Transcript
Interstellar: the secrets of the projection room The Odeon Leicester Square invited us to look inside their projection room during a screening of Interstellar on 70mm film The projection room of the Odeon Leicester Square is a fascinating mix of old and new. Two enormous digital projectors sit in a large, rectangular room with bottle green wall tiles that date back to the Thirties. Dotted around are various tools and fixtures that remain unchanged since the Second World War – vintage light switches, an old film rewinder, metal cupboards that once stored (highly flammable) nitrate film. But for the next two weeks, the two digital projectors will be used only to play trailers and adverts during screenings of Christopher Nolan’s space epic Interstellar. Nolan has long been a fan of film, rather than digital, having shot The Dark Knight, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises on varying film formats. Only certain cinemas are equipped to show these films in their original format, however, meaning that most cinema goers will have seen only fully digital versions. For Interstellar, Nolan shot on a mix of anamorphic 35mm and IMAX 70mm – and a select group of cinemas in Europe will actually show it via a film projector. The Odeon Leicester Square is one of these. It’s the first time a 70mm print film has been shown here since 1998, when another space epic – Armageddon – became the last to grace the cinema’s big screen on that format. It will be shown here for two weeks before moving across the square to the Odeon West End, which also has a film projector, for a longer run. Watching a movie on old-fashioned film offers a superior visual experience. Though digital may be an easier, less cumbersome, format to shoot with – and project – the resolution is lower and the tones less rich. For the thousands of fans expected to make the effort to see the film the way Nolan intended, it’s worth it. The cinema’s film projector had sat unused in a corner of the projection room for 16 years. When it was announced that Interstellar would be playing on 70mm 5-perf film there, it was time to pull it out of retirement. Some parts no longer worked, some were missing, and replacing them was no easy task because they’re no longer manufactured. Michael Mannix, the operations manager digital (“projectionist” to you and me) had to make phone calls to Odeon cinemas around the country to source replacement parts. The aperture plate, a 70mm sprocket and the time code readers were among the items that had to be tracked down. “The time code readers were the hardest things to source,” he says. “We managed to find five and only three of them worked. That’s just enough to do both here and the Odeon West End. South End gave us a couple. The other pieces were just dotted about in other Odeons.”
! The Cinemeccanica Victoria 8
The projector is relatively new one, having been bought in 1998. It’s an Italian Cinemeccanica Victoria 8, one of a few left in the world, with the film fed from a Christie AW3 Platter System. “Most of them are now on the scrap heap,” says Odeon’s operations manager Chris Tayler. “In the Nineties and before it was always 70mm. We've been using scraps of 70mm to test this out because there's so little test film around. We had to go into the stores and find odd bits and pieces.” The film projector sits alongside the two digital ones and, where there would be a computer to control it, there are three enormous discs positioned one on top of another. Together, these three platters are known as a “cake stand” and on one of them sits the giant roll of film that is Nolan’s three-hour movie. As it plays, the spool runs through the machine from one platter and feeds out on to the one above. The film arrived in eight reels which had to be spliced together by hand. In total it took seven days to set up all the equipment.
“When it goes back I'll have to break it down and put it on its original spool,” says Mannix.
! A piece of 70mm film
Mercifully for the projectionist, the sound is digital and is stored separately on a hard drive. But it’s kept in sync with the visuals the old fashioned way – using a time code that is imprinted on the edges of the film, just outside the sprocket holes. Keeping the film reels in good condition is also no easy job. The smallest piece of grit or dirt in the machine can mark a whole reel of film if not spotted. And if something goes wrong during the screening, you cannot run the film backwards to replay the lost moment again. When the last trailer ends and the film projector kicks in, it’s like watching – and hearing – a piece of history. The clack-clack-clack of the reels, the flickering light as it shines through the film immediately evokes cinema’s golden age. Downstairs in the auditorium, over 1,000 people watch the event – many oblivious to the mammoth effort that goes into projecting a film this way. Interstellar will show at the Odeon Leicester Square on 70mm 5-perf film until 20 Nov when it will move to the Odeon West End. The film is also available to watch on 70mm film at the BFI IMAX and Odeon Manchester Printworks.
When the Roxy was built in 1930, there was much more concern for cramming as many seats into the building as possible, than there was for making the projection booth livable; so, the booth commands a grand total of 10 x 16 feet in the building. In the beginning, our projection booth contained two projectors. Movies would arrive at the theatre on reels of 15 to 19 minutes each, and in the old days, the projectionist would run the first reel on one machine, then make a "changeover" to switch to the second reel on the other machine. Done properly, a changeover was seamless and unnoticeable to the audience. On many nights, there would be two projectionists: One for each projector. (Usually, one of these people was getting paid...the other one was just hanging out because there was nothing else in town to do, and why not see the movie...again?) In the Roxy booth, the more experienced projectionist operated machine #2 (the left machine). Despite its secondary number, the #2 machine was always the first one to be started. The projectionist had to fire up the lamp, start the film rolling, dim the houselights, kill the pre-show music, put the picture on the screen, and open the stage curtain. It was done by pushing various buttons, flipping switches, pulling levers, turning knobs and praying everything worked properly. It was all done manually, and all in the space of seven or eight seconds. These days, the changeover is less common. The majority of projection booths now use a platter system to transport the film. With the platter system, the film reels are spliced together and wound onto a horizontal disc. This way, the film is threaded one time, and runs continuously through one projector. After the film has ended its run, the reels are separated again, and the film is sent back to the depot to be shipped on to its next engagement. We installed our platter system in 1980, along with a complete new projection system. We replaced our 1930-vintage sound system with a solid-state system that had no tubes to burn out. Our single speaker behind the screen was a classic: An Altec Voice of the Theatre, model A5, weighing something like 250 pounds.
Before modern xenon lamps came along, carbon arcs provided the light for movies. Before starting the projector, the projectionist would strike the arc by turning on the electrical power and then striking the carbons together by turning a knob or pushing a lever. The projectionist then had to maintain the arc (with help from two motors in the lamphouse, which advanced the carbons as they were consumed) at the proper size to keep the picture bright on the screen. The carbons burned at about 6000 degrees, making the booth nice and warm, summer and winter! The carbons in one machine would be refreshed while the other machine was running. Here, Don Herndon changes carbons as Clayton Miars threads the projector. Through the lamphouse door, you can see the copper-colored negative carbon. (Late 1960s)
Here's Don again, doing his favorite activity: Splicing previews together. We used to receive previews (trailers) in flat boxes, like the one on the bench in front of Don. A box would hold three or four trailers. The reels of the current feature were kept in the cabinets under the bench. The machine at the back of the bench is a rewinder. In the background (over Don's shoulder) is the tube-based sound system. The suspicious-looking bottle sitting next to the flashlight is lens cleaner. None of this equipment is in our booth today. If this picture were wider, the projectors would be about two feet behind Don's back...giving you an idea of how small this booth really is. Trivia: Movie trailers are getting shorter. In the 1950s, trailers could be up to 10 minutes long, or more! Today, the maximum length of most trailers is 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and some are much shorter than that.
The entire booth was damaged by a fire in 1953, so the projectors were replaced. That's when the projector shown here (and another identical to it) was installed. The theatre was originally equipped with different machines (which we don't have pictures of) but they were similar to the machine pictured here.
These projectors were used from 1953 until they were replaced by our current equipment in 1980. There are many projectors just like this one still running film today, although they probably have more modern lamphouses. The projector was made by Motiograph and the lamphouse is an Ashcraft. Soundwise, we started out with an RCA PHOTOPHONE system, which was the height of technology in 1930. This picture was taken just before these machines were removed from the booth, in January 1980.
Here's a better view of the "controls" on the old Ashcraft lamphouse. The two red knobs at the top were for adjusting the position of the lamp's reflector. The two large red knobs under the amp meter were for adjusting the carbons forward and backward. It was necessary to maintain the right distance between the carbons to keep the arc burning bright and steady. The projectionist had to keep an eye on things at all times, because without occasional adjustments, the arc might wander, causing the picture to get dim and flickery. The small black and red knobs adjusted the speed of the carbon feed motor, and the large lever barely visible at the bottom of the picture was used to turn the power to the lamphouse on and off.
