Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Lyric Theatre Web Tour

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Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 10:12 AM:

I just finished a new section to the Lyric Theatre's web site. It is an online web tour that will guide you through the theater with before and after pictures of the Lyric during it's renovations. There is also an important stop at the projection booth. You can check it out at the link below:
http://www.thelyric.com/webtour/start.php3

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Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA
www.thelyric.com

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-29-2000, 12:19 PM:

Colin- Very good job on the site. Nice booth too!!
Mark

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 12:28 PM:

Thanks, I can't take credit for the rest of the theater, but the booth remodel was done by yours truely.

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA
www.thelyric.com

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-29-2000, 12:34 PM:

Excellent and very thorough tour. Theater looks great!

(Where's the detailed booth pics for us? )

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 12:39 PM:

Actually, I have a bunch of leftover shots of the booth that I didn't use. If I have time this weekend I'll zip them up and send them off to you.

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA www.thelyric.com

Posted by Martin Frandsen (Member # 74) on 03-29-2000, 01:19 PM:

Very nice, i guess i have to visit the Lyric during my trip to the US this fall

Posted by Jeff Stricker (Member # 224) on 03-29-2000, 03:32 PM:

Colin - Great site and great looking projection booth!

Posted by Joe Smith (Member # 190) on 03-29-2000, 06:58 PM:

Great work Colin. I haven't been to Blacksburg in a long time, but the next time I get there, I'll have to check out your Lyric. It looks a lot different from the old Lyric we had in Lexington. It's now been converted into several condo's for those who like to live downtown.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-29-2000, 07:14 PM:

>>"Thanks, I can't take credit for the rest of the theater, but the booth remodel was done by yours truely.
------------------
Colin Wiseley"<<

A couple of addendums...

The speakers listed as "A-4" are actually Altec A-5/MR-94B.

The projector repair done in "Maryland" was by Cardinal Sound & Motion Picture Systems, Inc. (yes located in Maryland).

The Platter, Speakers, Soundhead (with Component Engineering ASR-30SH reader), Ultra-80 lamphouse and High-reactance power supply, Dolby CP-65 soundrack with QSC amps...etc. were also specified, supplied and installed by Cardinal Sound & Motion Picture Systems.

Nice job on the site, by the way. The theatre does look just wonderful and worth visiting by anybody near the Blacksburg area.

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 07:23 PM:

I hope I didn't give the impression that I installed all of the new equipment I only meant the remodel of the booth as in new paint and fixing all of the holes in the walls from the tons of old equipment I took down. Sorry about that. I tried to avoid listing the names of any companies that helped us out because there were so many and I didn't want to forget anyone which would make that one forgotten company even more upset. Cardinal Sound did a great job installing everything and it sounds and works great!

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA www.thelyric.com

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-29-2000, 07:43 PM:

Neat theatre, nice web site. I wish I'd had the chance to visit when I was at school in Virginia.

I'm pretty jealous of that Eastman 25...we had a lousy MARC-300 Pageant at the Williamsburg Theatre where I worked (also in Virginia...see Brad's picture warehouse).

They sure did a nice job on the theatre renovation, too, judging from the pictures.

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 08:09 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Scott Norwood:
Neat theatre, nice web site. I wish I'd had the chance to visit when I was at school in Virginia.

Unless you were in school in '98 or '99 you wouldn't have wanted to visit the theater before the renovations. It was in much worse condition then I was able to capture in the pictures. At the time I had a really crappy digital camera and the resolution was terrible.

The Eastman 25 is probably the best 16mm I've ever worked with including those new xenons Elmo has out. It's so quiet and smooth running that without the lamp and blower on you would have no idea it was in operation. I wish we used it more often although it does suck stopping the movie to make reel changes but the school kids don't care, they're just happy to be out of class.

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA www.thelyric.com

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 03-29-2000, 08:11 PM:

Colin

You did a great job. You've got a very interesting site. I hope to see the place in person one day. How is the on-screen presentation?

Bruce

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-29-2000, 08:42 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Bruce McGee:
How is the on-screen presentation?
Bruce

The on-screen presentation is fantastic. It's hard to describe how much of an improvement it is unless I describe what was there before. This is going to make a lot of you guys cringe and its something I'm not too proud of, but we had to make due for 2 years trying to run a theater with 25 year old equipment that had been idle for 7 years while raising the money for the renovations.

Film Head:
Luckily this was in fairly good shape and only needed a change of oil and a few parts replaced but it always had a problem with the intermittent making noise which wasn't fixed until the guys at Cardinal Sound got it. One of the other projectionists tried to fix it but never could.

Lamp House:
An old Peerless Magnarc Lamphouse that had been converted to xenon. I don't remember what the power supply was but it sucked and always blew fuses and once caught one on fire (that was an exciting night). The bulb had a arc stability problem and was very noticable on screen.

Sound:
All of the sound equipment was gone when we got there except for the sound head - an old RCA unit. One of the volunteers was an AV guy and donated an old PA mixer board and amplifier that we used. There was one Crate speaker behind the screen. The excitor lamp was powered by a 12v battery charger (don't laugh).

Screen:
The old cinemascope screen was in such poor condition that we tossed it and bought a roll down screen that looked pretty good but always had problems with wrinkles when the weather changed.

Masking:
None, which wasn't really a problem for flat films because the image fit pretty well on the screen. Unfortunately for scope films we still had to use the scope lense for the cinemascope screen and as a result had to crop about 3 feet off the image on either side to get it to fit using tape on the port window (don't laugh again).

Platter:
20 year old SuperPlatter - enough said.

During the renovations, the roll up screen was replaced by a frame screen with masking curtains. It is attached to hoists and can raised out of the way for stage performances. We also have new lenses and appatures for flat and scope so the image no longer has to cropped.

I think by now you should be able to appreciate what an improvment things must be without even seeing or hearing it. Boy am I glad those days are over, but it some ways it also made things interesting.

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA www.thelyric.com

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 03-29-2000, 10:08 PM:

I like the intercom system!

Posted by Stephen Winner (Member # 8) on 03-30-2000, 08:50 PM:

any thoughs on what you may do with the old booth equipment. It looks like you have the same setup we have here at the Byrd (Peerless Magnarc's Simplex XL's , Altec's, etc)

We may be interested in parts!

...actually after reading the details, it sounds like the origional equipment you had up there had been pretty well screwed up!
a Xenon Peerless?!?!?
battery charger exciter lamp!
what were those guys thinking

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-30-2000, 09:26 PM:

I've seen the xenon-converted Peerless lamps before; I guess that they're OK, but not great. For a while, it appears that Strong made a 1600w xenon lamphouse that looks just like a Peerless; the Charles Theatre in Baltimore has (had?) a pair of these, although they may have tossed these in their recent expension from a single-screen to a small multiplex.

I've also heard of a couple of places that are using battery chargers for exciter supplies. It sounds like a nutty idea, but apparently it works, although I don't really understand why people bother when they can get proper Kelmar exciter supplies for $50 or so.

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 03-31-2000, 10:27 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Stephen Winner:
We may be interested in parts!

We have a fair amount of extra parts but none that we're ready to part with or that would probably be worth-while to you. We have one spare Super Simplex pedistal and two Peerless lamphouses, one fitted for carbon-arc and the other fitted for xenon. We also have complete sets of 2000' and 6000' reel cartridges for both projectors and a cool 2000' wall mount power rewinder.

We also have an old SuperPlatter but I may take that if I ever build a home theater even though it's a very evil machine. One of the more interesting items we found are 10 boxes of unopened Polaroid polorized 3D glasses from the 1950s. They look pretty cool!

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA
www.thelyric.com

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-31-2000, 10:52 AM:

If you want to sell the power rewinder, let me know. My arms are getting tired of hand-cranking... <grin>

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-31-2000, 06:25 PM:

Scott
Strong made a lamp called the X16 that was a verticle 1600 (2000) watt lamphouse
Zies also had a Xenoblock conversion to a 2500 watt verticle lamp
Kniesley made a very good conversion to the peerless and other carbon arc
It uses the same optics as the Xenex1 lamphouse and was actually fairly efficent and a cold glass mirror was fairly cool on film
By modern standards they are left behind but there are many peerless conversions still in use daily that preform very well

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-31-2000, 08:11 PM:

>>"We have one spare Super Simplex pedistal and two Peerless lamphouses, one fitted for carbon-arc and the other fitted for xenon. We also have complete sets of 2000' and 6000' reel cartridges for both projectors and a cool 2000' wall mount power rewinder. "<<

Not so fast their Colin...next we have to work on getting that second projector put (back) in....then you could take the SPECO for your home theatre! ;-)

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

Posted by Stephen Winner (Member # 8) on 03-31-2000, 11:05 PM:

I thought you guys at the Lyric were mostly an art house like the Williamsburg, showing films only for a few days. Are you guys first run now?
The reason for this question was because most art-houses don't run platters because of the short time the films are run. It doesn't warrant build-ups for the platters. In fact that's why we are still running changeovers here, we sometimes keep films for only a week or so

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 04-01-2000, 01:33 PM:

Steve Guttag,

It would be great to get the extra projector running but it's missing one key element, the film head. It was gone by the time we got to the theater and may have been sold when they put in the SuperPlatter in the 70s. I'd love to have the Speco at home I think the plan now is to setup the projector with one of the Peerless lamphouses (probably the carbon-arc one) and a junk film head someone is giving us as a display item in the lobby.

Stephen Winner,

The Lyric is still an art house but we're not first run. We usually get them about a month after the inital release. The Grandin Theater in Roanoke (about 30 miles away) is a first run art house but we have a pretty dedicated clientel and they are willing to wait until we get the print. I'd like to be able to go back to changeovers but we've always just had one projector and a platter (sounds like a sitcom) and never had the option not to use it. Building up and breaking down the movie isn't too bad since it's usually only 1 film every week. We run a movie 11 times during that week so for me using the platter makes sense. It would just be more fun to run changeovers if we could.

------------------
Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA www.thelyric.com

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 04-01-2000, 02:49 PM:

Colin:

The missing second head isn't such a big deal...Simplex XL heads can be had new and used.

I think the real issue is financial resources and priorities...as in how much is available and where does those in charge want it to go.

Each circumstance is different and one has to make the most of what they have. I have seen some that will put in a platter with the intention of pulling it later for the 2nd projector just so they could get over the financial hump of getting the theatre on-line (after all, the platter, like most projection equipment is ultimately saleable in the future). In other situations I have seen the second machine go in on the onset but the cut back was in the sound where they started with just mono (Dolby Mono with SR) and as money grew so did the sound system. Then there are some, and I will never understand it, just want the platter. While others (and it happened recently) took over a theatre and yanked the platter on inspection and put in the 2nd machine with priority above almost all else (God, I love those people)!

Sorry to ramble, I just love the 2-projector show.

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

Posted by Richard Quesnelle (Member # 391) on 04-01-2000, 10:03 PM:

Hey Colin

The theatre looks amazing. How much did it cost to fully restore the theatre? Just being curious. I work in a pretty old theatre that uses old equipment. Were there pictures to compare to fir the renovation? Are there any pictures of old theatre set-ups available for reference in such cases.

Again, the the theatre looks awsome.

Reg

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 04-02-2000, 01:14 AM:

Colin, congratulations on a magnificent effort with the website. Obviously a lbor of love in there!

The theatre looks very nice indeed.

Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 04-02-2000, 10:11 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Quesnelle:
How much did it cost to fully restore the theatre? Just being curious. I work in a pretty old theatre that uses old equipment. Were there pictures to compare to fir the renovation? Are there any pictures of old theatre set-ups available for reference in such cases.

I think the current cost of construction is right around $620,000 but there's still more to be done like the marquee and some interior detail work. It seems like a reasonable price to me considering all the work that was done.

Luckily all of the original architectural plans from 1930 were in the archives at Virginia Tech's library. They were very detailed and helped a lot in restoring the theater. There were a few pictures of the theater's exterior, but we could never find any of the interior and the plans didn't specify what the paint colors should be. We have an interior designer on board and he picked out the paint colors. We also found a piece of the original lobby carpet up under the balcony and based the new carpet pattern on that. One of the originial auditorium wall lanterns and some of the lobby doors were found in someone's basement and we used those to reproduce the ones in use in the theater.