This is topic Outdoor IMAX..Would it be possible? in forum Large Format Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 03-26-2004, 01:52 PM:
 
Not sure if this is the right place for this topic, so please move if necessary. Is it possible to have an IMAX drive-in theater. I realize the structure would be much bigger than normal, but it can be done right? Has this even been attempted, or am I just crazy thinking that this would work? Or is there already one, and I should have just looked it up before posting?
 

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 03-26-2004, 06:09 PM:
 
It would work, but it's never gonna happen.

1. Way too expensive for the situation.
2. The film library doesn't go with the market.
3. A major part of any large format experience is the controlled environment in which the image and sound are presented. You just can't achieve that at a drive-in.
4. It is highly unlikely that you'd be able to keep the booth clean enough to run large format without spending huge amounts of money.
5. Lots and lots of other reasons.
 

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Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 03-29-2004, 05:10 AM:
 
I would also imagine car headlights and other ambient light would be more of an issue than a regular screen.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-29-2004, 08:17 AM:
 
Actually it would easily be possible. We did a really large outdoor 70mm venue some years ago in Lincoln Park in Chicago very sucessfully. Check out the Cinema Borealis photos on the picture page. With something like the Maverick projector(but with a reliable platter system)and building it all into the back end if a short semi-trailer it could be kept very clean and made very practical. I wouldn't count on any assistance from a company like Imax though. Like us, your biggest problem would be the ambient lighting from street lights and a rain storm !

Mark @ CLACO
 

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Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 03-29-2004, 08:29 AM:
 
It would be great to see something like this. BUT, a gazillion
watts of audio power would wake the dead and hold them there!!

fjn
 

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Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 03-29-2004, 08:34 AM:
 
Thanks guys. Just a thought I had, while sitting here bored at my day job.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-29-2004, 03:16 PM:
 
Mark why a Maverick it didn't work anywhere from what I heard
The standard SR machine fits right through a doorway
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-29-2004, 03:55 PM:
 
When Pacific's Kailua Drive In Theatre was still in operation. "MY FAIR LADY" was shown at that venue in 70mm immediately after it's first run road show engagement at Honolulu's now defunct Cinerama Theatre. I am not sure which one but the world premiere of either POCAHONTAS" or "BEAUTY & THE BEAST" was held out doors in Central Park in New York City in 70mm. I understand Disney also struck a 70mm print of "PEARL HARBOR" for the Japan premiere at a baseball stadium in Tokyo. If that can be done, I cannot see why IMAX films cannot play at an outdoor site but why should they do that?

-Claude
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 03-29-2004, 05:08 PM:
 
Claude

Disney did "Pocahontas" in Central Park, I think they had third prints running that night. They have also struck special 70MM prints to be run double-system with a 35mm SRD track for Radio City Music Hall.
Pacific Theatres tested and opened in Three-Panel Cinerama, "This is Cinerama" at their Century Drive-In in 1964. And they would later play in Cinerama, "Seven Wonders of the World" before dropping the Cinerama Drive-In idea.
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 03-29-2004, 06:22 PM:
 
Okay, realistically you'd have to be playing at least double featurettes but I was struck by the vision of all those cars entering and leaving on 20-45 minute intervals.

[Now going seriously off topic...]

That got me to thinking of theme park rides where one way or another the people are put into some sort of conveyance--whether boats or trams of some sort--and moved along a course and basically are shown things. Has there ever been one where you stay in your own car and either drive along or get moved along like in a car wash?

[Back on topic...]

The impressiveness of IMAX has to do with the size of the screen and clarity of the images and you need to be fairly close to it to appreciate that and be overwhelmed by it. Viewed from a large distance it's just a pretty picture. Thus it would hardly be worth the effort to do this. On the other hand an outdoor theatre for persons seated in an amphitheater type setting might be spectacular.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-29-2004, 06:48 PM:
 
Gord,

Actually I had a long conversation with one of the designers of the Maverick Projector not too long ago. I was told this information by the gentleman.....

"There are no real problems with the Maverick itself...it runs fine. The problem was that when they did the Crown Theatres installs they used a Strong Special Venue platter system. The backers of the Maverick project did not want to spend more $$ developing a proper platter system for it. Had they done that the Crown Theatres installation might still be rinning along just fine".

One of the Mavericks was on display at Showorst this year. Its not much larger than the Imax SR, being a bit wider but not quite as long. Its also an available projector thats sitting idle right now.... Quite an ingenious mechanism!

Mark @ CLACO
 

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 03-29-2004, 07:52 PM:
 
The Maverick is more than twice the size of an SR. It's more along the lines of a Classic with a small lamphouse.

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Viewed from a large distance it's just a pretty picture. Thus it would hardly be worth the effort to do this.

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On the other hand an outdoor theatre for persons seated in an amphitheater type setting might be spectacular.

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Lylle Breier has been promoted to the newly created position of senior vice president, special events, for The Walt Disney Studios, it was announced today by Richard Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group. In her new role, she will be responsible for creating and overseeing a wide range of worldwide special events related to the domestic and international releases of the studio's motion-picture and video product.

Over the past decade, Breier has helped to stage some of the industry's most elaborate and memorable events, including the 1995 premiere of Pocahontas in Central Park, the 1997 "Hercules Premiere Weekend" in Manhattan complete with Electrical Light Parade, and the recent live worldwide concert tour for Fantasia/2000. Additionally, she has been responsible for many of the special activities at Hollywood's legendary El Capitan Theater and the recent construction of a temporary IMAX theater in Los Angeles to showcase Fantasia/2000.

Commenting on the announcement, Cook said: "When it comes to great showmanship and achieving the impossible, Lylle is without peer in the industry. She is enormously creative, a tireless worker, and has the vision and ability to oversee the most ambitious and complex of projects. "She has helped the studio launch some of its biggest successes in a spectacular manner and added to the Disney legacy for outstanding showmanship. Lylle has been an incredible contributor to our team for the past 11 years, and we have tremendous respect for her talent, taste and creativity."

For the past four years, Breier has served as vice president, special events, for Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. She held the post of director of special events for two years prior to that. Among her accomplishments, she was involved with the opening of the legendary El Capitan Theater in Hollywood in 1991 and has been responsible for all group and advance ticket-sales programs ever since.

She has also helped to supervise many successful special events, including the premiere of The Lion King at Radio City Music Hall, the Angels in the Outfield world premiere at Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium, "Pocahontas: The Premiere in the Park" on the Great Lawn in Central Park, the six-city preopening engagements for Pocahontas, the "Totally Toy Story" Funhouse at the El Capitan, the 1997 premiere of The Rock on Alcatraz Island, and the spectacular parade and Superdome premiere for The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

In 1998, Breier and her team orchestrated "The Hercules World Premiere Weekend in New York." That Herculean feat involved the complicated logistics of transporting Disneyland's popular "Main Street Electrical Parade" to Manhattan and closing down a 1-7/8-mile parade route along 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. More than 4 million people turned out to view the parade in person while millions more watched the live television broadcast.

Most recently, Breier helped to launch Fantasia/2000 in grand fashion with a "World Premiere Tour" that included live concert performances synched to the film in New York (at Carnegie Hall), London, Paris and Tokyo. The tour concluded on New Year's Eve in Pasadena, Calif., with the Fantasia/2000 Millennium Ball.

Breier and her team were also responsible for lining up 75 IMAX theaters around the world for the exclusive giant-screen engagement and working closely with each venue on a comprehensive marketing and group sales program. To help kick off the Jan. 1, 2000, IMAX engagement, Breier's special-events group was responsible for overseeing the construction of the Disney IMAX Theater in Los Angeles, a temporary structure located on the Howard Hughes Parkway.

Breier began her association with Buena Vista Pictures Distribution in 1987 as a summer intern. Two years later, she joined the company on a full-time basis as marketing coordinator, where her principal duties included overseeing the college-intern program. In that role, she was in charge of a select group of college interns who traveled across the country throughout the summer to check on the use of promotional materials.

In 1992, she was promoted to manager of special events and took on responsibilities for the El Capitan shows and ticket sales plus events surrounding Disney's major releases.

A native of Miami, Breier contributed articles to the Miami Herald while still in high school. She went on to attend UCLA, where she majored in communication and graduated in 1989.

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Breier’s involvement in special-event launches goes back to 1995, when she coordinated the massive “Pocahontas: The Premiere in the Park” on the Great Lawn of Central Park and the film's six-city pre-opening engagements. In 1998, she and her team orchestrated “The Hercules World Premiere Weekend in New York,” which included a parade that attracted more than four million people and millions more who viewed the event as a live television broadcast.



Additionally, Breier, who is also in charge of Disney's Home Entertainment special events, has been responsible for many of the special activities at the Disney-owned El Capitan Theatre and other Disney special events, including supervision of premieres of such films as The Lion King, Angels in the Outfield, The Rock and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and, most recently, premieres for The Rookie, the Pearl Harbor premiere aboard the USS Stennis in Hawaii, three Lilo & Stitch premieres, and the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl world premiere at Disneyland.

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 03-30-2004, 12:26 PM:
 
I think it might be fun to us an Imax projector to project an image on some large feature outdoors like the Boulder Dam in Las Vegas, or some large office building or a natural cliff somewhere.

This wouldn't be a show but more like an art installation.
 

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 03-30-2004, 01:43 PM:
 
I like Ian's idea. There is a current magazine ad for video projectors that show a giant image of a shark being shown on a dam. Dam's even have about the right screen ratio...would be a little wet watching the film, though.

Maybe you could mount the projector on a flatbed and pull it around a downtown area while showing something abstract. Hey, could be some grant money in there somewhere.

If there can be Cinerama drive-ins, there can be Imax drive-ins! (Yes, I agree it would never fly, but its fun to dream!)

Cinerama Drive-In

I'd sure like to see the projection trailer for that.

They converted the prologue to 26-fps for the drive-in showings (normally showed at 24-fps on a separate machine). John Harvey used that prologue for his THIS IS CINERAMA so he wouldn't need an extra projector. (Running 3 was enough!)

There are also confirmed showings of Windjammer at Drive-Ins, with 3 projectors and mono sound.
 

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Posted by Rob Butler (Member # 2274) on 03-30-2004, 02:15 PM:
 
One thing I thought of that might be neat for a Las Vegas hotel or something is to use an IMAX projector to project the logo onto an outside wall. If they built a hotel or casino with one giant blank wall with no windows or anything, at night, a projector in a building across the street could run a looping logo print that you could see from a fairly good distance.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 03-30-2004, 02:15 PM:
 
Project onto Niagara Falls at night, as part of the regular "light show" : "Niagara: Miracles, Myths and Magic"

http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/imax/welcome.html

The Canadian "Horseshoe" falls is a deep-curved "screen" 52 meters high by 675 meters wide:

http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/falls/canadianh.html

http://www.infoniagara.com/attractions/illumination.html

I always thought it would be a neat advertising "gimmick" to project a movie onto some low-hanging clouds.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-30-2004, 08:00 PM:
 
Didn't you get enough of that while working at the Grandview?
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 03-30-2004, 08:22 PM:
 
At the Grandview, it was usually fog, not clouds. Not that I didn't sometimes try to reach the clouds with a mirror in front of the booth.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-30-2004, 09:28 PM:
 
Not to mention the huge amount of Keystoning you'd get on the front of Hoover Dam fomr a barge.... or peoject from way up high. The bottom is a bit further forword than the top by about 200 feet! And of course to get the proper angle from above you'd have to suspend the booth by huge cables out over the river... I'd let Ian do the weight testing though......

Actually a friend in Chicago occasionally partakes in projecting images onto skyscrapers. He and a friend have built special projectors to accomplish this.

Mark @ CLACO
 

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Posted by Jeremy Fuentes (Member # 2135) on 03-30-2004, 09:48 PM:
 
Any pics of the images on the skyscrapers?
 

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 03-31-2004, 01:42 PM:
 
Hoover Dam would be easy, they are buiding a bridge right in front of it. When the road bed is installed you could drive right up and park.
 

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Posted by Rob Butler (Member # 2274) on 03-31-2004, 03:12 PM:
 
Imagine the money you could get from advertising, I think Pepsi would pay for a 100'x100' animated logo on the side of a dam or building. I could see it on a building in a large city with good nightlife, but there wouldn't be enough of an audience for the one on the hoover dam unless there was an actual event set up there at night to draw the audience.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-31-2004, 05:49 PM:
 
Paul,
YESCO electric sign company in SLC is already doing full color electronic billboards that big..... Sure film would be neat but this stuff already exists in the advertising world and its easy to program and run anything you want on one.
Mark
 

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