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Topic: CineSea 12 Fall 2015 In Pictures
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Claus Harding
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1149
From: Washington DC
Registered: Oct 2006
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posted October 17, 2015 10:56 AM
Saturday night went into Sunday morning (past 2am). Some "Bond", some "Jurassic Park", some classic horror...quite a list:
As a special treat, Joe Vannicola had made a video documenting the last Cinefest in Syracuse with interviews and such; it made for a potent reminder of the importance of keeping the shows going. Our old friend, animation guru Tommy Jose Stathes, made an appearance in it:
Now here's the device I was hinting at earlier. Doug had brought his Pedro Box with him. This amazing synch device showed its capabilities in a live demo:
A simplified explanation:
Doug had a silent super-8 reel of Elvis performing a song live.
He recorded the Elvis performance video off YouTube, using his video camera, at 24 frames per second.
A burned DVD of that video was put into his DVD player, and the player "video out" hooked into the Pedro Box:
The "Sync Out" was hooked from the Pedro Box to the GS-1200 "Sync In", and "audio out" from the DVD player was hooked to "audio in" on the GS-1200.
When set up, the film played back with perfect lip sync from the DVD.
It was amazing to behold "live", this marriage of old and new, with the big Elmo living up to all the expectations built into it when it was "state of the art" about 33 years ago, and the Pedro Box keeping everything locked together.
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And so it ended, once again. Cinesea 12 sailed off into the sunset, making way for Cinesea 13 in April of 2016.
The magic of Cinesea isn't just the pleasure of getting together and talking film, of celebrating the hobby.
Not just that, not any more.
As the years go on, our show (and others) take on a greater importance.
35mm film, the daddy of all film formats, is fighting for its life in an increasingly digital world, and yet the irony is that two little gauges, 8mm and 16mm, which have been declared deader than Dracula (and about as often) are still holding on...thanks to us.
We are the "new historians", in a sense.
Along with surviving repertory theatres, we are rapidly becoming the curators of the very idea of projecting physical film, the people with the ability to actually still thread and operate such machines, and to appreciate the look of film.
That is also what hangs in the air at Cinesea, unspoken, but there: we are not just enjoying a hobby, we are literally keeping something alive, something important. Film, the very format that gave us more than a hundred years of art and memories, is now partly in our hands for safekeeping.
Thank you for reading and looking and please make plans to attend Cinesea in the spring. You will love it.
Claus.
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"Why are there shots of deserts in a scene that's supposed to take place in Belgium during the winter?" (Review of 'Battle of the Bulge'.)
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted October 17, 2015 04:59 PM
There was more!
Sunday morning we got a nice surprise: we were being invited to visit the Sea Theater. This was one of those offers I just couldn’t refuse! As I’ve said before: on my 50th birthday we went out to see a movie at the local theater. Being that these were still 35mm days (…It’s not that long ago!), I wanted to ask the manager for a booth tour, but I kind of…wussed out! Now I was being asked!
-This time I HAD to go!
http://www.seatheater.net/index.html
The Sea Theater is a jewel. It’s a century old: first operating during the silent days of the mid-nineteen teens. It’s on a scale we small-gauge folks will feel comfortable with: one screen, one projector, 65 seats. People wanting to build a classic style home cinema should feel inspired by this place. Instead of the usual twenty times or fifty times what we could ever have at home, it’s maybe three, four or five times!
It actually hasn’t operated as a theater for most of its existence. It had been various kinds of businesses for decades until a local family bought the by then abandoned building and restored it. Upon gutting it out, they discovered a sloped auditorium floor that had been covered over easily fifty years. They then brought in everything they needed to establish a vintage style cinema with 35mm projection and modern comforts. The place has everything a movie theater should have: ticket booth, snack bar, lobby, auditorium and projection booth. It’s just all on a very approachable scale.
Maybe this isn’t a cathedral to film, but it’s at least a chapel. There are displays there like this one:
We’ve been doing CineSea almost 6 years now. I’d say that’s long enough to have some “lore”! Part of the lore of CineSea is way back during # 3 (John Black’s last show), Dino Everett came from California and did a 9.5mm show for the crowd at the Sea Theater. To this day, on a ledge beneath their screen you will find these programs:
There’s more going on here than is obvious. Part of the reason they are still on that ledge is the Sea has been closed since the end of the 2011 season. Like a great many small venues it had trouble getting 35mm prints and then wasn’t able to make the leap to Digital. It has remained frozen in time ever since. The current owner is hoping for a buyer willing to reopen it as a nonprofit movie theater, hopefully still featuring 35mm projection.
What else isn’t so obvious is the moisture damage on that old program. Three years ago this month, Wildwood was hit by Hurricane Sandy and the Sea Theater was flooded up to the third row of seats. In the midst of coping with their own messes, friends of the place showed up and did such a great cleanup that there is little evidence of flood damage inside there today. One thing you will notice is on the floor of the booth there is a deceased Eumig Dual-8 machine: obviously having been immersed in flood water, and possibly saltwater at that.
-but enough of those regrets, this was a happy occasion:
Sunday, October 11th 2015 the Sea Theater was an active movie theater once again, even if just for the afternoon. The audience that day was entirely from CineSea XII and we felt lucky to be there.
Without the odd mix of feelings that comes with turning fifty years old all over again (”What happened to THIRTY??!!”), I finally stood inside a genuine film based, theatrical projection booth!
There it was!
-Several HUNDRED pounds of 35mm power and brilliance! I’m alleged to be pretty savvy technically speaking, and theoretically I understand how this beast works, but this is downright intimidating! I’ve never operated a movie projector that doesn’t have a handle on top, and comparing what I’m used and this is like comparing a “Boat” and a “Ship”! (I also understand what makes a helicopter fly, but…)
I saw a big knob marked “Frame” and felt a little smarter, but there was no question this was a job for a professional!
-Fortunately we arrived prepared…
(to be continued...)
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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 October 17, 2015 09:21 PM
Part of what keeps CineSea interesting is the qualifications of the people that join in. It makes for a lot of great conversation. For just a few examples we have at least two professional filmmakers, we have a radio producer, we have at least one actor, we have a teacher that does a film studies class (with real FILM!), and we have Joe Griesbach:
Joe is a professional projectionist. Over at the Ocean Holiday he is hands-down the guy with the coolest gear on display!
(I just work at a place that shoots an electron beam around a big circle: in this crowd I’m a film hobbyist!)
This machine is a long way from plug and play. (It’s called “Simplex”, but don’t be deceived!) There are bearings in there that require active lubrication and an operator who knows where, with what and how often (-and they started out as dry as Arizona that day.)
Automatic Threading?!
-Thread THIS!!
The setup there needs some TLC, yet under Joe’s skilled attention we got through the afternoon with only one interruption.
The Sea has an unusual floor plan. Every other theater I’ve ever been in you come in back by the booth and walk downhill towards the screen. Here you come in by the screen and then walk uphill towards the booth. I wonder if there is some hurricane-country logic at play here. If you kept the lobby at grade and then walked down to the screen, the front of auditorium would now be well below grade unless you put a flight of stairs in between and boosted the whole theater up. It’s a fact of life that any hole you dig this close to sea-level is one decent storm away from becoming your own private swamp! This way it may still get flooded, but at least it has natural drainage!
(I’ve never seen a building this close to the ocean that had a basement either: why tempt fate?)
When we went inside the auditorium, we saw light through the back of the screen:
This is a reminder that a lot of the time a theatrical screen isn’t a solid, opaque surface like the rollup screens we use at home but a perforated vinyl sheet that allows speakers mounted right behind the screen to send sound directly through the picture. The owner left the light on behind the screen so we could see the speaker.
The feature that afternoon was Blazing Saddles. For me this was an interesting choice. You see, when it was first in the theaters Mom and Dad went to see it, but ruled it too edgy for a 12 year old. Meanwhile, not having ever seen it, that same 12 year old is sitting there 41 years later with his own 13 year old wondering what I’d gotten us into! Actually by modern standards it’s not that big a deal, and I’m sure Steven will not be permanently scarred! (-actually the campfire scene would be comic gold for your average 13 year old!)
So with our Blazing Heroes riding off into the sunset (in a Cadillac limousine), it was time to say our goodbyes. Everyone but us left the Sea Theater and went home.
We went back to the Ocean Holiday and spent the night so we could visit Cape May on Monday (Columbus Day). We spent a pleasant evening up on the Wildwood boardwalk enjoying the sunset .
We also had a meal of the really scandalous kind of food you get at the beach but would never confess to your doctor!
-but CineSea comes but once a year!
(It’s really twice, but that just sounds…wrong!)
[ October 22, 2015, 04:36 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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