(I personally like a tiny bit of light over the seats, as it adds to the "group" feeling of the audience).

An interesting anecdote is that I once worked at a theatre that had an illuminated clock just to the left of the screen. It was great when you were keeping track of the time watching a bad movie, but was a constant distraction to the audience during a good movie, ruining the "magic" of the silver screen.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
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At the theatre I plan to open, the curtains will be kept shut until showtime. When showtime comes, the lights will dim down 3/4 and the curtain will rise. The lights will stay on 3/4 until the trailers are done. As soon as the actual movie starts, the lights will be right off. At the end of the show, the lights won't rise until it says "CAST" on the screen. The curtain will finally lower after the film has run out of the projector!

We will also introduce shows with a spotlight on the bottom center of the screen. An usher will come up at 5 minutes to and say welcome to this theatre, blah blah blah!

As for Famous Players,
The lights are soo low when you enter SilverCity St. VBital's auditorium that seriously, there's no point in even having the lights on!

A women tripped inbetween the aisles at some SilverCity in ontario in 1999 and broke a rib or something !
Famous Players had travellers insurance so, the old couple couldn't sue, but now they leave the lights on until the actual movie! It sux!

On the curtains, the traditional manner is for the screen to never be "blank". Waiting until the film has ran out of the projector defeats the purpose. They should completely close the screen on the last frame of credits.

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They were typically neon lit, as someone else noted. The one we have at our shop has a violet tube in it. Around the face of the clock would be some form of advertisment. In our case, it is for what was a local pharmacy.

They typically augmented an Art Deco's decor.

Steve

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quote:

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An interesting anecdote is that I once worked at a theatre that had an illuminated clock just to the left of the screen.

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Clocks seem to have been common installations at smaller & "neighborhood" houses from the teens up through the 50's (& of course often left there if the theater survived past that time).

You can sort of see why they'd put a clock up there - so people wouldn't stay too long & not forget to leave! With continuous, grindhouse performances, people would be coming in & staying an indefinite time. The clock would make sure you didn't lose track of time & left, the sooner the better for the theater. Hey, after you've bought your ticket, from a business standpoint, the next thing you need to do is leave.

I read a wonderful reminiscence of early silent-era theaters written in longhand by a senior citizen who recalled that during the summers of her childhood, the place to go was to the movies, & as the day progressed the houses would fill up with children. At one house, every now & then, the manager would come down front at about the time the evening crowd usually began to arrive & shout "Would all the kids who have been here since two o'clock please GO HOME!"

There are some pictures of silent-era front ends at
http://members.nbci.com/saenger.1/foh/foh.htm

You can see clocks at Woodley's Optic Theatre & the Savoy Theatre.

And one that I've gotten tired of cleaning up, but here it is all rough anyway, there's a clock at the Family Theatre

As you can see, there were worse things than sitting behind a post back in the day.
You could be sitting behind a tree.

Two of these lights were about 1m from the top of the screen, and would have made screenings awful, if the inspector hadn't agreed that these could be shaded - so I did, with four hand crafted large painted drinks cans! these saw stirling service for about ten years, when a new Inspector wasn't happy with the level of illumination, and insisted that these fittings be removed completely, and be replaced with a new secondary lighting fitting on the back wall of the auditorium, that would only come on in a power failure - he happened to dislike going into lit cinemas himself, and was happy that the two exit signs over the doors at the back of the auditorium gave enough light to find ones way out under normal circumstances.

He did however insist on extra fittings being put in in our other auditorium, one of which was going to be above a door on the stage that lives behing the screen when we screen films in there - after it was pointed out that this would prevent film shows in this auditorium, he permitted this fitting to be one that we could turn off when we didn't want it on, which is of course most of the time

I also ended up with two fittings on a balcony which isn't used for films, as its at the same level as the projectors, and people would manage to get in the way of the picture, these were illuminating the screen a treat until I placed some Neutral density lighting gel in them (Lee Filters 210) which reduced the light level a treat, and so far hasn't received comment from the inspector...

As to leaving the houselights on during a feature - the only time I had to do this was for a screening of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' which had been organised by Film Education, an organisation over here that arrange film shows for schools, with back up information, anyway I had a cinema full of seven to eight year olds, some of which were scared by the movie, and wouldn't watch it without the lights on (although at about 30%).

>>On the curtains, the traditional manner is for the screen to never be "blank". Waiting until the film has ran out of the projector defeats the purpose. They should completely close the screen on the last frame of credits.<<

Just saw this and had to comment. I agree that there's no point in waiting until the film is out of the projector before closing the curtain, but neither do I like closing the curtain too early.

For me, the perfect closing of the curtains is to have them _almost_ touch the last of the screen credits while the curtain spotlights light up the last lines or the company logo (or whatever that is last) and--of course--the piece of the screen that is still visible. The effect must be that the spots fade out the film exactly at the same moment when the curtains close on the credits.

I hate those smallish left- or right-aligned end credits, especially when the feature is in Scope, because having a large curtain "cover" them too early is ugly as hell and pretty much destroys the last of the film for whatever audience that is still watching the film.