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Presented by Flicker Alley n ssociation ith Cinerama, Inc. On the evening of September 30, 1952, the shape and sound of movies changed forever with the premiere of This is Cinerama, the film that introduced the Cinerama experience. This unique widescreen process was launched when television was deemed as a major threat to US film exhibition. Fred Waller, Cinerama's creator, dreamed of a motion picture experience that would recreate the full range of human vision. It used three cameras and three projectors on a curved screen 146° deep. [email protected] (323) 851-1905 Commemorating the 60-year anniversary of Cinerama, Flicker Alley is proud to present This is Cinerama, exactly as seen by over 20,000,000 viewers in its original roadshow version. You will travel around the world with Cinerama, from Venice to Madrid, from Edinburgh Castle to the La Scala opera house in Milan, and concluding with a flight across America in the nose of a B-25 bomber. [email protected] (323) 851-1905 20th-century writer and explorer Lowell Thomas introduces and narrates, becoming a fixture of the Cinerama series. [email protected] (323) 851-1905 “This Is Cinerama remains a magnificent piece of midcentury Americana — a seamless blend of idealism and hucksterism, poised between the concert hall and the carnival side show.” – Dave Kehr, The New York Times “The most historically important Flicker Alley release.” – David Sterritt, Cineaste "The sights of This is Cinerama Oscar Winner: Cinerama remain a stunning demonstration of the power of inventor Fred Waller received moving a camera - or three - the 1953 Scientific & Technical through space.” – Keith Phipps, Academy Award A.V. Club “This Is Cinerama is an engrossing, powerful experience at any scale, and it's a thrill to at long last see its arrival on Blu- ray. Recommended.” – Adam Tyner, DVD Talk [email protected] (323) 851-1905 Preview This is Cinerama on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/28299 Use Promo Code AMPLIFY for free stream. [email protected] (323) 851-1905 Please contact Josh Morrison Operations Manager Flicker Alley (323) 851-1905 [email protected] .

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Widescreen Weekend 2007 Brochure
The Widescreen Weekend welcomes all those fans of large format and widescreen films – CinemaScope, VistaVision, 70mm, Cinerama and Imax – and presents an array of past classics from the vaults of the National Media Museum. A weekend to wallow in the best of cinema. HOW THE WEST WAS WON NEW TODD-AO PRINT MAYERLING (70mm) BLACK TIGHTS (70mm) Saturday 17 March THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR Monday 19 March Sunday 18 March Pictureville Cinema Pictureville Cinema FLYING MACHINES Pictureville Cinema Dir. Terence Young France 1960 130 mins (PG) Dirs. Henry Hathaway, John Ford, George Marshall USA 1962 Dir. Terence Young France/GB 1968 140 mins (PG) Zizi Jeanmaire, Cyd Charisse, Roland Petit, Moira Shearer, 162 mins (U) or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, Ava Gardner, Maurice Chevalier Debbie Reynolds, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, (70mm) James Robertson Justice, Geneviève Page Carroll Baker, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, George Peppard Sunday 18 March A very rare screening of this 70mm title from 1960. Before Pictureville Cinema It is the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world is going on to direct Bond films (see our UK premiere of the There are westerns and then there are WESTERNS. How the Dir. Ken Annakin GB 1965 133 mins (U) changing, and Archduke Rudolph (Sharif), the young son of new digital print of From Russia with Love), Terence Young West was Won is something very special on the deep curved Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, James Fox, Alberto Sordi, Robert Emperor Franz-Josef (Mason) finds himself desperately looking delivered this French ballet film.
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CINERAMA: the First Really Big Show
CCINEN RRAMAM : The First Really Big Show DIVING HEAD FIRST INTO THE 1950s:: AN OVERVIEW by Nick Zegarac Above left: eager audience line ups like this one for the “Seven Wonders of the World” debut at the Cinerama Theater in New York were short lived by the end of the 1950s. All in all, only seven feature films were actually produced in 3-strip Cinerama, though scores more were advertised as being shot in the process. Above right: corrected three frame reproduction of the Cypress Water Skiers in ‘This is Cinerama’. Left: Fred Waller, Cinerama’s chief architect. Below: Lowell Thomas; “ladies and gentlemen, this is Cinerama!” Arguably, Cinerama was the most engaging widescreen presentation format put forth during the 1950s. From a visual standpoint it was the most enveloping. The cumbersome three camera set up and three projector system had been conceptualized, designed and patented by Fred Waller and his associates at Paramount as early as the 1930s. However, Hollywood was not quite ready, and certainly not eager, to “revolutionize” motion picture projection during the financially strapped depression and war years…and who could blame them? The standardized 1:33:1(almost square) aspect ratio had sufficed since the invention of 35mm celluloid film stock. Even more to the point, the studios saw little reason to invest heavily in yet another technology. The induction of sound recording in 1929 and mounting costs for producing films in the newly patented 3-strip Technicolor process had both proved expensive and crippling adjuncts to the fluidity that silent B&W nitrate filming had perfected.
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History of Widescreen Aspect Ratios
HISTORY OF WIDESCREEN ASPECT RATIOS ACADEMY FRAME In 1889 Thomas Edison developed an early type of projector called a Kinetograph, which used 35mm film with four perforations on each side. The frame area was an inch wide and three quarters of an inch high, producing a ratio of 1.37:1. 1932 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the Academy Ratio the standard Ratio, and was used in cinemas until 1953 when Paramount Pictures released Shane, produced with a Ratio of 1.66:1 on 35mm film. TELEVISION FRAME The standard analogue television screen ratio today is 1.33:1. The Aspect Ratio is the relationship between the width and height. A Ratio of 1.33:1 or 4:3 means that for every 4 units wide it is 3 units high (4 / 3 = 1.33). In the 1950s, Hollywood's attempt to lure people away from their television sets and back into cinemas led to a battle of screen sizes. Fred CINERAMA Waller of Paramount's Special Effects Department developed a large screen system called Cinerama, which utilised three cameras to record a single image. Three electronically synchronised projectors were used to project an image on a huge screen curved at an angle of 165 degrees, producing an aspect ratio of 2.8:1. This Is Cinerama was the first Cinerama film released in 1952 and was a thrilling travelogue which featured a roller-coaster ride. See Film Formats. In 1956 Metro Goldwyn Mayer was planning a CAMERA 65 ULTRA PANAVISION massive remake of their 1926 silent classic Ben Hur.
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Cinerama to Digital Cinema: from the Zenith to the Decline Written by Enric Mas ( ) January 11, 2016
Enric Mas nitsenblanc.cat Cinerama to digital cinema: from the zenith to the decline Written by Enric Mas ( http://nitsenblanc.cat ) January 11, 2016 I try to imagine what the audience felt when they first saw a movie in Cinerama... but I cannot. I wonder, did they feel the same as I did when I saw a projection in 70 mm IMAX for the first time? Some clues tell me the answer is no. Howard Rust, of the International Cinerama Society, gave me an initial clue: “I was talking to a chap the other day who’d just been to see IMAX. ‘Sensational’, he said. ‘But, you know… it still doesn’t give you the same pins and needles up and down the back of your spin that Cinerama does’ ”. 1 What is its secret? Why is every film seen in Cinerama a unique event that is remembered for decades? We have another clue in a man who had worked with D.W. Griffith in That Royle Girl (1925), who produced and directed technically innovative short films, where black performers appeared, a rarity at the time, including the first appearance of Billie Holiday (Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life , 1935). He created a new imaging system (Vitarama) for the World’s Fair in New York (1939), joining 11 projectors of 16 mm, which reached a vertical image of 75 degrees high and 130 degrees wide, 2,3 developments which led to the most advanced artillery simulator in the world, which was used to train future aircraft gunners in World War II.
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Film Essay for "This Is Cinerama"
This Is Cinerama By Kyle Westphal “The pictures you are now going to see have no plot. They have no stars. This is not a stage play, nor is it a feature picture not a travelogue nor a symphonic concert or an opera—but it is a combination of all of them.” So intones Lowell Thomas before introduc- ing America to a ‘major event in the history of entertainment’ in the eponymous “This Is Cinerama.” Let’s be clear: this is a hyperbol- ic film, striving for the awe and majesty of a baseball game, a fireworks show, and the virgin birth all rolled into one, delivered with Cinerama gave audiences the feeling they were riding the roller coaster the insistent hectoring of a hypnotically ef- at Rockaway’s Playland. Courtesy Library of Congress Collection. fective multilevel marketing pitch. rama productions for a year or two. Retrofitting existing “This Is Cinerama” possesses more bluster than a politi- theaters with Cinerama equipment was an enormously cian on the stump, but the Cinerama system was a genu- expensive proposition—and the costs didn’t end with in- inely groundbreaking development in the history of motion stallation. With very high fixed labor costs (the Broadway picture exhibition. Developed by inventor Fred Waller from employed no less than seventeen union projectionists), an his earlier Vitarama, a multi-projector system used primari- unusually large portion of a Cinerama theater’s weekly ly for artillery training during World War II, Cinerama gross went back into the venue’s operating costs, leaving sought to scrap most of the uniform projection standards precious little for the producers.
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Widescreen Weekend 2010 Brochure (PDF)
52 widescreen weekend widescreen weekend 53 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (70MM) REMASTERING A WIDESCREEN CLASSIC: Saturday 27 March, Pictureville Cinema WINDJAMMER GETS A MAJOR FACELIFT Dir. Stanley Kubrick GB/USA 1968 149 mins plus intermission (U) Saturday 27 March, Pictureville Cinema WIDESCREEN Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Leonard Rossiter, Ed Presented by David Strohmaier and Randy Gitsch Bishop and Douglas Rain as Hal The producer and director team behind Cinerama Adventure offer WEEKEND During the stone age, a mysterious black monolith of alien origination a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the Cinemiracle epic, influences the birth of intelligence amongst mankind. Thousands Now in its 17th year, the Widescreen Weekend Windjammer, was restored for High Definition. Several new and of years later scientists discover the monolith hidden on the moon continues to welcome all those fans of large format and innovative software restoration techniques were employed and the re- which subsequently lures them on a dangerous mission to Mars... widescreen films – CinemaScope, VistaVision, 70mm, mastering and preservation process has been documented in HD video. Regarded as one of the milestones in science-fiction filmmaking, Cinerama and IMAX – and presents an array of past A brief question and answer session will follow this event. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey not only fascinated audiences classics from the vaults of the National Media Museum. This event is enerously sponsored by Cinerama, Inc., all around the world but also left many puzzled during its initial A weekend to wallow in the nostalgic best of cinema. release. More than four decades later it has lost none of its impact.
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Escape, Cinerama & the Triptych
58 WIDESCREEN WEEKEND Three steps to heaven Escape, Cinerama & The Triptych Mark Trompeteler reports on the evolving Widescreen Weekend festival of big screen technology at the National Science & Media Museum ust as cinema changes and heaven almost no other venue can emulate. central screen. An additional pair of evolves, so the festivals and Barco’s Stefan Vandemaele and acoustically transparent, and retractable institutions around it change too. Frederick Lanoy referred to the company’s screens, with additional curtaining, are A more diverse demographic of development and launch of the three-wall added to the two sides of the existing screen. delegates than usual descended on Escape system as almost part of another It is DCI-compliant and versions of movies Jthe newly renamed National Science and repeat of cinema history. They asserted that will be available with DCPs encoded so that Media Museum in Bradford to attend the recently, whilst box office takings were either the movie can be run with just one 21st Widescreen Weekend for four days in remaining steady, due to the utilisation of central screen, or in a version that has the mid-October. It billed itself as “the unique higher prices for PLF and an improved and two added screens available to project. They festival of big screen technology, past, wider range of offer and other sales factors, argue that, due to digital projection, Escape present and future”. Incorporating its there will always be a concern about falling is deliverable far more easily and reliably IMAX auditorium alongside the analogue, attendances in auditoria. As in previous than was Cinerama.
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Digital Cinerama
Widescreen Weekend DDigitaligital CineramaCinerama - D150D150 CCinemaScopeinemaScope 5555 - Ultra-Ultra- PPanavisionanavision aandnd muchmuch muchmuch moremore MMarkark TTrompetelerrompeteler aatt thethe BradfordBradford WWidescreenidescreen WWeekendeekend The 14th. Annual Widescreen Weekend One of the most important and memorable was held from 19th. – 23rd. March at the moments in the history of film projection is National Museum of Media, in Bradford. “the Cinerama reveal” at the beginning of One hundred and five delegates travelled this film, when the curtains pull back from from all over the world to the Pictureville the small standard academy aspect ratio Cinema, based in the museum, for this black and white screen image to slowly annual event that celebrates and showcases reveal the giant colour widescreen aspect all aspects of widescreen cinema. Attendees ratio of the Cinerama image and also herald had travelled from as far away as Australia its fabulous accompanying magnetic track and New Zealand, China, America and sound. Even after all these years seeing this Canada, as well as from many countries at Bradford for the first, or a repeated time, both in Eastern and Western Europe, the is still a thrilling moment. (pictures below). Scandinavian countries and of course many parts of the UK and Ireland. The Dave Strohmaier and Randy Gitsch annual event has for many years been co- from Los Angeles (right) are amongst the programmed by Bill Lawrence and Thomas world’s leading experts, chroniclers and Hauerslev. This year the contribution documentary film makers on Cinerama of Duncan McGregor, the museum’s and its place in cinema history. They Projection Team Manager to the weekend’s attended this year for the fourth time.
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70Mm Cinerama Films in Japan
Film List – 70mm Cinerama Films in Japan – and their public opening dates – 1) "It´s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" at Tokyo´s Cinerama "Shochiku Central" Theatre (28.12.1963). 2) "Circus World" at four Tokyo venues on 19.12.1964: at "Pantheon", at "Milano-za", at "Marunouchi Toei Palace" and at "Asakusa Toei Palace" (only in Super Technirama 70). 3) "Mediterranean Holiday" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (both on 01.05.1965). 4) "The Greatest Story Ever Told" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (both on 04.09.1965). 5) "The Hallelujah Trail" at Tokyo´s Cinerama "Shochiku Central" Theatre (23.10.1965), at Nagoya´s Cinerama "Nagoya Theatre" (25.12.1965) – and later at Tokyo´s "Shibuya Tokyu" and "Shinjuku Piccadilly" Theatres (both on 09.04.1966) – the two theatres were not Cinerama-branded. 6) "Battle of the Bulge" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (both on 01.04.1966). 7) "Khartoum" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" (28.10.1966) and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (most likely also on 28.10.1966). 8) "Grand Prix" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (both on 01.02.1967). 9) "Custer of the West" at three Tokyo Cinerama venues on 24.02.1968: at "Pantheon", at "Shochiku Central" and at "Milano-za" – "Pantheon" and "Milano-za" were extra rebuilt for Cinerama. – a short description about the 3 venues with their opening dates. 10) "2001: A Space Odyssey" at the Cinerama theatres: "Theatre Tokyo" and Osaka´s "OS Theatre" (both on 11.04.1968).
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Red and White on the Silver Screen: the Shifting Meaning and Use of American Indians in Hollywood Films from the 1930S to the 1970S
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WIDE SCREEN MOVIES CORRECTIONS - Rev
WIDE SCREEN MOVIES CORRECTIONS - Rev. 2.0 - Revised December, 2004. © Copyright 1994-2004, Daniel J. Sherlock. All Rights Reserved. This document may not be published in whole or in part or included in another copyrighted work without the express written permission of the author. Permission is hereby given to freely copy and distribute this document electronically via computer media, computer bulletin boards and on-line services provided the content is not altered other than changes in formatting or data compression. Any comments or corrections individuals wish to make to this document should be made as a separate document rather than by altering this document. All trademarks belong to their respective companies. ========== COMMENTS FOR VERSION 1.0 (PUBLISHED APRIL, 1994): The following is a list of corrections and addenda to the book Wide Screen Movies by Robert E. Carr and R.M. Hayes, published in 1988 by McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC and London; ISBN 0-89950-242-3. This document may be more understandable if you reference the book, but it is written so that you can read it by itself and get the general idea. This document was written at the request of several individuals to document the problems I found in the book. I am not in the habit of marking up books like I had done with this particular book, but the number of errors I found was overwhelming. The corrections are referenced with the appropriate page number and paragraph in the book. I have primarily limited my comments to the state of the art as it was when the book was published in 1988.
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Hollywood and the Dawn of Television 1
Foster_ch01_001-010.qxd 1/28/10 1:33 PM Page 1 Hollywood and the Dawn of Television 1 INVENTING TELEVISION Scientists began experimenting with a form of mechanical image scanning in the first years of the twentieth century. By the twenties the term television was being applied to these inventions. No doubt the fledgling movie industry was giving some impetus to this endeavor. Early in the decade two very different inventors began to make major breakthroughs in the development of electronic image scanning, Philo T. Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin. Farnsworth was a farm boy from Utah who had won his high school science fair with a diagram for an instrument he called an image dissector. Due to his father’s early demise, Farnsworth was not able to complete his college studies. He was able to interest a few financial backers in supporting his research and opened a small labora- tory in San Francisco in 1926. The following year he applied for a patent for his inven- tion of a primitive television picture tube. Zworykin was an important member of the Russian scientific community when the revolution broke out in 1917. He managed to escape to Paris and, in 1919, settled in Pittsburgh to work in the Westinghouse research laboratories. He was fascinated by the possibilities of television and worked after hours on his own experiments with electronic image scanning. By 1923 Zworykin’s work was sufficiently advanced that he applied for a patent for a camera tube device he called the iconoscope. Westinghouse was not enthused about his work because television was not one of the company’s research priorities but Zworykin continued to labor late into the night after completing his workday for the corporation.
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