Posted by: thepinetree on 05/29/2009 09:37 AM
Updated by: thepinetree on 04/15/2010 01:12 PM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM
:
Our Chat with Angels Theater Manager, Jeff Olson...Historic and High Tech ~By John Hamilton (A feature from last year is our "Reel Talk" for this week!)
Angels Camp, CA...To the casual observer Angels Theater looks like a moment frozen in time. The classic Art Deco facade mixed in with Historic Downtown Angels Camp. It is, but it is also much more. Angels 5 is the only theater in our entire area filled to the brim with all the latest toys in the digital cinema world. Cinema pro and Theater Manager Jeff Olson must have lobbied long and hard for Cinema West to pick Angels to make this significant investment....
Theater Manager Jeff Olson Rubbing one of his new "Toys"
The results are stunning. When we screened the latest Pixar film "Up" the quality of the show was spectacular. It was crisp, with bold vibrant colors and the 3-D experience immersed you in the story in a whole new way. It isn't just the multi-layered 3-D that is an improvement it is also very fundamental quality improvements.
Analog film projectors typically run at 24 frames per second. The new digital projectors are capable of well over 100 fps. For 3-D the improvements are vary large indeed. The end result is a fluid very lifelike experience. Some have likened it to the jump in the music experience going from mono to stereo.
We have asked Jeff for months to allow us to peek at some of his high tech toys and after our sneak peek of "Up" he obliged.
What we saw was very impressive and also somewhat familiar. The impressive was the enormous Christie Digital projectors. These can take up to a 4,000 watt bulb and sprout dedicated cooling systems, control consoles and much more. Cutting edge also costs money...lots of money. Upgrades like this can run hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We should thank our lucky stars that only digital theater in our whole area in right in Angels Camp.
The upgraded projection rooms would look familiar to anyone who has spent time in the data center of any large organization. Equipment racks filled with Dell servers, rack mounted consoles and looms of Cat 6 cabling snaking along the walls.
On one of the consoles Jeff gave us a peek at an interface that would look familiar to anyone who has spent much time in a video editing program. Jeff has to build each show. In addition to the movie files that can be as large as 250 gigabytes he has to add the previews ads and other intros.
If anything the transition has made the projectionist's job technically much more difficult. There are also the somewhat humorous anecdotes about applying patches and firmware upgrades on this bleeding edge equipment.
In addition to the projectors a special screen surface has been added as well.
The comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for its content. We value free speech but remember this is a public forum and we hope that people would use common sense and decency. If you see an offensive comment please email us at news@thepinetree.net
