too -- no argument here. Whenever I'm in Omaha, I make it a point to see a film at the Dundee, which has a great picture and amazing sound quality, IMO. I've attached a color photo below from my trip there last week.
    [​IMG]

    Also, the Dome's current screen still follows the same curvature as ever, but they are using a smaller portion of it. (Since they are now using a single-sheet screen, not a Cinerama "strip screen," they can't fill the full 146-degree curve with screen material, as the 146 was not a continuous arc, so trying to "bend" a sheet-screen around that arc would make the screen buckle at the "bend," so it's now just a 120-degree continuous arc.)

    Matt
     

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    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  2. Chip TRG

    Chip TRG Senior Member

    The last super huse screen I was in front of was the old UA theater in Syosset, Long Island--which is sadly now a gym. I saw TITANIC there, and cheesy chick-flick aside, the visuals were QUITE intense.
     
  3. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    That shot was pre-Cinerama, but still very impressive in other ways! :righton: By contrast, here's a shot showing the Cinerama retrofit. Clearly, this was a pretty demanding retrofit, somewhat akin to making a square peg fit into a round hole (or vice versa).
    Screen shot 2010-10-14 at 5.51.18 PM.jpg Screen shot 2010-10-14 at 5.53.32 PM.png
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2015
  4. williamjoel

    williamjoel Spins At 33 1/3 RPM

    Location:
    Orlando, FL
    Thanks, Matt! I couldn't find a modern-era photo of the screen. So, in order to accommodate the wide screens used in the 60s, they actually cut the seating capacity in half! It's amazing that management allowed that!

    They sure didn't make up for the lack of seats with THESE ticket prices!

    :laugh:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    ^^^^^^ The avg. US movie ticket price was about $1.30 in 1968, so the Capitol was still clearly offering "Cinerama" as a premium-worthy experience at $2.50-$4.25, even though it was no longer using the large-staff-required 3-projector process.

    In 2010 dollars, that's the equivalent price range of $16-$27!

    By the way, that very steep ramp between the front row and the screen is highly unusual for Cinerama. In many theatres, the screen came literally to the floor, which was either flat or very slightly inclined, making it seem like you could just about walk into the picture. Apparently at the Capitol, you would have had to climb into the picture.

    Matt
     
  6. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    Which one? The UA Syosset (which was triplexed) or the other one (UA 150, I think?) that remained a single until it closed?

    One of my best friends is from Syosset, and LOVED the UA 150. (I think later it may have just been called "The UA." Oddly, UA owned both theatres, so it's confusing.)

    Matt
     
  7. ChadHahn

    ChadHahn Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ, USA
    It's been forever since I've been in the Dundee. The Cinerama theater in Omaha was torn down about 10 years ago to make a parking lot. I think the only film I saw there was 2001 back when I was three.

    Chad
     
  8. Downsampled

    Downsampled Senior Member

    Some of my best theater memories are of the Cinema 150 in Santa Clara, CA. I remember seeing Battlestar Galactica in Sensurround, King Kong ('76), and (best of all) Close Encounters of the Third Kind there. (There were certainly others I'm not remembering.)
     
  9. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    I was bummed to drive by there 10 years ago or so and see that it was demolished and a bank was there, IIRC. (In the parking lot of a bowling alley, no less.) Being a D-150 house, it was undoubtedly a great place to catch a show! (And thanks for including the link to photos.)

    Matt
     
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  10. Downsampled

    Downsampled Senior Member

    My pleasure. No doubt I missed its glory days, but at least I was around for its autumn years. It's truly sad how most of these great "modern" theaters have disappeared.
     
  11. sparkydog

    sparkydog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kentucky
    I saw The Trouble With Harry there a few years back and it looked awful - the aspect ratio was way off too. What was really weird - there sure were a lot of flies in that movie! Never noticed them on a small TV.
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I appreciate the info, Matt. Your comments fill in some gaps I didn't know about the Dome screen, and what you say makes a lot of sense. I hadn't considered the problem of vertical keystoning, and that would explain the horizontal distortion I've seen for years at that theater.
     
  13. williamjoel

    williamjoel Spins At 33 1/3 RPM

    Location:
    Orlando, FL
    Duh! Of course I had forgotten about that. Everything cost a lot less in those days, so those were, in fact, premium prices.

    So, how did they account for that odd shaped screen, (curved on the bottom but flat on the top?) Did they have use special lenses not used in other Cinerama theatres when showing Cinerama films there? Whatever they did, it looked great.
     
  14. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    A few years ago, I prepared a very lengthy paper for a group in Omaha who were looking to bring Cinerama back to Omaha and wanted to know about screen options/problems, curvature, etc. I included some photos I had taken of different curved screens. One is the screen in Honolulu, which included a fairly steep ramp as in the Capitol in NYC, although (as far as I can tell) not quite that severe. Note that (pictured below), it's not that bad when viewed from the main floor. Part of the oddness of that NYC photo a few posts back is that it is being viewed from above. Here's Honolulu (now an auto parts store, by the way):
    [​IMG]
     

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    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
  15. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    Again, I'm lifting photos/captions from that doc I prepared for the Omaha folks, but there are two ways to fit the rectangular image onto a curved surface: 1.) Mask the curved screen to make it accept a fully rectangular image;
    [​IMG]
    or 2.) Use an aperture plate in the projector to matte the rectangular frame to a curved shape.
    [​IMG]

    Either way, something has to be "forced." My personal preference is option 1 above, as I don't like having stuff cut out of the image, but I know that most Cinerama nuts prefer to have a "butterfly"-type aperture plate inserted into the projector to take a curvy wedge out of the top and/or bottom of the film image. This allows the full height of the big curved screen to be used all the way across the image, but some image is actually lost in the process. See below:
     

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    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
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  16. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    (Part 3 of this response.)

    Two shots I took of "The Dome" in Hollywood.

    The first shot was taken during the credits of Lawrence of Arabia, from the projection booth. Look at the credits that appear on the right side of the screen, and note the slight "smiley face curve" that they have. The closer to the edge, the more pronounced this will be, and this is caused by the fact that the booth is slightly too high.
    [​IMG]

    (Compare it to the shot of the Villa Theatre in the previous post, on which text stays ruler flat.)

    The second shot shows the difference in the current screen width and what would have been the original width. If you are ever in the dome, look carefully at the light track that runs along the top of the screen. You will notice that just beyond where the screen currently ends, the track's curvature changes. This is because true Cinerama (DESPITE what you may have read) was NOT a 146-degree continuous curve. It was a 120-degree curve in the center (near-entirety) of the image, but the remaining 26 degrees (13 on either side) were actually straight, not curved.
    [​IMG]
    Because of that, a single "sheet screen" cannot fill the full Cinerama size in this or any theatre, because the screen would buckle at the transition from the curve to the straight section.

    Sorry to have bored many of you to tears today......but somebody asked! :)

    Matt
     

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    Last edited: Jun 17, 2019
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  17. ChadHahn

    ChadHahn Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ, USA
    It's good to know that Omaha was at least thinking about getting another Cinerama theater. Every time I watch the beginning of Entourage I miss that theater, even though I live thousands of miles away now and like I said only went to it once.

    Chad
     
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  18. Chip TRG

    Chip TRG Senior Member

    I forget what it was called, but it was the one right off of the off-ramp of Rt. 135 (South-west corner). The other one was right on Jericho Turnpike just west of Rt. 135 by a few thousand feet (and was an older theater). Yeah, it was kind confusing. Although the one west of 135 was gone for a few years before the other one closed up.

    The only time I was in the older one was during a 3rd grade school trip to see what I remembered as a God-awful musical version of A Christmas Carol. And as a 3rd grader I obviously had no idea to even realize what kind of theater I was sitting in. Too bad, because as far as Cinarama goes it was a historical theater.
     
  19. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff Thread Starter

    Thanks. The older one was the (later triplexed) Cinerama; the newer one the Dimension 150 format.

    Matt
     
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  20. wolfram

    wolfram Slave to the rhythm

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Wow. Nicolas Roeg was on the Second Unit of Photography on "Lawrence of Arabia". That's interesting.

    :)
     
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  21. williamjoel

    williamjoel Spins At 33 1/3 RPM

    Location:
    Orlando, FL
    Here's another one that I went to regularly as a child, the former Loew's Paradise Theatre in The Bronx. Yes, believe it or not, it's in The Bronx!
    This theatre had one of the famous Wonder Morton Organs which
    has since been relocated to the Loew's Jersey theatre.

    It's been restored to its original beauty. Check these out:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  22. maxnix

    maxnix Forum Resident

    Wasn't the original McClurg Court Theate in Chicago (long gone) also a 70mm screen? Man , that was a great place to see a movie. Had a friend who used to pay me for freelance work with preview tickets . . we saw Poltegeist at McClurg Court, with four people in the theater . . him, me, Siskel & Ebert!! Surreal day.
     
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  23. williamjoel

    williamjoel Spins At 33 1/3 RPM

    Location:
    Orlando, FL
  24. sparkydog

    sparkydog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kentucky
    It's spectacular! One look and I could see that it was designed by the same architect who designed Louisville Palace (United Artists), John Eberson. They look really similar.
     
  25. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Wow, that's an almost-identical clone of the Tampa Theater in downtown Tampa, built in the 1920s. They also had twinkling lights at the very top of the ceiling to give the illusion of nighttime. By the time I saw it in the 1960s, it was totally rundown, but I can imagine how it might've looked in its heyday. I bet they used the same architect mentioned by Sparkydog above. [minutes pass] I'll be damned... the Tampa Theater is on that list! Amazing.

    The screen wasn't curved, but I think they could show 70mm and it was a big screen. No doubt it's been sliced up into multiplexes by now...
     

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