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Author
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Topic: CineSea XIII in Pictures
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted May 04, 2016 02:32 PM
So after months and months in between, it was time for CineSea once again!
As usual, life was complicated. We were doubtful for a while we’d make Friday night at all, then it looked like we’d be arriving halfway through the feature, then everything suddenly lined up for arrival with 60 minutes to spare!
-but Murphy was riding with us that day: we had traffic on Staten Island and construction constriction on the Garden State Parkway. 6:45 arrived with us at the Atlantic City Expressway: still 30 miles out. We texted Doug and they held the feature for us!
-That’s what’s great about a small, friendly event like this: everybody matters!
Soon we arrived at the Ocean Holiday.
CineSea has given the Ocean Holiday Motor Inn a strange kind of fame. To the rest of the world it is just one of maybe a hundred beach hotels in one of maybe a dozen beach towns on the New Jersey shore, yet to the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the world that is into small gauge film pretty much worldwide it is a minor Mecca. I’m sure there are many other venues in many other towns CineSea would drop right into, but to us it’s become home.
We have a very good relationship with the Ocean Holiday: we come and go without causing mayhem (-there are actually other groups banned from ever staying there again!) and leave them a little income at the ends of the season when it becomes awfully thin. We’ve been there long enough that when we call for a reservation, the voice on the other end often says “Oh Hi! How are you?!”.
-and it's not unknown for the people who work at the hotel to drop in, browse through the stuff and kibbitz a little!
-so we got ourselves checked in and went downstairs to Friday night feature.
Often we arrive early enough I am able to join in the screen raising, but the screen was set up well before then.
This is built on Doug’s backdrop stand. For the purposes of these weekends he bought a foldable Matte screen roughly 10’ by 14’. It goes on the frame with about a zillion little bungies and at least 3 willing volunteers. It’s a close coordination operation: when I help I just let Doug conduct the band! It needs to be level and wrinkle free as possible.
As elected by a pretty wide majority, Friday Night Feature was Gary Sloan’s 16mm Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope in 16mm and ‘scope. Gary’s setup is two Bell and Howell 16mm machines, a mixer between them and powered speakers up by the screen. The picture was big, bright and sharp: and they probably heard the soundtrack in Cape May!
This was a Cinesea first, a 16mm Friday Night feature. The previous two have both been Super8 on Doug’s Xenon GS-1200.
While we are at it, May the 4th be with you!!! (…I like a good pun, but I love a bad one!)
The weekend of CineSea happens in strange timing: you anticipate it for months, yet it still sneaks up you. I actually had two projects I was working on to bring with me. Two quickly became just one when six months shrank to three. The one that was left is this model of a WW2 US Army amphibious jeep I have been building on and off for almost a decade. I know myself: if I had a deadline I would at least work on the thing. I proclaimed (mostly to myself) the goal of sailing this thing in the Ocean Holiday’s pool at CineSea this April. Yet night after night it came down to getting out the tools and working on it, or just threading up a film, or reading a book, or watching the tube and even though I made real progress on it, three months became none and it still wasn’t ready.
(Deadlines work best when you can get fired!)
So I would publicly like to thank the Management of the Ocean Holiday Motor Inn for validating my laziness!
”-Eh!...wouldn’t have happened anyway!”
-Next: Saturday morning and afternoon.
[ May 07, 2016, 08:40 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted May 04, 2016 07:17 PM
Saturday morning dawned (…as it does every day…I suppose!)
It also dawned kind of brisk. Cool weather is a CineSea tradition: with a couple of exceptions over the years. This time was certainly NOT one of the exceptions!
Another of our great traditions is breakfast. The Ocean Holiday doesn’t have a café, but a lot of hotels nearby do. Our Saturday favorite is breakfast at the Crusader: maybe two blocks up the beach. This is a good, honest breakfast: nothing too challenging before you’ve had that first, critical cup of coffee. The food is great, but part of it is the group’s walk over and back. It’s as if a bunch of middle-aged people were suddenly in high school again!
-Later, back at the Ocean Holiday…
Film talk and horse trading had already begun.
There was talk:
-and film:
-and talk (with film!):
-and MORE film: (probably some talk close by...)
First timer Evan Samaras visited Doug’s table:
YET, there was STILL more film!
This young guy, now a teenager, has been coming to CineSea since #6 when he was …just a kid, and despite being a child of the Digital Age, he’s content to join in:
Lunch is whatever people want to do: the rooms have kitchens and you can cook for yourself, there’s a good Pizzeria up on Pacific Avenue and I’ve done that, there are diners by the acre, but dinner is kind of an event.
NEXT: Dinner and a Show!
[ May 04, 2016, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted May 05, 2016 12:45 PM
Saturday night Dinner is one of the high points of Cinesea, generally it’s a real restaurant (No cash register in the dining area!) and maybe too classy for us! This is a big deal because it’s NOT actually a film event. This is where we sit down as human beings and quite often talk about our lives other than films: our families, our jobs and what we do the rest of the day when we aren’t totin’ reels around.
Being a beach town, many of Wildwood's restaurants are seafood oriented. The décor runs from the subtly nautical to the downright piraty (ARRRRRRR!!!!), and a tank full of doomed lobsters isn’t a rare sight at all. This doesn’t mean if you want a steak or a salad you are out of luck, it’s just that when you are looking for a main course with tentacles, this is a place you really need to be!
One of CineSea’s favorites is the Boathouse. It is one of the first places you see when you come over the bridge from mainland New Jersey (Wildwood is an island.). It is seafood, steak and pasta. The back windows look out over a small harbor with private boats swinging at anchor.
Per the official count, we had 32 people out to Dinner. This is the chance we get to actually stick a number on how many people are joining in and it is growing!
The Boathouse staff themselves are probably saying “The Movie People are here from the Ocean Holiday again!”
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch…
CineSea had returned to theatrical mode after a day as a film convention. Some tables were moved back, ”theater seating” installed (-we bring our camping chairs…greatly reduced posterior fatigue!) and the two xenons moved into position for the big screen.
We need a brief intermission so everybody can get back and get comfortable, so there is some pre-show film negotiation and just general talk.
This is Taras. He’s a cool guy! How cool? Well let’s say you were at a model airplane club and a fighter pilot showed up? He is that cool! Taras did what many of us dream about: he restored Wildwood’s Sea Theatre to operation after it had been dark for decades and still owns it. He’s still a film guy through and through, and enjoys thumbing through Lou Franchetti’s boxes of film for sale with the rest of us, and he spent most of the weekend at CineSea too.
I had a chance to talk to him about the Sea’s encounter with the really bad storm we had a few months back. He said the lobby took on some water, but they managed to dry it up without permanent damage. This was great news: as a 35mm only, single screen theater, the Sea is part of an endangered species, and it doesn’t need this kind of trouble.
Showtime Came: Doug introduced Shorty, he gave us a short introduction remembering John Black. John and Shorty co-founded CineSea in 2009. It’s important to remember John because good things don’t often happen by accident. We gather there today because somebody had a good idea and saw it through. Now it’s up to us to keep it going.
-so the show went on!
NEXT: Third Row, Right-Hand Seat
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted May 05, 2016 07:23 PM
Thanks, Paul! Thanks also to Claus for all the times he's done this! It takes some effort!
The Heart of the Saturday Night Show is these two machines
-both Xenons: one Super-8, the other 16. How it works is they take turns on screen. The owners of the machines certainly bring their own films to show, but many others among us do too.
These are just a sampling of the films we saw that night. We had many hours on screen and there’s no way I can show them all!
Early on, we had an episode of the Mickey Mouse Club: a reminder of the long standing relationship between broadcast TV and 16mm film.
Later: two episodes of the 1946 Republic serial “The Crimson Ghost”.
Part of contributing a reel to this show is the chance to see one of your own films in a new way. At home I usually project on a screen roughly 5 feet by 9: not too tiny, but here I can see one of my own films on a screen much bigger than that projected with a xenon lamp with audio levels that might make my neighbors call the Police!
-this is no time for Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons: you need action, sound, maybe even a little mayhem!
I happen to have the 400 foot “Seven-Ups” digest. This provides what little story line needed to make an excuse to show what we all came for: the car chase!
-if there ever was an exact opposite of a Driver’s Ed. Film, here it is! We have driving on the sidewalk, getting airborne at intersections and firing shotguns out the window! Leaving the scene of an accident? Not at all: the accidents followed them wherever they went!
Where’s a COP when you need one? -that’s right!: he’s the one driving through the fruit stand!
(Do you think they stopped and paid the toll?)
-meanwhile we reduce two (now) vintage Pontiacs to absolute rubble and very nearly make Roy Scheider into just so much chop-meat!
-it was FUN!
Next: Saturday Night Continued
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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