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Author Topic: Eidophor Projector Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-23-2003 10:44 AM                     There are a few of the century VV in use still for special effects work. The was also an italian machine the Micro that had a dual optical/mag soundhead  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-23-2003 10:53 AM                     My VistaVision projector was out on a job not too long ago.....Its really alot of fun to operate.....things happen really fast, actually twice as quick! Mark  |  IP: Logged Hugh McCullough Expert Film Handler Posts: 147 From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK Registered: Jan 2003 posted 01-23-2003 12:17 PM                        Sorry, but it appears that I did not make it very clear how the Eidophor cooling works. The water was circulated through a metal pipe that was welded to the frame that supported the revolving mirror. Think water cooling of film projector gates, but inside a vacuum. After all the oil film takes the place of the film in a normal projector. My knowledge of horizontal VistaVision is limited. It comes from reading, and what people who worked on it have told me. I have only worked on top to bottom VistaVision, you know, the prints with the Plimsoll lines at the beginning of each reel. A junior projectionist cut these lines out of a copy of the River Plate. He thought that they were film damage. Had to give him full marks for film checking. I believe that apart from the Odeon the only other West end cinema to run VistaVision was the Paramount, later Plaza, in Regent Street. To explain how Cintel worked please go to my other site www.cinephoto.info\cintel_1.htm These pages are not accessible from the main site. We seem to be getting off the subject of Eidophor. Is this wise?  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 01-24-2003 04:26 PM                     Hugh, That makes more sense, I've never actually seen inside one, and have only seen one working a handful of times. I have certainly never operated one. How did you feed the Eidophor, did you have permanent Post Office lines into the building, or a microwave dish on the roof, or what? As far as I remember, the BBC started regular colour transmissions in 1967, and by the early '70s, it was becomming quite common for people to have colour televisions at home, it must have seemed something of a step backwards to have a black and white picture at the cinema, when most films had been in colour for at least 15 years. Was a colour Eidophor just too expensive for even the Odeon to afford? So it was the Cintel machine which was used at the Telekinema. I have never seen one of these, but 7 ft Lamberts, with a contrast range of 50:1 sounds quite a bit short of what the Eidophor could provide.  |  IP: Logged Hugh McCullough Expert Film Handler Posts: 147 From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK Registered: Jan 2003 posted 01-24-2003 05:26 PM                        The signal was sent by satellite to the Telecom tower. From there it was fed to the Odeon by land line. Lines were also supplied by BT to enable the signal to be fed from the Odeon to any other place in the UK that was showing the same event. We were also in direct telephone contact with these other venues in case of trouble with their signal. There was a Telecom engineer always present during any satellite transmissions. For the Royal Film Performance we took the signal from the OB vans. People may have had colour sets at home, but did they have a 25ft wide picture? Anyway, as a photographer myself I like B/W. I was told that a colour Eidophor cost in the region of £250,000, and that there were only six in the whole of the UK. The Cintel did not use any form of arc to project it's picture. Basically it relied on the light output from the cathode ray tube as it's light source.  |  IP: Logged

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