Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Projection room vs Bio box

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Posted by Matthew Peters (Member # 1495) on 02-21-2004, 10:54 PM:

At my small theatre I/we usually refer to the booth as the Projection room. However, some of our employees who have worked for other Australian cinema chains call it a bio box. I’ve noticed when visiting other cinemas and I go to the counter to bitch about their presentation, they usually reply, “ok I’ll let the bio staff know.”

What is the origin of the word(s) bio box?

A search for bio yielded a couple of results; I only found Aussie projectionist use the term bio. I guess it must be a local thing.

Posted by Paul Trimboli (Member # 1509) on 02-21-2004, 11:48 PM:

That is funny you should ask that, I have often wondered where the term Bio Box comes from. I call it the projection room and Bio Box as well. Even in high school the sound mixing and lighting room at the back of the auditorium was called the Bio Box.

Posted by Stephen Jones (Member # 16) on 02-22-2004, 12:26 AM:

Hi Matthew,

For as long as I can remember the projection room has always been called Bio or Bio box and the term is used all around the country.We never used the term Booth.So its an Australian termanolgy.
Now I think it came from the days when cinemas were known as the biograph,now I will stand corrected if any of our guys here in oz know more.
You could check out the C.A.T.H Vic web site as the members may know the exact story.
Here at my site its known Bio.

Cheers [beer]

Stephen

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 02-22-2004, 01:11 AM:

I was just going to suggest Biograph...

Booth seems to be the American preference, while I've heard Box used consistently in England (projection box, telephone box, etc.).

Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 02-22-2004, 04:48 AM:

Yeah, booth is pretty much what we use here. Though I personally refer to it as simply "upstairs".

Posted by Hugh McCullough (Member # 1542) on 02-22-2004, 07:24 AM:

Biograph
An instrument for exhibiting life-movements by photography. The cinematograph projector.
(Greek word meaning depict)
The term 'projection box' used in the UK comes from the early days of cinema.
Due to some very nasty, and fatal fires caused by the nitrate film catching fire, the projector being in the auditorium, regulations were brought in that all projection equipment should be used in a fire proof room constructed of brick, or iron.
As the owners of some buildings could not build a special fire proof room an enterprising manufacturer made a cubed shaped, fireproof iron box for the projectors, and projectionists.
As this passed the fire regulations it could be assembled anywhere in the auditorium.
Hence the term 'projection box'.

Posted by Bob Koch (Member # 1062) on 02-22-2004, 02:31 PM:

Clear out in the wild and wooly west coast when I was still in high school,in the switch room under the balcony stairway of the Oaks Theatre in Berkeley Ca the main feed to the booth was labeled "Biograph Room". Quite awhile ago, I`m 81 now.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 02-22-2004, 02:56 PM:

In the first decade of movie exhibition, the term "Bioscope" was also often used (in different spellings all over european countries).

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 02-23-2004, 04:09 AM:

ah bob, that's my "neighborhood theater", but not the one i work at. my sister worked there a few summers.

now a twin, split down the middle, and the balcony unused. i've been meaning to ask the projectionist for a booth tour. he owes me one since i helped him push-start his truck once.

they have a bygone projector on display near those roped-off balcony stairs now. don't know the model, but maybe it's one you used to thread.

carl

Posted by Gilbert Travin (Member # 2138) on 02-23-2004, 08:34 AM:

Hi !

I also agree with "biograph" . [Big Grin]

In America have you a "nickname" to indicate the projectors ?
In France, we (the projectionnists !) say "chrono" in remember of the Leon Gaumont's "Chronophotograph" ... [Cool]

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 02-23-2004, 10:01 AM:

quote:
an enterprising manufacturer made a cubed shaped, fireproof iron box for the projectors, and projectionists.

...allowing the film -- and the projectionist -- to burn safely inside the iron box while the audience breaks for intermission! No thanks...

I don't refer to it as a "box" or a "booth" anyway. I'd hate to think that I work in a box. And "going to the booth" sounds like I'm preparing myself for a loooong stay in the bathroom. [Smile]

I just call it the projection room or upstairs, especially since it's not a booth at all... it's the whole second floor!

"Bio box" sounds like a place you would store a misbehaved child. -- "Billy was getting rambunxious, so I locked him in the Bio Box until he calms down." [Wink]

=TMP=

Posted by Hugh McCullough (Member # 1542) on 02-23-2004, 11:26 AM:

quote:
allowing the film -- and the projectionist -- to burn safely inside the iron box while the audience breaks for intermission! No thanks...

Yes, even in the early days the projectionist was treated as an expensive nuisance. The cry would go up from the cinema owner "Let him fry. We can get another, cheaper, one off the street anytime."

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 02-23-2004, 03:40 PM:

Apropos Hugh's history of the origin of projection "box", I worked in the 1970's in a row of theatres on 42nd Street built as stage theaters around 1900 to 1910.

Some of these theatres showed burlesque, and began to use films as "chasers" to clear the audience for the next paying live show patrons.

The "temporary" boxes they built in the second or third balconies were made of sheets of asbestos board, and remained intact until the theatres were demolished or remodled as legit stage theaters again in the 1980's and 1990's.

But we always called them "booths."

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 02-23-2004, 04:00 PM:

I call it the gundeck.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 02-23-2004, 07:45 PM:

I have operating projection equipment in my "office". [Razz]

Posted by Gracia L. Babbidge (Member # 582) on 02-24-2004, 11:11 AM:

I liked to refer to myself as working in the 'dungeon upstairs'. [evil]

Posted by Gary Crawford (Member # 2038) on 02-24-2004, 01:10 PM:

When I started in the early 1970s they all were called "booths" no matter now big or small they were. One old former stage house had a six-sided cube of transite (hard asbestos panels) installed in what used to be an attic. That was also a "booth."

Projection "room" seems to have come into being when the first multis were built, at least around here. It actually was a room as opposed to after-thought hanging metal boxes or rebuilt attics and upper balconies.

Around here we simply call the projectors "machines". Thread up #1 machine, trim the lamp in #2 machine, etc. Other things we used to have were simply "spots", "FX", "Slide", etc. and with numbers (starting with the left side machine as seen from the back of them). Not very creative but we all knew what machine was being referred to.

One of our guys claimed that a "booth" was accessed by a ladder and a "room" via a real staircase. Makes sense I guess.

My little concrete "booth" is lovingly referred to as "Gary's Little Cage." My own escape from the world, no one wants to climb that ladder. Fine with me.

Posted by Matthew Bailey (Member # 601) on 02-24-2004, 06:31 PM:

For simplicity & shortness of text should a projector head be called an image head?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-24-2004, 06:34 PM:

Moving Picture Machine is the correct term.

Mark

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 02-24-2004, 06:51 PM:

The Paramount Publix Theatres Corporation employee book of 1926, refers to the booth as Kinobooth.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 02-25-2004, 12:01 AM:

I've seen 'room' & 'booth' in blueprints, & 'biograph box' sometimes, mostly in 'teens -era literature.

It's a booth in the Capitol/Metropolitan/Wang's 1st mezz plan (1925).

Posted by Gary Crawford (Member # 2038) on 02-25-2004, 02:42 PM:

If have a manual from the 1920s from the Chicago Fire Dept (who was by far the toughest when it came to fire regulations for theaters in those days) and they refer to "film handling rooms". I believe this is a blanket term though, for anywhere film might be kept, including distribution warehouses and the like.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 02-26-2004, 01:17 AM:

F.H. Richardson, _Motion Picture Handbook for Managers & Operators_, NY, 1910. F. H. Richardson wrote the Operators Column for the main US exhibition periodical Moving Picture World for many years.

Posted by David Kilderry (Member # 142) on 02-26-2004, 06:57 AM:

Yep, here in Australia it is mostly referred to as either the bio box or projection room, I use both terms. The Cinematograph Operators Board, who presided over the former projection licence here in the state of Victoria, Australia, referred to it as the "biograph cabin" in some literature.

As Hugh and others point out, one explanation from my own research has indeed been where the biograph equipment was housed. Another explanation I have come across, was that many early live houses ran film as just another entertainment during a burlesque or vaudeville show, in this instance the "life" or "bio" came from the box at the rear instead of the stage. Hence bio box.

David

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-26-2004, 08:18 AM:

Does the "booth" or "box" designation apply only to the room with the projectors or also to adjacent rooms with related equipment? It seems pretty common in older houses for there to be a large room with at least two film projectors and maybe a slide projector (Brenograph) and/or followspot, as well as a separate rewind/film storage room and a third room for rectifiers/generators and dimmer rheostats (sometimes located underneath the room with the projectors). Apparently some localities required these separate rooms and others didn't. In Massachusetts, it is (and, presumably, was) legal to have rheostats in the same room as the projectors. This probably wasn't true in other areas.

Posted by Hugh McCullough (Member # 1542) on 02-26-2004, 10:39 AM:

In the UK it was common to use the term "Projection Suite".
This comprised of the projection box, rewind room. rectifier room, dimmer room, workshop, non-sync room, and other ancillary rooms etc.
If we were lucky it also had a rest room for the projectionists to, as the regulations put it, "Partake of light refreshment".

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 02-26-2004, 07:24 PM:

quote:
"Partake of light refreshment".

I love the genteel way Britians say things. I'm sure living there would agree with me tremendously. I could live out my days in utter happiness.

[Smile]

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 02-27-2004, 12:23 AM:

quote:
Does the "booth" or "box" designation apply only to the room with the projectors or also to adjacent rooms with related equipment? It seems pretty common in older houses for there to be a large room with at least two film projectors and maybe a slide projector (Brenograph) and/or followspot, as well as a separate rewind/film storage room and a third room for rectifiers/generators and dimmer rheostats (sometimes located underneath the room with the projectors).

In the 19teens it was typical for the whole mess to be in the one fireproof room: projectors, rectifiers, etc. By about 1924 it was more typical to have a separate room for the rectifiers/motor generators. The room would either be off the booth, or in the entry hall/vestibule to the booth. In both cases, the construction of the room (or hall if there were rectifiers or generators there) was also bomb-proof concrete like the room with the projectors. In blueprints, I've seen it identified as either rectifier room or motor room. I don't know if it was an NEC or building codes thing, but designs seemed to be fairly univerally adopted as they went along, for safety or to play it safe with regs. By the time of the SMPTE Motion Picture Projection & Presentation Manual's 1969 diagram of a basic booth in "Physical Aspects of the Projection Room", the rectifiers are just sitting in the same single booth space with the projectors, etc.

Posted by Jackson Gilman (Member # 2142) on 03-01-2004, 06:40 PM:

Sometimes it will be a while before I can do my laundry...and since I only get one uniform shirt, I work in a B.O. box. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Matt Frankish (Member # 2131) on 03-02-2004, 05:05 PM:

We like to call it "the Whirring Box."