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Topic: Hollywood’s Historic Egyptian Theatre Undergoes Retrofit For “Rare” 35mm Nitrate Film

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-08-2016 04:08 PM

Nice pictures.

If that is the same print of Casablanca that played at the Eastman House Museum's nitrate weekend in 2015, your audience is incredibly lucky. Most of that is printed off of the camera negative and it is the best print of that title that I have ever seen (and probably will ever see).

I love that your nitrate-capable booth has a Barco in it, too. If only every theatre could be so well equipped to properly present the entire history of motion-pictures.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-08-2016 11:51 PM

Given the softness and lack of midtone in some of the shots, I'd be surprised if that print was straight from the camera negative. There again, I don't recall seeing any printed-through edge codes from an IP, so I guess it's possible.

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I would have retained the original Phillips reproducer and had the lateral guide roller on it split and spring loaded to eliminate film weave past the scanner ... Your DTS Reader can mount inside the projector above the Shutter housing. Had the Kinoton scanner been left alone it would have been your SRD/Red Light, and for the occasional need for White Light the original reproducer could be swapped with it in minutes and with no alignment necessary if they are labeled which machine they go to.

OK, but we're trying to get to a place whereby we can play all of the following:

- White and red light optical analog
- SR-D, DTS (35 and 70) and SDDS
- Mag (35 and 70)

With a bare minimum of reader and component swapping needed to accomplish format changes. So even if we were to do as you suggest (swapable Kinoton and Philips readers below the gate and swapable DTS 35 and DTS 70 readers above it), that would still leave the problem of the SDDS readers.

It may be that we have to bite the bullet and accept that the top nitrate mag will have to be swapped with one assembly containing all of the digital penthouse readers when converting the machines to and from nitrate configuration, but we're still looking for a solution that will avoid us having to do that.

quote: Rick Raskin
To clarify: Are you saying they did not previously have coolant re-circulators before the conversion? Every DP70/AAII I ran (JJs too) had them as part of the initial install. Yes, the cooling plate was always cool when running film, even with lamps pulling 150+ amps.

No: they've had liquid cooling ever since they were originally installed here, in 1998. I was saying that the design of the gate (to accommodate liquid cooling), while originally designed with the high heat environment of large screen 70mm projection in mind, happens also to be a big advantage for nitrate projection.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-09-2016 07:09 AM

I've never been a big fan of that style circulator because that is all it is. It just circulates the water. In later designs, such as that one, they use a plastic tub that retains the heat picked off by gate and it gives it nowhere to go. Over time, the tank heats up.

MIT improved the design by putting a radiator on top of the tank with a fan so that it became a heat exchanger that actually pulled the heat off the gate and then blew it into the projection room. The designed still had this oversized tank involved. The purpose of the big tank is to buy one time in the hopes that one will not use it enough to heat the entire tank to ineffectiveness. Conversely, with a heat exchanger, there is no point to a significant reservoir.

I ended up adopting the same heat exchanger that the Series 0 (Mark VII) DCPs used.

You have about a quart of coolant in the system, and you are removing more heat and it has less evaporation than the big tub. Using a good glycol like Tyfocor in a low 1:5 mix, you get YEARS on what little coolant you put in. They aren't cheap but they are far and away better than the tub o heating water. If you know of where any of the old MarkVII projectors (Christie or Barco) are and aren't being used, you can probably snag the Heat Exchangers off of them.

For higher wattages, nitrate or 16mm, I turn to chillers. BL&S turned me on to the Remcor brand. Again, low quantities of coolant are required (maybe 2-quarts) and it will maintain the temp at anywhere you dial it in (you don't want things so cold that you get condensation but 65F is a good target. Heat is the enemy of nitrate.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-09-2016 05:39 PM

Well, Had the Kinoton reproducer been left alone then all but SDDS could be done within the projector head itself.

Not sure doing SDDS is even worth it because it is so unreliable of a system from the film itself all the way through to the processor. You just don't know if a given print will play back reliably or if the equipment sits unused for a long period if it'll even function again. I know there may be a few films that only have it and I understand the archival aspect of keeping it available. But only for SDDS that scanner will likely have to go outside the head. And is the hassle of removing magazines worth it when 99.8% of all movies are Quad Track...? Also in many cases the Analog SR tracks will way outperform the digital tracks of all three manufacturers. True Lies was a very fine example of where they got the SR track sounding way way better than the digital tracks were doing.

Agree with Steve on the coolant tanks. The thing about the Egyptian though is it is one or two showings and then nothing for a while. So not sure the water there has a chance to heat up very much in the duration of a 20 minute reel. If they run shows all day then it's probably gonna be steamy hot at the end of three or four showing in a row.

When I worked at CLACO we made similar tanks in the shop from scratch but added an automotive heater core and 4" muffin fan sitting on top to keep the water at room temperature. This could be easily added to those two coolers for about a hundred dollars in parts. The heater cores were around 40 bucks each at an auto parts store. Then you need the two fans and some copper fittings to connect it to the output of the tank. The return line feeds the heater core and thus keeps the returning water very close to room temp. Similar to how the old Ashcraft coolers worked.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-10-2016 12:38 AM

The low tech, bucket and pump cooler might be crude, but it's all we need. I'm guessing that the volume of liquid coolant in the container is large enough that it can hold all the heat that is carried away from the gate during the period the lamp is on (5-6 hours is as long as it's ever on continuously in our pattern of usage). In any case, at the end of the evening, the front of the gate backplate is still cool to the touch, and if you feel the side of the bucket, it is just a little warm, but the liquid inside can't be even close to hot.

If we were running those lamphouses for 10-12 hours at a time we might need something a little more sophisticated, though.

As for SDDS, keeping all the audio formats we had and adding the nitrate mags is a significant engineering challenge, but it is one we want to address. Point taken that if we accepted the loss of SDDS, all the others could be accommodated inside the chassis, but we did play an SDDS print from the 1990s and '00s probably every 4-6 weeks on average before the refurb, and some of our regular customers can hear the difference and give us feedback on it.

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Lindsay Morris
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 233
From: Darlington, WA, Australia
Registered: Sep 2002

posted 11-10-2016 02:49 AM

Leo, No idea as to what power your lamps run at but when I converted the outdoor venue from a pair of Simplex standards running carbon arcs @55A to the Century CC with a Lumex on the back running around 65A I had to setup water cooling.
The CC came with the water cooling gate assembly being an ex drive in unit & ran blistering hot without any water cooling. So hot in fact it was impossible to reliably set the screen focus as it continually moved about.
Seeing it got so hot I thought I would need plenty of water capacity so used a 200L plastic barrel sitting outside the bio as a reservoir.
Problem with that was the kids were able to lift off the lid & splash the coolant over each other. The temp in the barrel rarely got above ambient so tried a 20L barrel...just got warm by the time the night session had ended.
To keep the kids from messing with that one I shifted to just outside the front wall of the bio up on a stand so it was above the gate height inside & partly hidden by garden plantings.
When the pump died one night I thought I was in trouble but the system neatly thermo syphoned & the gate ran as cool as.
So whipped the pump out & for the remaining 5 years of film before digital it thermo syphoned quite happily.
Occasionally on very hot nights the aperture plate MIGHT get a bit warm but as compared to running with NO cooling as done initially (where one burnt the fingers on the aperture plate when you swapped it on a format change after 20mins of running) the water cooling worked a treat.
Hot nights were after 40C+ days so ambient often still 32C at 8pm.
Good to see some nitrate still being screened & I can still remember the guy who trained me grizzling that Safety Film was like looking at an image thru flywire up close. Nitrate he claimed was as clear as which he frequently pointed out to me as there were still quite a few nitrate prints being screened in 1958 here in Australia.
Only ever saw one fire where a cartoon broke & went up. Took all the paint off the feed spool box is seconds and there was probably only 50 feet of film left to run...absolutely intense heat AND smelly. [Smile]

Recently the old CC found a new life running odd clips & shorts for copying to DVD purposes & the group I sold it to had issues with a bundle of film that a client wanted copying.
It had been stored for years as a number of tightly rolled rolls. They were almost impossible to get to lay straight in the splicer but we got them all spliced & run thru & copied AND it was full frame silent stuff. Although I could not see nitrate printed on the edge printings it certainly had that look about it and after we had done the copying I grabbed the offcuts from the splicing process & set them alight in a tin can outside.
One match and whoosh it all went up in seconds and the tin was red hot.

Turns out the shots were from movies made by the clients grandfather who was an actor in Europe & these rolls of nitrate stuff had been stored for years in the family home just sitting in a cupboard [Roll Eyes]

The lot went back on a bobbin & big note attached warning that the stuff was highly flammable & should not be kept in the home & would be better off being destroyed now they had a DVD of the shots. [Smile]

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-10-2016 01:45 PM

I agree Leo, SDDS can sound better... when it works.

Mark

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