Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Inauguration On The Big Screen

This is topic Inauguration On The Big Screen in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 01-20-2009, 12:58 PM:

We put the inauguration hoopla on the screen at 10:00 this morning and ended it when it went back to local coverage at 1:00. It drew about 650 appreciative people. It was free of course and great P.R. for the theatre. At least 2 TV stations covered it and the view for our audience was better than what 98% of those who were there live got and it was warm. We used the HD signal from the local CBS affiliate thru a Samsung receiver using the HDMI out and into the VGA input of the Barco DP100. Very good pic. Concession sales were excellent.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-20-2009, 01:26 PM:

I imagine the event will be re-broadcast later for those who have day jobs and couldn't watch. I tried to check out a little bit of it on Hulu, but the streaming video was glitching out too much.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 01-20-2009, 01:40 PM:

We are still running right now! HD-Cable 720p to an ACS-2048 then to our DP100. Most left after the official ceremonies, but there are still 100 people here, and concessions is doing fine. We're moving a lot of our alternate foods like sandwiches. Plan to keep rolling until about 4pm.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 01-20-2009, 02:15 PM:

I received an e-mail while I was on the bus going to work this morning from the Senator Theatre in Baltimore MD saying hat they would be showing it in HD, but I don't know where they were getting the feed from. This seems a bit late to be advertising the show, but the subject line of the e-mail was 'Urgent News!' Was this a public holiday over there? It would be interesting to know how many people they got in for it.

I was told that the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 was shown in a cinema in London almost live, i.e. by transferring the signal to film, putting that through an on-line processor, and projecting it as soon as it was dry; I don't know how long the delay was. Thankfully the technology has advanced somewhat since then.

Mike, what's an ACS 2048' some sort of video scaler, like the Christie Cine-IPM 2k? How did the picture look? What format was the sound in? How many people did you get?

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 01-20-2009, 02:46 PM:

The ACS-2048 is a video scaler and switcher. It has Dual DVI, VGA, Component, Composite, S-Video, and SDI inputs. It scales the image while also providing aspect ratio corection and cropping. The video is output to 1080x2048 via dual DVI.

The sound was fed directly from the optical out on the cable box into a Dolby DMA-8+ for 5.1 decoding (if the station provides it).

Video and sound quality are excellent, there is not a pixel out of place.

We sold out all 550 seats, plus as people left we were able to seat people in our standby line. At this point, I'd say there are about 200 people still here as of 3:45pm.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-20-2009, 03:55 PM:

The local democratic party rented out our dinner theatre auditorium for the inauguration. I ran NBC's 1080i feed (off-the-air source for the best bitrate, using a DishNetwork box) into one of our Sony 4K projectors using a component input. Ran the audio through TOSlink to a USL ECI-60 to run it in 5.1. Looked & sounded great!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-20-2009, 05:08 PM:

Man I bet the subwoofer was rockin' in that 5.1 setup. If there's one thing live TV is known for, it's the great subwoofer! [Smile]

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-20-2009, 05:45 PM:

Actually they did have one audio issue I noticed, where the subs hummed LOUDLY for about 5 seconds, the booth was vibrating. Seems the only LFE action on live events is due to screw-ups! [Big Grin]

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 01-23-2009, 04:39 PM:

quote: Stephen Furley
Was this a public holiday over there? It would be interesting to know how many people they got in for it.

No, the holiday was January 19th, Martin Luther King's Birthday, which is a legal holiday in states which have made it so. (By now, that may include all 50 states, which would make it akin to a national legal holiday.)

Inauguration day is alway observed on January 20th every four years, following the November presidential election.

Since the two events were consecutive dates, I flew two flags from my balcony for both days, plus a third day for the new administration's first work day, which turned out to be very productive. My wife usually closes her office on King's Day,
but this year she saw patients on Monday and we stayed home and watched the inauguration on TV Tuesday, switching three major channels and to PBS for the round-table commentary by columnists and professors.

As for numbers of spectators, they were astronomical but many ticket holders were shut out because there wasn't enough room on the Mall and the seven D.C. bridges were shut down for security. The millions endured the cold, though in-glove hand warmers were distributed to all those on the dais, and many huge JumboTron TVs were set up in the crowds, plus 5,000 Port-O-Sans
(for crowd relief of the basic kind.) It was a most moving spectacle!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-23-2009, 04:48 PM:

For the record...security was not the only reason for the limited access (bridge closures)...it was the reality that due to many, many, many steet closures and the more than normal out-of-towners...there would be zero parking, if you could even get your car to a lot you knew (somehow) had a space.

Therefore, buses, taxis and the like COULD drive on the bridges that lead to DC because they need not park anywhere and the buses had desinated parking (which took away from private single car parking).

The realities were/are, there was no point of going to DC unless you were trying to attend the event...in which case you should use the several provided transportation methods (taxi, train, bus).

Steve

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-23-2009, 04:51 PM:

Well, Aretha Franklin's "singing" of My Country 'Tis of Thee moved me, but not in a good way. [puke]

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 01-23-2009, 04:56 PM:

We played it through some kind of deal with ScreenVision, which required us to play the MSNBC feed - which is only SD. One of the HD feeds through DirecTV would have been better. We had seating for nearly 800, but only about 50 showed up.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 01-23-2009, 05:28 PM:

Actually I think the song is titled "America", and I was dismayed to hear Diane Feinstein introduce it as "My Country 'tis of Thee", as some children call it. That title doesn't make much sense unless you complete the sentence .."sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing."

I think her rendition follows the example of singers at sport stadium events where the designated singer tries to embellish an anthem with highly individual effects, so much so that it's sometimes questionable what song they are singing.

There are exceptions, of course; one being a guitar rendition of the "Star Bangled Banner" played during the Vietnam War that evoked "..the bombs bursting in air..." so vividly it sent chills down my spine. Or the rich tones of Richard Havens...

During the Inaugural an instrumental quartet played an original piece composed for the event, in which some church tunes appropriately themed were interwoven, such as the opening line "It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free..."
I thought this Williams piece was beautiful. We learned later the YoYo Ma and Itsak Perleman, who played carbon-fibre instruments because of the below-freezing weather, had actually pre-recorded the quartet with clarinet and keyboard musicians. They sort of "lip-sunched" the bowing, while the TV audiences heard a studio recording, free of crowd noises, and their antique string instruments were spared the wood-splitting freeze.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 01-23-2009, 06:34 PM:

quote: Gerard S. Cohen
Actually I think the song is titled "America", and I was dismayed to hear Diane Feinstein introduce it as "My Country 'tis of Thee", as some children call it.

Gerard - you're correct about the song title and it bugs me to see it mis-used. But, for the purposes of my post I thought it would be clearer to use the title that was said on TV.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 01-28-2009, 03:26 AM:

I received another e-mail from the Senator this morning; this time they're showing the Superbowl in HD.

web page

Anyone else showing this? I'd be interested to hear how well it does.

Posted by Anslem Rayburn (Member # 1267) on 01-28-2009, 04:43 AM:

Posted by Louis Belloisy (Member # 3836) on 02-02-2009, 03:10 PM:

We played a live feed from the cable company, thru a HD converter into a Sanyo PLC-EF60, then onto a 20' x 30' sound screen.
The picture was outstanding. Our restored old movie house theater holds 2700 patrons, we had 1970 in attendance. our concession sold great. admission was of course free, great PR for the theater.

Louis

See image:

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-02-2009, 07:40 PM:

Why do all old theaters have such tiny screens?

Also, why is Connecticut spelled the way it is?

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 02-03-2009, 06:29 PM:

Answers
1. In the days when these old dumps were built the movies were so
bad nobody wanted to see them anyway. If the screens were much
bigger the light would keep you awake.
2. It's a pretty good guess, how would you spell it Joe?