Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Metrograph Cinema New York

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Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 05-28-2017, 02:46 AM:

The Metrograph, a new art house cinema, opened in Manhattan on the lower east side in 2016. Two screens, one 175 seats and the other just 50 seats.

Has anyone attended a 35mm screening there? Anyone know who did the installation in the booth etc.?
Apparently they have dual Kinoton FP-30 projectors to be able to screen archival prints.

Looks like they have clean brick walls painted dark in the large cinema. Wonder what that does for the accoustics in that auditorium...

Any input appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

J.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-28-2017, 05:27 AM:

While I'm not really a fan of brick walls inside an auditorium, a brick wall isn't as bad as it might seem at first. It's in any way, better than a large, plastered or even bare concrete surface. Brick walls are ok sound diffusers especially if they're rough and because of their considerable mass are also pretty good insulators.

The acoustic performance can be slightly enhanced by applying paint with dampening qualities, although the effect of "acoustic paint" is generally pretty weak.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-28-2017, 10:33 AM:

I have also seen a theatre where bricks are used with staggered placement at various depths and angles so the wall resulted in very many broken surfaces. In this particular venue, the bricks were placed so that each one was at a slightly different angle than the one next to it so that about an inch of the blunt end faced the screen and protruded slightly from the brick in front of it. The result was hundreds of small broken surfaces. I assume that if those surfaces were treated with "sound abatement" paint, even though, yes that stuff isn't terribly effective, adding it to an already significantly broken surface could be quite effective. My recollection is that dialog intelligibility in that theatre was quite good, which you wouldn't necessarily expect with a hard brick wall. The variety of brick depth was a resulted in a very interesting look as well -- to no avail...that theatre is now a condo.