Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: THX in San Francisco Bay Area

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 11-05-2019, 06:48 PM:

I'm curious if anyone knows (given the proximity to Lucasfilm Headquarters and the frequency in which Lucasfilm-produced movies played there) why the Coronet and Northpoint in San Francisco and the Cinema in Corte Madera were never THX certified?

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 11-05-2019, 07:39 PM:

Good question!

Coronet while a wonderful venue was acoustically messy and it was run by UATC most of its life and then by Regal until the end. I don't think the Naify's ever thought they needed it. It did have one of the original Todd AO installations, personally supervised by Mike Todd.

THX didn't yet have a "legacy" category to cover significant movie palaces.

Plitt's Northpoint was a wonderful venue and certainly eligible technically. Tom Holman did critical measurements there as part of the process in establishing the criteria.

Ultimately, they were both white elephants. Too big and single screens. Northpoint was on rented property. UA management was never too aggressive at protecting their turf. The Alexandria up the street was more the top UA venue back in the day. It became a hideous triple, with a long tunnel from the original booth to the screen with two tiny mono houses on the side.

Corte Madera was a nice space but weak and sparse technically. Started life with Altec A8 surround speakers and not enough at that. Every year it got upgraded a little.

I guess all said and done, there wasn't a lot of competition in SF or Marin County.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 11-06-2019, 05:01 PM:

We looked into it back in the day at the Grand Lake side 1 and it was just not possible in a large space. One issue was the horizontal viewing angle. At a 100 feet deep you need a 60 foot screen and up as the room gets deeper. The issue of surround coverage is another issue on wide auditoriums. Generally speaking THX's tight requirements ruled out most legacy auditoriums and was much more suited to screen built to THX specs in the first place.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-07-2019, 06:14 AM:

Stephen is on target.

I also ran into known/named theatres feeling that their theatre gave THX more credibility than vice-versa so there was no incentive for these theatres to invest into paying THX for the name or licensing, let alone the cost of altering the space.

As time moved on, as most have realized, THX would allow out-of-spec theatres to get the three letters and take the licensing and they also explored, but never implemented (to the best of my knowledge) the THX-Historic designation...a way to legitimize historic theatres that physically could not meet the requirements (like the subtended angle that Stephen mentions) but met criteria where they could (equipment choices, coverage, Noise Criteria, and possibly RT60 though architectural features could prevent RT60 and even NC30 from being met.

The announcement of THX-Historic is in the F-T warehouse as a video at ShoWest...the theatre used as the advertisement for it was the Senator in Baltimore...it never received THX designation.

http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/trailers/showest2003/filmtechshowest2003thxhistorical.html

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 11-07-2019, 01:36 PM:

I believe that Cinema 1 in Corte Madera did advertise that it was THX certified at one point. I have a vague memory of the designation being added, though I never noticed any change in the sound.

I lived in the area from 1996 to 2008 and saw a ton of movies there, including a lot of LFL company screenings, which were usually held on Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the theater's first public showings. (I worked for LucasArts and we were invited to free screenings of almost everything that ILM or Skywalker Sound worked on.) One memory that stands out is that people were asked to not exit through the side doors after the film because it would splash bright morning sunlight on the screen, annoying the employees watching for their names in the credits. And yup, people went out the side doors every single time.

It was (and hopefully still is) a great theater.

Here are a few references that also claim Cinema 1 had a THX certification, for what they are worth.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/12/star-wars-the-force-awakens-george-lucas-corte-madera-theater

quote:
They spoke with particular affection for the theater’s enormous screen and high-quality sound. It was Lucas himself, Marin rumor has it, who outfitted the theater first with THX sound for 1983’s Return of the Jedi and later with one of the earliest digital projectors for 2002’s Attack of the Clones.

https://sfist.com/2017/05/11/best_movie_theaters_bay_area/

quote:
Century Cinema Corte Madera
It's got one movie screen and potholes in the parking lot, but you know what else Century Cinema in Corte Madera has? It's THX sound-certified by the Oscar-winning team at Lucasfilm. This (rather junky and old) theater has a world-class sound system so great it was used by George Lucas himself for big screenings — at least according to Marin County lore. It's still used today as one of the theaters for the Mill Valley International Film Festival, and I saw the youngest son from Home Improvement there on the opening night of Mrs. Doubtfire. It's a celebrity magnet! — Beth Spotswood

Sorry none of that is more definitive...

But I can say definitively that proximity to LFL and THX did not correlate with theater quality. The THX UA Galaxy in San Francisco ran the TEX trailer with the rear channels reversed... for months, if not longer.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 11-07-2019, 06:03 PM:

As far as proximity was concerned, Dolby was headquartered in SF, yet apparently the Northpoint wasn't outfitted with the first 4-track mag version for Nashville (at least a blurb in Boxoffice Magazine stated that it was placed by Dolny at the Village in L.A. and the Cinema II and Baronet (or Coronet? in NY. I found the sound quality to be excellent anyway. The fall of 1975 also saw the first Dolby stereo optical film Lizstomania open in SF at the Metro in mono yet played in LA at the Wilshire Beverly Hills in the newest Dolby format. These may have been prototype units, but they may have skipped their home turf.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 11-07-2019, 07:12 PM:

Grand Lake got SRD fairly early with a DA10 and cat 699 reader. For a long time we had issues getting SRD prints. Initially the labs were charging extra for SRD and would only turn on the edge light for the number of SRD prints ordered. Those prints would go to the big markets.

While the DA10 was replaced with a DA20 when one of the boards developed a cold solider joint. We still use the Cat699 for SRD and did so with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.