Protocol Document
SEPTEMBER 201350 WWW.FILMJOURNAL.COM
put the digital equipment was a challenge. The new projector
will go in the empty space under the current booth and that
will require blowing a hole in the wall.”
On a positive note, that means the beloved classic
hardware can remain in place. “Our current projectors are
Simplex XLs, which we bought used in 1994,” he further
notes. “They are probably from the 1960s. We have a 16mm
Hortson that we bought used from a DC porno theatre in
1986, likely from the late 1970s. The Capri’s 1941 wiring is the
other challenge. Being in the South, heat and humidity is always
a problem, especially in a building that doesn’t have efcient
HVAC. We will have a separate AC for the digital projector.
We will also be installing new curtains and masking, as well as
some additions to the sound system. Our sound processor is a
Dolby CP650 bought new in 2002.”
A
t the Tampa Theatre, some $30,000 of the budget was
devoted to improving sound, John Bell estimates. Prior
to installing the upgraded and “very well-designed” screen
speaker arrays with narrow dispersion angles that were
“literally aligned with laser beams,” there were problems, he
notes. “The muddiness of the olden days, especially in the
speech intelligibility spectrum, was caused by the sound from
behind the screen bouncing off this very ornate 1926 plaster
work. Now the sound is completely focused on the seats and
nothing directed at any of the walls.” On those very beautiful
walls, “the 24 surround speakers that we already had from a
5.1 upgrade ten years prior were sufcient enough” to remain
in place “after BL&S tuned them up, with a lot of queuing and
balancing.” (By the way, the Tampa’s three-manual, 14-rank
Mighty Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ doesn’t need any of that.)
“The new Datasat processor is great,” Bell says, praising
its manifold options of auxiliary input. “That capability is
important to us, because we have a custom input panel to
accommodate all kinds of different formats that our guests
bring in when we host lm festivals here.” On the visual side
as well, “you plug in what you have. We select an input and,
boom, it magically shoots through the d-cinema projector and
goes up to the screen. All the while being scaled up so that it
looks the best it can possibly look.”
“For us, it was never an either/or decision, but about
adding d-cinema technology rather than converting,” Bell
continues. “We have the space to keep our two 35mm
projectors—and the platters we used for rst-run product—
in place for showing archival prints in the future.” Where then
did the Christie CP-2220 projector and Doremi servers go?
“I wouldn’t say the Tampa Theatre was designed for digital
projection,” he chuckles, “but fortunately, we have three
projector ports with one sitting right in the middle that was
not in use.” The 24-degree angle—with a 105-foot throw to a
24-foot-wide screen that lls the entire proscenium—was not
quite as convenient. “There is not a digital-cinema projector
on this planet that can function properly—and remain within
warranty terms—at an angle greater than 20 degrees. After
some head-scratching, the design team gured out to go with
a series of optical mirrors bouncing the image up and out in
a periscopic system. It’s quite ingenious, actually, and works
quite beautifully.” To optimize the picture quality, the mirror
array system had to be prevented from vibrating, so as not to
cause jittery images on the screen. BL&S fabricated a projector
frame, which was afxed tightly to the projector.
The alternative to those mirrors would have been to
construct an unwanted new booth in the mezzanine of the
historic auditorium. “That was not going to happen. Finding
an engineering solution was a great sigh of relief for us,” Bell
says, giving due credit. “Our stage manager and projectionist
worked it all out with Boston Light & Sound. I can’t sing
their praises enough. They offered the most detailed design
itineration and planning. They weren’t the highest and they
weren’t the lowest bid, but I knew we were going to end up
with a really good system. The installation went just great.
And the quality of the image is so crisp and pure… Frankly, all
we’ve gotten since debuting digital are rave reviews about the
beautiful picture and the awesome sound.”
M
aybe it is because Martin McCaffery hasn’t had his digital
systems installed yet at the Capri, but his perspective is a
little more astringent: “I am hoping for a revelation that digital
causes some horrible disease, but your audience probably isn’t
interested,” he jokes. In turn, John Bell admits to being “one of
the lm purists, honestly, that lamented the demise of 35mm…
but I have become a convert. I think it sucks that it costs so
much for theatres having to install all the equipment that…
primarily benets the distributors. But, at the Tampa Theatre,
it has also brought a huge increase in the quality of the
experience for our audience.” To him, it all “still comes down
to what you put up on the screen, the stories that lmmakers
tell us. Going digital is also about choices, so that we could
program what we wanted to show without being blocked from
new opportunities simply because of a technology we didn’t
have. At the end of the day, technology is the means. Going
to the movie theatre is still about the lms we show and how
good they are. It’s all about the experience for the audience.”
For more about lm versus digital choices and experiences of
movie houses and their audiences, check in again next month.