Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinerama on History Channel

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Community » Film-Yak » Cinerama on History Channel (Page 3)

This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

Author

Topic: Cinerama on History Channel

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 11-28-2004 11:25 PM

quote: Will Kutler
Horack also stated that carbon arc was only used until the 1950's, when it was replaced by xenon

What should have been said is that Nitrate film was eliminated in the 1950's with the developement of safty film in 1948 for the motion picture industry. Carbon arc was continuously used in a vast majority of theatres through the sixties. Xenon lamps were devoloped in 1951 but did not become widely used in the cinema until the advent of fillm transport systems.

| IP: Logged

Dick Vaughan
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1032
From: Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-29-2004 03:24 AM

Cinerama uses 7 track mag. 5 screen channels + left and right wall. At certain points in the film left wall track is switched to both walls and right wall track to rear speakers .

EX plus ,50years earlier! [thumbsup]

| IP: Logged

Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 11-29-2004 04:00 AM

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
The show implied that sync'ing Vitaphone discs with the picture was a matter of hit and miss. Not so. The disks had a clear start point, and the turntable was connected to the projector by gears (not belts).

The problem was not with the sychronisation mechanism per se, but the fact there were two ways sync could be and was frequently lost: if the needle jumped a groove in the record or if any length of film was lost in an accident and the projectionist failed to replace the missing frames with an identical length of opaque spacing.

Vitaphone discs were made of a softer shellac compound than the 78rpm records sold to consumers. This largely offset the loss of dynamic range from the slower rotation speed (33 1/3rpm) but did mean that the steel needle and very high tracking force tended to wear them out very quickly. Each side was supposed to be good for a set number of playings (20 I think but am not sure) and had tick boxes on the labels. Once all the boxes were ticked you were supposed to bin the disc. The problem was that as the discs were purchased by theatres outright - i.e. if you wanted to replace a worn-out set you had to pay for a new one - a lot of second run and lower budget houses didn't bother, played worn-out discs with worn-out needles and had them jump out of sync as a result.

Articles and letters in the British trade press suggest that this was a serious problem and a big part of the reason why Vitaphone was eventually discontinued. In the early days it gave a slightly better sound quality than sound on film (especially the early Western Electric AEO-light based VD tracks), but took more skill and was a lot more expensive to get right.

More info: Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound, pp. 203-205; Edward Bernds, Mr. Bernds Goes to Hollywood, section starting on p. 68; contemporary sources - Rudolph Miehling, Sound Projection (NY, 1929); James R. Cameron, Motion Pictures With Sound (Manhattan Beach, 1929); Harold B. Franklin, Sound Motion Pictures (NY, 1929).

quote: Darryl Spicer
Xenon lamps were devoloped in 1951

Do you have a source for this? According to Don E. Kloepfel, Moving Picture Projection & Theatre Presentation Manual (SMPTE, 1969), the first short-arc xenon bulbs designed specifically for theatrical presentation were first demonstrated by Zeiss-Ikon at the Photokina trade show in 1954.

quote: Will Kutler
For example, this film historian that they interviewed, Jan Christopher Horak, seemed to be clueless as to how a projector works

I've had a factual accuracy issue with him, too. I recently wrote an article on ethics and film restoration practice for the AMIA journal (see The Moving Image, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 130-141), which he edited. As part of the revision process he suggested that I add a reference to a decision made during UCLA's restoration of another film from the one I was mainly dealing with. I couldn't find any published information on it, so I put the reference in a footnote naming him as the source. Shortly after the article was published I was contacted by someone from UCLA pointing out that the information was incorrect. Should a similar situation ever happen again I'll check it out or leave it out!

I'm with Steve on this one - sometimes boiling down technical issues for a non-technical audience can be very difficult and you often have to oversimplify some issues or leave others out altogether. But that's not an excuse for factual errors, and in these instances the programme makers should have had a system for checking and double-checking the information in the script.

| IP: Logged

William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-29-2004 06:38 AM

I've had 2 reports (one from a manager, one from a tech) who said that the Vitaphone discs received were *copied* via an onsite piece of equipment, the copied discs run, & the originals held for making another copy when the previous copies became worn. The tech described seeing the copying device in an older theatre, & was told what it was by an operator who'd worked there in the Vitaphone days.

| IP: Logged

Dick Vaughan
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1032
From: Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-29-2004 06:46 AM

quote:
I've had 2 reports (one from a manager, one from a tech) who said that the Vitaphone discs received were *copied* via an onsite piece of equipment,

You see in booth piracy even back then [Big Grin]

| IP: Logged

Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 11-29-2004 06:53 AM

Gosh, that's a new one on me! Must have been an acetate disc cutter of some description - I doubt if there'd be room in the booth for a full-scale wax cutting, electroplating and shellac pressing plant! I wonder if this was done with the studios' blessing or not.

| IP: Logged

Jeremy Fuentes
Mmmm, Dr. Pepper!

Posts: 1168
From: Corpus Christi, TX United States
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 11-29-2004 07:18 AM

quote: Phil Hill
In unrelated news: The Science Channel has been running an hour-long behind-the-scenes look at IMAX and Iwerks theatres, projection systems, and simulator-ride motion bases. Ahhhem... Some of which I designed and built.

Any credit given to you on the show?

| IP: Logged

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 11-29-2004 09:38 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Do you have a source for this? According to Don E. Kloepfel, Moving Picture Projection & Theatre Presentation Manual (SMPTE, 1969), the first short-arc xenon bulbs designed specifically for theatrical presentation were first demonstrated by Zeiss-Ikon at the Photokina trade show in 1954.

You are correct Leo. THe information on the site I found was not acuarate on the dates.

| IP: Logged

John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 11-29-2004 10:05 AM

The technical paper "Motion Picture Projection, Xenon Short Arc Lamp" by Seeger and Jaedicke (of Osram?) was published in the July 1960 SMPTE Journal. It was first published in German in Kino-Technik, 13: No.3, pp 55-59 in 1959.

| IP: Logged

Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 11-29-2004 10:37 AM

The Discovery Channel has a discussion forum, on which at least 1 F-T member has posted a remark. Look at www.historychannel.com, then select Modern Marvels from the scroll down list of shows. There is a link to a discussion forum.

Anyhow, it would be interesting to see F-T members bombard THC with factual information.

Furthermore, it would really be great if Leo Enticknap would post his personal experience with Jan Christopher Horack!!

Cheers

K.

| IP: Logged

Leo Enticknap
Film God

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

posted 11-29-2004 11:45 AM

What I posted above is really all there is to say. The person I swapped emails with at UCLA thought the most likely explanation to be that Jan-Christopher Horak had misheard the details in a lecture or conference panel and that the incorrect notes which resulted formed the basis of his suggested revision to my paper.

All human beings make mistakes and get facts wrong every now and again (I do it as much as everyone else, if not more so): the point is that if you're publishing something or putting it in a TV documentary, it's not a good idea to rely on any single source. If you have the same information in two separate sources (i.e. you can be fairly certain that one didn't get it from the other) then it's probably true; if you can't then treat the information as suspect. That really is a basic rule of historical research which it seems the producers of this documentary didn't pay much attention to, given the large number of errors which the posters in this thread have identified.

John - thanks for the reference on xenons.

| IP: Logged

William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-30-2004 01:13 AM

quote:
Gosh, that's a new one on me! Must have been an acetate disc cutter of some description - I doubt if there'd be room in the booth for a full-scale wax cutting, electroplating and shellac pressing plant!

These were both big Loew's houses in a large & large-midsize markets. The tech says the one he saw was in another closet-like room built for the purpose at the back of the balcony; a short walk, same level as, & opposite the projector booth, but against one of the outside walls. The tagline was the usual "I should have taken that thing with me, now it's gone..."

| IP: Logged

Phil Hill
I love my cootie bug

Posts: 7595
From: Hollywood, CA USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 11-30-2004 02:00 AM

quote: Jeremy Fuentes
Any credit given to you on the show?

While I designed and/or improved several of the theatres/projectors/motion bases/systems that were shown, the premise of the show was not specific to the particular people involved but more of a general comment on the industry. However, still a very interesting and informative show.

| IP: Logged

Christian Appelt
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 505
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: Dec 2001

posted 11-30-2004 06:07 PM

Just for the record:

quote:

Horak, Jan-Christopher - Author Biography
Jan-Christopher Horak: Curator, Hollywood Entertainment Museum, Visiting Professor, UCLA. Previously, Founding Director, Archives Universal Studios. Director, Munich Filmmuseum, Senior Curator at George Eastman House Film Dept.. He has taught at Universities of Rochester, Munich, Salzburg, and the Munich Film Academy. Published books include Making images move (1997), Berge, licht und traum (1997), Lovers of cinema (1995), The dream merchants (1989), over 250 articles and reviews. Founding editor, The moving image. Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

"Those who know it do it. Those who don't know teach it."

| IP: Logged

Christian Appelt
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 505
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: Dec 2001

posted 11-30-2004 06:07 PM

Just for the record:

quote:

Horak, Jan-Christopher - Author Biography
Jan-Christopher Horak: Curator, Hollywood Entertainment Museum, Visiting Professor, UCLA. Previously, Founding Director, Archives Universal Studios. Director, Munich Filmmuseum, Senior Curator at George Eastman House Film Dept.. He has taught at Universities of Rochester, Munich, Salzburg, and the Munich Film Academy. Published books include Making images move (1997), Berge, licht und traum (1997), Lovers of cinema (1995), The dream merchants (1989), over 250 articles and reviews. Founding editor, The moving image. Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

"Those who know it do it. Those who don't know teach it." [Big Grin]

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.