Cinerama Hollywood

Just visited again the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Same old problem with no lights on when you come into the theatre to find your numbered seat. They have the blue lights turned on so low on the curtains and the lights on the gold ceiling turned way down. The worst is the DCP scope picture. They have masking on the bottom right and left part of the curved screen going up words. I have been to many large curved screens lately and you don’t see this problem on the bottom. I think they can correct this bottom problem by doing a pre test curve alignment to push the curved image down more to fit the corners not loop the image up? They have seemed to have put in these new cheap looking surround speakers that have the grill off that shine the treble cones. The old surround speakers were hidden behind the side wall curtains. Seems the Cinerama Dome had way better base a few years ago. The new 3D scope Disney movie ‘Toy Story 4’ did not have the deep base or was it the speaker set up at the Dome? At least the image looked bright and crisp. Pacific needs to turn up the lights and correct the bottom curve problem. Go check other theatres that have the curve but don’t curve up the bottom corners, see what they are doing to correct the image on the bottom corners. .

Cinerama Dome among others in the trailer for “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1jXvk9w8mE71x6Xy0LiR8NPg9m8g_JYXWUYPR9Fad-tWjwJCP_L1Dl0Dg

Hello-

to the best of my recollection when Krakatoa East of Java opened June 1969 at the Warner Theater (47 St.& Bway) it was not continuous nor reserved seat but a reserved performance policy.

The Legion Theater on North Highland is testing its newly renovated theater equipped with two DP70 film projectors. The 70mm is stunning picture and sound.

edlambert, I was quoting the spec so I’m not sure what would cause the height limitation but I suspect that it could be that the three booths were sometimes placed on orchestra level at the back of the house which might cause problems with a balcony overhang. If the height was lensed down to be completely visible then the width would be sacrificed and the screen would be smaller. It might have been that they felt that it was better to have the widest “wrap around” effect than to have to reduce the screen width. We were frequently required to place road projectors at the back of the orchestra when I was at Radio City and we had to be careful about the 1st Mezzanine balcony overhang. That problem would be exacerbated with Able and Charlie booths possibly getting the image clipped from the overhang.

There were, and may still be, single strip 35mm IB tec prints of The Brothers Grimm.

RobertEndres, I should have gone back to Hart’s website myself. The problem with screen height that you mention eludes me. It seems to me that the overall aspect ratio was known and that a screen would be installed to accommodate it, the overall dimensions of the screen being dictated by the space available and lens focal lengths being used that would fit the image to the screen. Perhaps I’m revealing my ignorance of physics here.

edlambert: checking on the Cinerama specs listed in Martin Hart’s Widescreen Museum which lists them from the SMPTE standards the negative image for three strip Cinerama was .996 x 1.116. The print aperture was .985 x 1.088 x 3. This produced an aspect ratio of 2.59 although there was a note that because some theatres might not be able to handle the increased frame height the ratio could be 2.65. Somewhere I have a pamphlet from the SMPTE published in the ‘60’s that had all the specs for all the widescreen processes. I hope to find it as it was the definitive reference source.

Hello-

thanks to Peter A. for his reply. if I understand your reply correctly Warner Bros. Hone Video which has home video rights to all of MGM’s roadshow epics wouldn’t want to spend the necessary $$$ to restore Grimm. but didn’t they do an extensive restoration/remastering of HTWWW before they released the Blu-ray disc Oct. 2008?

“I hope someone with indepth technical know how can answer a question. if the Dome was able to find a print of Grimm good enough to show a few years back why isn’t it good enough to use for mastering for a Blu-ray disc?”

BigJoe – Using a theatrical print would probably not yield a very pretty image. The contrast from the dye-transfer print would obscure shadow detail and it wouldn’t be as sharp as going back to the original elements. Other video labels might do it if there were no other option – though the expense of making three transfers and then attempting to color correct and clean up the join lines might make it prohibitively expensive for something that can’t sell more than a couple of thousand copies. Warner’s studio policy regarding restorations means they wouldn’t do it that way.

Mr. Haas, I did a bit of math, which should be checked, given my history with math! I assume that for each aperture of the Cinerama camera the the aspect ratio became 0.913:1 because the height was increased by 1/3 when 2 additional sprocket holes were included. I used the Academy ratio of 1.37:1. A film projected with a height of 10' would have a width of 13.7' in this ratio. Increasing the height to 15', which the 6-sprocket hole aperture would give us, and the 13.7' width remaining constant, we have a new aspect ratio of 0.913:1. With the 15' ht. remaining constant and the 13.7' multiplied by 3, we get a 15' ht. to 41.1' width, which is an aspect ratio of 2.74:1. Close enough. I’m off if the Academy ratio of 1.37:1 was not used for the aperture. The source you site refers to a possible 2.89:1 aspect ratio. That can only be if some other aspect ratio was used for the camera apertures.

both sides at the far ends? see Restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_West_Was_Won_(film)#Restoration