posted 12-06-2005 10:15 PM                       

quote: Dave Macaulay

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Too bright changes the "look" of the film as much as too dim does, and bright scenes will have annoying flicker.

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posted 12-06-2005 10:50 PM                       

quote:

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You can go brighter. . . with a three-blade shutter, and in most cases, the images look very good, but not necessarily what the director and cinematographer intended. (e.g., you might see something in the shadows they don't want you to see).

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I don't understand. How would using a 3-blade shutter cause that?

posted 12-06-2005 11:18 PM                       

quote:

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I don't understand. How would using a 3-blade shutter cause that? [Confused]

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posted 12-07-2005 04:32 AM                       

quote: Steven J Hart

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I've been looking for ideas on dressing stage area of the theater. I have almost no sense of "design"

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Same here, I just have gotten to notice what's missing from the pipe batten, & why it was there by the way it looks when it's gone.

If you do it, you need to sort out how all the components work at the same time, & the only other component that may be missing is if you use top masking only for scope. Only the leading 6" or so of the side or top masking is black, the rest is something else that goes with the house decoration. Otherwise, the screen does look small & awkwardly thrown in:



Fortunately, top masking is usually a panel, so it's easy to just apply above the leading black edge whatever fabric or whatever is going to be used. This is technically a lambrequin: a panel with fabric on top of it that sort of impersonates a drape.



This panel is the only one where you can use vertical folds (pleats here, really, since they're flat). A "straight valance" with vertical folds really looks lowball over a screen because the lines run in the wrong direction. However, if you've got a valance or pseudo-prosc above it with lines running horizontally or radiating, you can go with vertical lines on a short lambrequin beneath it to get eye-busying variety & to de-empahsize the sliveriness of the lambrequin. There must be some sort of demarcation at the bottom of the decorative panel where the black edge starts; not a fringe (which is wrong for deco), I forget what they're called at the fabric store. It's just a fabric border-y thing in a roll, sometimes it looks like a few-inch-wide fabric thing, some are like soft cloth rope.

The audience manipulation part about reducing the screen size with the top masking is to tart it up somehow with some eye candy so that it becomes something new to stare at & wonder what the hell that's all about when it comes in. I personally would enoy an RCA meatball stuck in the middle of the lambrequin on the top masking, but if you'll be disguising the speaker with a single, central element already, you'll need something more horizontal in layout. In a frenchy-looking movie palace, you could put a silhouette of Phaeton joyriding or something, but in a deco house, it's all about geometric shapes. You don't want something else out of left field adding to the clutter, so I always look around to find some existing element that might can be utilized there in the star position. Just from the photo, the only shape that pops out is the silhouette of the sconces, so they could be a candidate somehow:



If that works for you, go to Home Depot, buy 4 panels of sheet metal, cut them in silhouettes of the nested bowls of the sconces, spray them dark gold, & stick them on the lambrequin. I've noticed in deco houses with cast metal figures of some sort that they're almost always just silhouettes with a small bit of geometric relief: you could do the same by taking each cutout and giving it a soft vertical bend no more than 1" up the center. Don't shine a light on it, the two slightly differently facing sides will have sufficient eye-candy action in the houselight scatter.

Someone else will really need to work out the design with you, these are just the components & how they're laid out, especially considering that it must be something that works visually with your grand drape.

The missing components:
False prosc/valance thing
Lambrequin panel on top masking
(in your case) panel or something over the AC ducts

The neat thing here is that in your case, you might be able to do it all just by getting enough scrim material for all 3 components. They're all basically lambrequins, just stapling fabric to a panel & then hanging the panel. Radial pleats on the AC panel, horizontal pleats (with maybe a sort of swirly thing in the center) on the valance, vertical pleats on the top masking.

Hopefully, you & someone else can work out colors & maybe work out something better for the top masking design which isn't really setting me on fire.



All right, this is starting to work for me.

posted 12-07-2005 05:33 AM                       

quote: Carl Martin

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what open gate luminance would allow most people to perceive flicker if the shutter has two 100 degree blades?

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posted 12-07-2005 01:57 PM                    

quote: John Pytlak

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Standard SMPTE 196M allows up to 22 footlamberts for theatres, with an aim of 16 footlamberts screen luminance.

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I thought the standard was 16 +/- 2 foot lamberts.

posted 12-07-2005 10:10 PM                       

quote:

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I thought the standard was 16 +/- 2 foot lamberts. [Confused]

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posted 12-08-2005 01:44 AM                       

quote: John Pytlak

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You still should stay in the standard SMPTE 196M range of 12 to 22 footlamberts, and aim for 16 footlamberts. Whether the blades of a two-blade shutter are 90 or 100 degrees, it's still a two-blade shutter with 48 interruptions per second.

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