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Project projection: Harlo students bring old theater back to life
By DAN BURKHART
Of the Gazette Staff
HARLOWTON – High school students here, like teenagers everywhere, like to run their own show. Only here, they literally run their own show.
As a school-to-work project, the students have reopened the historic Harlo Theatre.
“They’re responsible for every phase of the business,” school-to-work adviser Dave Wallace said. “That’s the deal.”
The project began in June when a core group decided that they wanted to do more “than just sell candy bars and pencils at the school store,” senior Brett Warren said.
Warren, a senior and the project’s operations manager, is one of six students on the committee to restore and operate the theater. Joining him are students Jessica Wambach, general manager; Kelsey Miller, advertising and concessions manager; Kristi Thompson, employee relations; Brandi Murray, clerk; and Tiffany Thompson, ac-countant.
The titles don’t mean much to these students. Except work.
They’re accustomed to that. Besides working with the theater, these students carry a full load of academics and extracurricular activities. Wambach not only coordinates all the other managers, she also took on an internship at the local newspaper. Warren played for the undefeated football team, and Miller plays basketball and volleyball.
Kristi Thompson schedules student employees, and that means training as well as seeing that they show up for work. But, while the six served as the core committee, more than 50 students have helped so far. And more than 100 of the 150 students in the high school indicated that they wanted to help.
“We have a good nucleus, and their enthusiasm is encouraging others to want to get involved,” Wallace said.
The project is an ambitious one.
Harlowton has known hard times in recent years. Main Street resembles a gappy smile, with about every other building boarded up. Harlowton’s grandest theater – the State – burned two years ago. The newer Harlo Theatre had closed three years ago.
“We were just talking when someone suggested fixing it up,” Warren said. “We all thought that sounded pretty good.”
But the Harlo Theatre needed more repairs than anyone imagined. Twenty rows of 13 seats each were in bad shape, the springs sprung, the upholstery ripped. Leaks rotted out the ceiling. Exit doors fell off the hinges. The screen had huge gashes. The projectors were ancient and fickle.
“The carbon-arc lamp houses are from 1906,” Wallace said. “The projection systems are from 1946.”
Still, the students were not discouraged.
They started with the basics. They first drafted a comprehensive business plan, one that had to be presented to the school board and then the City Council. The city owned the theater but agreed to transfer it to the school district.
The business plan that the students came up with could be a model for adults wanting to start a business. It included a complete cost analysis, presented community surveys, a profit/loss statement and details about legal and corporate structure. It pegged the break-even costs to the decimal point and number of tickets to sell for each film.
Shows are every other weekend, Friday and Saturday nights, with a Sunday matinee. But even with that schedule, the students are more than meeting their business plan.
“We need to beef up Sundays, but the other nights exceed the 34 average tickets we need to sell,” Wallace said.
So far they haven’t run afoul of community censorship. The only R-rated film was “The Patriot.” Most are rated PG or PG-13 like “Mission Impossible 2” and “Meet the Parents.”
“We want it to be family oriented,” Miller said. “There are still lots of good films to choose from.”
And, the idea isn’t really to make money, at least a profit in normal business terms, Wallace said. “The money gets plowed back into the theater.”
The students’ business plan served as backbone for grant applications, which convinced the Alberta Bair Foundation and Kid’s Stuff, a Florida-based foundation, to pony up $10,000 for startup costs.
Beginning in June, students rolled up their sleeves to do the physical cleanup, repairs and painting. They eliminated several rows of seats, cannibalizing parts to fix the remaining seats. They scrubbed walls and floors right up to the night before opening in August.
They tinkered with the antique carbon-arc lamp houses, bulky lighting machines that look like a cross between Star Wars laser cannons and an old wood stove with dampered pipes exhausting the heat and fumes out through the roof.
They mastered changing six to seven reels of a feature-length film between the two projectors without a glitch. At least most nights. The fickle carbon-arc blacks out occasionally, or worse, burns a film.
“We were lucky, the only burned film was a preview,” student projectionist John Stagner said. “But I had a perfect night last night,” he said, referring to the Saturday showing of “Remember the Titans.”
Warren, who was recipient of the Governor’s Award for Civic Engagement for his work on the Harlo Theater project, says most problems came down to money or elbow grease.
“If we didn’t have the money, at least we had the labor,” he said.
One of the highlights of the project has been seeing the marquee lights come on again, Miller said. “They’re brighter than the bar signs.”
A major concern is continuity. In the business plan, they identified competition from cinemas in Billings, Big Timber, Lewistown and White Sulphur Springs. But the real competition may be their own commitment. Will students coming up from lower grades sustain what this year’s crop of high schoolers started?
“Yes,” Warren said, introducing projectionist trainee Ron Hayden, an eighth grader. “We’re making sure we’re teaching others to take over.”
These kids should be commended for their hard work
More of these small town theaters should be brought back into service so people can experience the real theater atmosphere.
Be sure to point them here to film-tech for advise and technical questions.
(BTW, how do you burn film with a carbon-arc lamphouse? I've never managed to do this personally, and can't really see how this is possible, at least not without removing the fire shutter and intentionally stopping the projector motor with the lamp struck and douser and changeover open.)
Scott: I agree it would be hard to "burn" a print, unless they had a really large carbon arc lamphouse, pulling well over 100 amperes. But with improper heat filters or "hot spotting", even a lower power lamphouse could cause some heat-related damage.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Just thought I would pass this along to you guys (I said I would).
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Andrew McCrea
"I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Drawn That Way!" - Jessica Rabbit
