Watch a movie and become 17 again (April 17, 2009)
Posted by Reel Mountain Theater on Tuesday, October 27, 2009
This
is as current as it gets on the newsletter. Some of our staff don't
even know what happened in the projection room of Reel Mountain at
about 1pm on Tuesday afternoon.......
EARTH will play at our theater on May 8th, and during the following week, we'll host several hundred students that will come by bus and watch the movie, then be involved in earth day activities at the school. Our largest auditorium is 192 seats, so we have been planning on splitting the students into groups of 192 or less.
When we play a movie, it is a 35mm format, and plays in one auditorium, with film flying up and down and across to the projector from the platters- quite the sight (check out a picture of platters & projectors on our general info page). There is a technique called 'interlocking' that starts the film in one auditorium, plays the film through the projector, then strings it to the next projector where it is deposited. It's risky and takes some specialized equipment... but it would surely be more efficient if we could show it in all of our auditoriums, to an audience of 438 instead of 192, right? Today we tried it.
The film starts in auditorium 1, and runs across a total of 80 feet of floorspace and 8 extra rollers and requires three people to start all three projectors at the same exact time, but guess what? It works! For the first time in Estes Park history, we've interlocked all the auditoriums, and now know that we can play to the largest crowd watching the same feature in Estes Park history. I'm not sure if this will come into play for big movie openings in the summer of 2009, but it could open some doors and avoid sell outs... as for Earth? The whole school could just about fit for a single screening.
I'll take pictures next time we set it up. In the meantime, the next time you come in, ask to see the projection room if you never have been there. Daily operations 'upstairs' are interesting to see- but 3 projectors interlocked was (this) projectionists fantasy come true.
EARTH will play at our theater on May 8th, and during the following week, we'll host several hundred students that will come by bus and watch the movie, then be involved in earth day activities at the school. Our largest auditorium is 192 seats, so we have been planning on splitting the students into groups of 192 or less.
When we play a movie, it is a 35mm format, and plays in one auditorium, with film flying up and down and across to the projector from the platters- quite the sight (check out a picture of platters & projectors on our general info page). There is a technique called 'interlocking' that starts the film in one auditorium, plays the film through the projector, then strings it to the next projector where it is deposited. It's risky and takes some specialized equipment... but it would surely be more efficient if we could show it in all of our auditoriums, to an audience of 438 instead of 192, right? Today we tried it.
The film starts in auditorium 1, and runs across a total of 80 feet of floorspace and 8 extra rollers and requires three people to start all three projectors at the same exact time, but guess what? It works! For the first time in Estes Park history, we've interlocked all the auditoriums, and now know that we can play to the largest crowd watching the same feature in Estes Park history. I'm not sure if this will come into play for big movie openings in the summer of 2009, but it could open some doors and avoid sell outs... as for Earth? The whole school could just about fit for a single screening.
I'll take pictures next time we set it up. In the meantime, the next time you come in, ask to see the projection room if you never have been there. Daily operations 'upstairs' are interesting to see- but 3 projectors interlocked was (this) projectionists fantasy come true.
