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Author Topic: Outdoor Movies Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-22-2006 05:31 AM                        For the last five years of the over 25yr old Celebrate Brooklyn Summer Festival, film has been added in a big way. Our biggest audience so far was for CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON in 3D (anaglyphic, unfortunately) for which 6,000 showed up. And it's not all fluff -- just last week we got nearly that many for an experimental title featuring the alt experimental rock score of the great Yo La Tengo trio. Just tonight we were about to go up with Hitchcock's BLACKMAIL and the Alloy Orchestra playing an original score. Unfortunately and hour before showtime the heavens opened up and we got pummled with an incredible thunder storm that drenched the site and our booth and threw 60 mph winds at our projection tower taking the tarp skins flying. Lightening strikes as close as a couple of hundred yards away made trying to salvage the night much too dangerous, and we had to abandon the tower and finally cancel. Even then, it was amazing to see a couple dozen people standing in the soaking rain at the gates. Film outdoors has some mystical, exceptional power. It is just a unique way of seeing movies, and it seems to excite a very broad spectrum of people. I think it generates the same excitement as do the Drive-ins. People just love DIs and our outdoor, Movies Under The Stars shows with the same enthusiasm. I mean, you never hear anyone saying, "I HATE to go to the Drive-In; on the other hand, I am always hearing people say they hate to go to the movies -- that of course, meaning the indoor multiplex movies. We run stuff that if it were booked into the standard indoor house, it would be playing to an empty theatre. We got thousands for THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Try running that at your local multiplex and you wouldn't make enough at the box office to turn on the lights. We run 35mm on dual Century SAWs with ORC lamphouses buring 4.5K to a 50ft width, non-perf medium gain screen. Sound is a by a new-comer to the cinema scene, SLS Sound which uses Constant Q Time Array stacks with ribbon tweeters instead of the traditional horns. The system produces very clear, rich sound but powerful enuf to do all the live, knock-your-sox-off rock 'n roll acts that perform in the same venue. There's pictures in the Picture Section as per here: Clicky Some vexing problems that plague outdoor venues, the weather, of course, but things you wouldn't even think of, like squirrles chewing holes in the screen and thru wires. They even got into the tower and into the booth, chewing thru the gallon plastic jug containing Ecco 1500 film cleaner. Moisture and outdoor air polution oxidizes and corrodes contacts much more quickly than indoor -- we had a rectifier relay burst into flames last year because of oxidation on the wire connections. Still to come -- July 27th - 7:30pm DRACULA with Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet playing an original score for the classic film. And -- Aug 3rd - 7:30pm This one is too complicated to paraphrase, so here is the brochure blurb: BILL FRISELL takes on KEATON, MORRISON & WOODRING / THE MOONLIGHTERS A one-of-a-kind night of live music and film as BILL FRISELL, "widely considered one of the world's most innovative and unpredictable jazz guitarists and composers," (Seattle Times) performs original scores to an astonishing program of shorts: Buster Keaton's HIGH SIGN and ONE WEEK; a selection of surrealist animations by maverick cartoonist Jim Woodring; and the artist Bill Morrison's hallucinogenic reimagining of the eerie 1926 Boris Karloff gem THE MESMERIST. Come one, come all....and pray for no rain. As odds go, in the five years we have been showing film on the big screen, this is the very first cancellation. Not to bad. If anyone FTF'ers want to come, let me know and I will get you VIP passes.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-28-2006 04:42 PM                        Well, you guys didn't pray hard enough. If you belong to the Drive-in list, it was posted there. : "Well, we all knew that there is always the chance that rain can close down a show quicker than most everything else, except perhaps loss of power. And just fresh in our minds was the show last week that we had to cancel because, of a humongous storm, so we knew that we COULD get hit any time, but after 6 summers of operating without a single show canceled due to weather, we kind of put heavy rain out of mind. Surely we couldn't get a storm two weeks in a row....exactly a week apart with no rain in between. Last night proved to confound the law of averages. We were playing the original DRACULA with the Kronos Jazz Ensemble and Philip Glass playing his score live on a platform below the screen. We rehearsed all day -- it's a big technical set-up sound-wise -- and the skys are blue and clear. And did the audience come out! It was a real "event" with over 7,000 people (our record to date). No question about it, people simply LOVE seeing movies under the stars, be it in their cars or sitting in a park. If I played this title, even with the stature of Philip Glass and Kronos in our 2500 seat indoor, I would be lucky if I got 300 --400. But as we know, outdoors has it's own magic beyond anything you throw up on the screen. I guess it starts with that thrill of sleeping in a tent in the backyard when you're 6yrs old -- but whatever it is, it sticks with most of us well into adulthood. So here comes a great crowd and the show is about to roll foreward. Everyone is poised, the film starts, Kronos is in fine form, but then, middle of the second reel, it came -- a monstrous thunderstorm. Of course, as we always do, we work out a contingency plan as to what to do if we have to stop the show. We explained to Kronos that in the past, we had a night when we had a slight drizzle during WEST SIDE STORY and the audience just whipped out umbrellas and rain parkers and sat thru the rain -- these are SERIOUS outdoor movie fans! Kronos said they were gunghoe and we could move them on stage behind the screen and they would continue to play as long as people sat there. At first we heard the thunder which coincidentally enough coincided with the rainy night scene in the movie. It sounded like it was on the soundtrack, only in stereo surround! Then came the downpour, almost instantaiously it went from no rain to buckets pouring down on us and winds at 40 mph blowing it sideways. Out came the parkers and umbrellas and people still sat there, just as we knew they would. We were prepared to stop the show and wait for the rain to clear -- we have internet Doppler radar and can watch the storm's progress and it looked like it would pass in about 15min, BUT with the rain came lighting and thunder so severe and so close that there was no time between thunder claps and lighting, with thunderclaps so loud that they were really quite frightening. And anyone who saw POLTERGIEST knows what no time-lag between thunder and lighting means. Plus, just a few days before in exactly such a storm, two teenagers in the park were playing soccer and as they were walking off the field to get out of the rain, they were fatally hit by lighting. So with this fresh in everyone's mind and the very frightening, deafening thunder hits, we called the show for safety and had to tell the thousands to please leave the park, which in and of itself was pretty scary as at one point it looked like panic had set in in one area of the park and we had to make another announcement asking them to please walk orderly to the exits. Panic is an evil, very dangerous thing. Anyway, no injuries; it all ended well albeit very sad that we had to kill such a great show with such a responsive audience. Brooklynites are a notoriously rambunctious bunch.... clapping, whistling, hissing Count Dracula and laughing hysterically at some of the hilarious dialogue in this 1930 classic. The Kronos people said this was the best audience they had ever played for. Up in the tower we had to scramble to secure the projectors and equipment since when the show is running, obviously we take the "skins" (a new type of plasticized tarp that attaches with very wide velcro strips) off the front wall so we can project. When the rains come so fast and so furious, you have to really hustle to get the skins back in place to protect everything. We throw plastic sheets over all the equipment, except we discovered something we hadn't thought of until last night. If the projectors are running, even if you turn off the xenons, those 4.5 killowatt lamps need 20min to cool down and the auto function keeps the fans running; you can't just throw tarp over the projectors and cover the exhaust pipes. We did loose the show last week as well, but that day the storm came at about 4pm and we could see on the Dopller that it was huge, covering as far back as Pennsylvania; it was clear that it would go on well into the evening. People make the decision not to come whenever they see any rain close to starting time. But believe it or not, about 30 people showed up at the gate, with their umbrellas and with their rain coats. I told the producer to give them free tee-shirts for being such loyal fans! Loosing that show was a lot different as we just canceled it ahead of time; all I had to do was rewind the print and get out of that tower . That storm came with lots of very close, very fierce lightening as well, which, on an all-metal scaffolding tower with 400 amps of current powering the rectifiers on the ground level, the sound system on the first level, the lighting system on the second level and projection on the top level, not to mention that it is sitting out in the middle of open ground, you are well aware of the danger. You feel torn between the instinct to "RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY," and to protect the equipment. A dear friend called me on my cell and asked if I was still up on the tower. I said I was; she said, "Well, either get down now or take a Sharpie and write my office number on your forehead so when they find your body, they will know who to call." She is always thinking about me. Anyway, just thought you guys would like to know about our rain experience. I know we are not exactly a drive-in, but we sure do have the same kind of problems. Rain certainly isn't something the hardtops have to worry about, but then again, they don't get to experience all that excitement. Frank Celebrate Brooklyn Summer Festival"  |  IP: Logged

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