Fw: [photo-3d] Re: House of Wax in Richmond

["John A. Rupkalvis" <stereoscope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Greg Kintz" <gkintz@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <photo-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 9:45 AM
> Subject: [photo-3d] Re: House of Wax in Richmond

Excerpts from Greg's post:

> > ...But back to a technical aspect of 3-D. John Rupkalvis
> > brought up an excellent rare highlight in 3-D projection-
> > the 70mm single projector format...

> >...have deemed 70mm unnecessary, so the 70mm format has basically > > > >
been abandoned in first run theaters...

 Quite true.  It is especially sad since the 70mm projectors still remain in
most such first run theaters.  If they had 70mm capability at one time, they
probably still do.  This is because most 70mm projectors were actually dual
format, and today are used only to project 35mm (the sprockets had a smaller
diameter 35mm set of teeth inside the larger diameter 70mm, and they only
had to change the aperture plate in the gate and throw the switch that
changed the 5 perf. 70mm pulldown to 4 perf. 35mm).

This is part of the overall "dumbing down" of many, probably most theaters
that were converted from single large auditoriums (how many of you have been
in a 5000 seat theater equipped with dual full blown white flame carbon arc
projectors and 70ft. screens) into small auditorium multiplexes.  They threw
out the magnificent JBL Voice of the Theater speakers, and replaced them
with small squawk boxes, removed the curtains, motorized screen masking,
light dimmers, and of course, the LARGE curved silver CinemaScope screen
etc., etc., and replaced these with small inefficient matte screens [(one of
our mall multiplexes, here in one of the world's largest cities, has 5 foot
by 10 foot unmasked, uncurtained screens in 50 seat rooms (hardly
auditoriums)]. Both flat and scope films are cropped (the top and bottom are
removed from flat 1.37:1 and 1.85:1 films, and the sides are chopped off of
2.35:1 scope films) and shown at the same 2:1 aspect ratio in the same small
size, with mono sound, of course.

JR



 

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