The Association's visit to Bradford on the weekend of 7-8 October was much enjoyed by the 20 Members, wives and colleagues who attended. In our case it was a straightforward drive of nearly 200 miles(3 hours) each way, only the hotel's desire to avoid displaying its name causing lost time.
An easy stroll to the The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television found us in a six level modern building in a prime central position, but our first show was next door at the Pictureville Cinema. Originally The Library Theatre but converted for films in 1992, it seats 306. It normally shows new and old features, and cult movies but on the first Saturday of every month it screens This Is Cinerama, the very first presentation in this 3-strip system dating from 1952.
The show starts with the usual smaller screen, black & white stilted introduction, giving due credit to inventor Fred Waller. Then the full, deeply curved 146 degree screen opens up. Made of vertical strips of perforated material to reduce cross reflections from either side, the strips are slightly visible in bright scenes. Because the three films have a six perforation pulldown at 26 fps, each of the one hour 'acts' involves 7,000 feet of 35mm per projector, so hefty handling equipment is needed. Indeed, as the left and right machines are in separate tiny booths, a special rotating tower behind them changes the first act to the second; focus and racking are by remote control to unify alignment of horizons etc to the centre projector in the main box.
The show itself is often really creaky with the cameras locked off for items such as agonisingly slow songs by the Mormon Choir, or one by the Vienna Boys in a park which had an unseen piano apparently emanating from a flowerbed off right. Things got much better when we travelled in a speedboat, or in an aircraft over Death Valley, or into a fascinating copper mine in Utah which had 160 miles of circular railways (Has no screenwriter seen this?).
The separate 35mm 7-track magnetic sound band was allocated L, LC,C,RC,R, plus two more which could be patched either to LS and RS, or R+L Surround and Rear. Though Pictureville is equipped with subwoofers for Dolby presentation, they were not, of course, utilised for this prodiuction, 'Format 40' being selected on the CP200. The commentator claimed a frequency range of 30-15,000Hz but we certainly weren't hearing that much. However, one of the most stirring sections was real location sound of massed pipes and drums at the Edinburgh Tattoo.
After the show, lowering of the normal screen with its own set of five speakers was delayed so that we could be given a tour of the equipment by the very knowledgeable projectionists Duncan McGregor and Tony Cutts. Amongst the unique things we saw were the 'Jigolos', sawtooth edge-masks in the projector gates which vibrate vertically to blur the edges where the left and right images blend with the centre one. Sadly, the colour of the print was often very variable, more than could be blamed on their coming from sometimes shrunk, scratched or faded original camera negatives due to the disappearance of the original Technicolor imbibition facilities. Nevertheless, steadiness was excellent and the equipment looked in fine condition despite having been rescued from different locations to where it had been tracked down.
The Museum is now the only public Cinerama facility in the world and desperately wants to show another programme. We understand that although one of Ted Turner's US companies has a copy of How The West Was Won they will not supply it without a high fee which the Museum cannot afford. What else can they do with it?
That evening, some of the group saw At The Max, a record of a Rolling Stones concert at Wembley Stadium for which 80 miles of film were edited to 89 minutes; our members Sandy MacRae, Tim Blackham and Patrick Heigham declared it excellent. Tim reckoned it should have been compulsory viewing for all but we preferred to wait until Sunday for a gentler choice of Imax programmes. After a group chat over coffee at the hotel, we crossed to the Museum and entered the 340-seat, steeply raked, shallow auditorium, dominated by its screen measuring 63' 8" wide by 52' 4" high. (Other installations include Poitiers which also has an Omnimax; Vancouver, 494 seats; Stockholm 291 seats; with the biggest screen in Jakarta: 96' by 70'!) Here, we could only see the projection room through a window but there was also a video tape explaining the development of the unique 'rolling loop' intermittent system, necessary because to accelerate the huge lateral 70mm, 15 perforation frame (69.6 x 48.51mm) in the normal manner would rip it to pieces.
Imax also has a separate 35mm magnetic roll but this time it feeds L, C, R, upper Centre, LS, RS. Imax shows don't use Dolby encoding, nor a dedicated bass track but do have two subwoofers driven by their own amplifiers. Illumination comes form a 4kW Xenon lamp via a very wide angle 53.8mm F2.4 lens, and steadiness is assured by register pins in the movement.
We saw two half hour documentaries. Destiny In Space conjectured about colonisation of other planets, sometimes using computer simulation and had a lengthy sequence of the NASA astronauts repairing the faultily designed Hubble telescope. The shrewd choice of commentator was Leonard Nimoy, who adopted a slow, restrained style cleverly complemented by the use of radio communications between Houston and the crew bouncing from L to R across the auditorium. Then came Yellowstone, which had a long recreated sequence of the early explorers, followed by modern research into 300 natural geysers.
In almost all the cases the definition was magnificent with everything from the remotest stars to grizzly bear mouths being detailed enough to reach out and grab. An American sound editor, Randy Thom, did a good job providing naturalistic effects for Yellowstone though I sometimes thought both movies could have been played a point louder.
In the Museum itself (free!) the six exhibition floors include the Kodak Collection originally housed at their Harrow factory, a large section on the history of television, and a cafeteria with a fine view of the town centre. This last persuaded me to spend a couple of hours following the town guide's Heritage Trail which showed me many splendid frontages built of local stone, but most were spoiled by tasteless latter-day shop fronts or clutter, or neglect.
It all made a thoroughly enjoyable mini-expedition, well organised by our indefatigable Chairman. Thank you Bob. Next Year Jakarta?
Members may be interested to know that an Australian producer using the Kinopanorama camera, built in 1956 by the Russians for their version of Cinerama, has been shooting a tourist publicity movie in and around Sydney for presentation on the giant Triptych curved screen with audio from a sync'ed ADAT. For further details see John Gainborough's article in the Jan 1995 issue of the BKSTS Cinema Technology magazine.
Thanks Harry for getting together a list of good Bradford restaurants, a map of the city and a booklet of tourist attractions in the area, sent to all of those attending. Especially appreciated was your letter of welcome to the North.