The things movies are made of
Since their conception more then a century ago, movies, short for moving pictures, have become one of the most broad, far reaching and successful staples in the entertainment diet of the world today.
While movies as a whole have grown in size, stature and artistic appeal, the fundamental basics of movie making and presentation have not really changed, even with the advent of new technology. Technology has only heightened and accented movie presentation to portray a more engulfing experience with each visit to the theater.
Every bit of technology, whether it's a massive digital surround sound system that picks up every minute detail and nuance of a sound track or the high caliber and crystal clarity of today's standard movie projector, help movies creep, step by step, closer to a more profound and realistic venture for its fans and consumers.
"We use technology in order to help the walls of a movie theater disappear, we don't want people to come to our theater and feel like they've been sitting in a big room watching a movie for the past two hours. We want to give them the notion that they've been engulfed into a new world with every film, and want them to forget that they're watching a movie," said Aaron Hawk, Manager of Boardman's Art Theater at 126 W. Church St., Champaign.
Movie technology rests on the basic concepts and technologies of film projection, sound, seating and screen; each of these areas has been modified and tweaked with technology overtime to provide the audience with the optimal chance of experiencing film as intended by the original producers.
"Film works because of a persistence of vision of the human eye," said Hawk.
The human eye retains an image for approximately one-twentieth of a second after seeing it. So in the early 19th century, several devices began to appear to simulate motion by exploiting this idea, with the use of synchronized still images in sequence placed around a revolving drum.
Soon after, the idea to place a strip if film in front of a light source came about, and prospered throughout the 20th century. Movie projectors grew in complexity to make it easier for film to move more fluently and rapidly in front of a light source, and one main idea that sprung from this was then invention of the platter said Hawk.
"A movie projector is a device that is built to continuously move film along a path so that each frame of film is stopped on for a fraction of a second in front of an extremely powerful light source, and have that displayed on a screen," said Justin Paulson, assistant manager at the Goodrich Savoy 16 theaters, Route 45, and Burwash Ave, Savoy.
There are four main parts to any standard projector in today's market, you have your spooling, lamp, lens and audio assemblies, each one is crucial to the process of projecting a film accurately onto the screen, Paulson said.
"Most people don't realize how much film it actually takes to produce a movie," Hawk said. "Most movies are shot on 35mm film stock, one second in the movie equals 16 frames (individual pictures printed on film) to every foot of film," he continued.
"Movie projectors move the film at 24 frames per second, so it takes like, one and a half feet of film to create every single second of a movie," Hawk explained.
By this math, one minute equals 90 feet of film -- 1.5 feet per second multiplied by 60 seconds; one hour equals approximately 5,400 feet; and a standard two-hour movie, plus five minutes of previews, would equal about 2.13 miles of film, or 11,250 feet.
"People don't expect a movie to take up that amount of space on film, and because these films are so massive, they can't be sent to us in once piece, so they divide films into segments and have them rolled on the reels of film," said Rebekah Brunleve, office marketing manager of Beverly Cinema, 910 Meijers Drive, Champaign.
"Typical two-hour movies are divided into five or six reels," Brunleve said.
"Basically how this works is, when a new movie comes in, we have people splice all the reels together with tape onto one big platter," said Tony Feller, manager in training for Goodrich Savoy 16.
For all standard film projectors -- this excludes digital projectors which don't use film -- the film feeds off a large pizza pie like platter, and moves through a film cleaner, through readers that detect the sound, through the light source of the projector, and it runs back onto a take-up platter or rewind platter, said Martin McFarlane, assistant manager for Boardman's Art Theatre.
A complete projecting unit consists of two parts, a projection portion and a platter portion which take up a good 7 to 10 feet in length. Each projector has three platters, you run the film, from one platter, through the projector, and then onto another platter. There is about a 3 foot difference between the platter and the projector, so you have to step over and duck under the film if you want to check the film as it's running, Paulson said.
The key element in the actual projection of a movie is the light source. Film projectors use xenon bulbs mounted in the center of a parabolic mirror that reflects light from the bulb and focuses it on a light condenser, said Feller.
The condenser consists of a pair of lenses used together to further intensify the light from the bulb, and focus it on the main lens assembly of the projector. The resulting heat generated by this process of focused light is immense, that is why film will melt very quickly if the film stops spooling through the projector, Paulson said.
"If no one is watching the film, we turn the bulbs off, because they actually cost like between 500 dollars and a grand. And since they're special xenon bulbs, you can't actually touch them, or they'll explode," said Paulson.
"There are two lens' for the projector, there's a flat lens with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and there's a scope, or cinescope, lens, that is in widescreen format, or a 16:9 aspect ratio, and dependent upon how a movie was filmed, we have our lens' switch from flat to scope," said Paulson.
A large portion of how the theater actually works is automated dependant upon the kind of reflective cue tape that is placed on the film.
"There's a reader that sees these pieces of tape and tells the rest of the theater how to act, for the first cue, there's just one that tells the theater to turn the lights down, the second cue is two cues, that tells the camera the change from flat to a scope lens for movies that are in widescreen, this will change the aspect ratio of the film, and the third cue is three cues, that tells the projector to shut down at the end of the film, that's why these are at the end, after that, you do four cues, and that changes the lens back to flat, cause all movies start in flat, cause all the rolling stock is in flat," Paulson said.
Multiplex theaters, such as ours, have all of their projectors in one long room, so it makes it easy if you need to switch a movie to a different theater, all you need to do get someone to help you carry a platter like 20 feet, said Feller.
Here we have 16 projectors, one for each house, and we have a variety of different seating and sound arrangements for each house as well. Some have flat seating -- which fit more people -- others have stadium seating, some have Dolby Digital sound and some have DTS (two sound standards) Paulson said.
Sound, whether it is dialog that helps move the plot, sound effects for explosions, or ambient noise and music that help set the atmosphere of a scene, is crucial to the film presentation process.
"Surround sound first appeared in Disney's fantasia, in 1941, and caught on very quickly after that," stated Hawk.
The first commercial use of digital sound came with the release of Jurassic Park into theaters with a system call DTS. DTS is name after the company that patented the digital sound process, Digital Theater Systems.
The system is a modern version of the original way sound was played with films. They used to record the audio for a movie onto records, and play the record along with the film using a band connected to the projector to keep the record in sync.
"DTS uses a special optical time code printed on the right side of the film. Basically it's just a series of dot sand dashes along the side of each frame between the image and the analog soundtracks," said Paulson.
There is an optical reader mounted on the top of a projector that reads the time signatures from the film, and sends the corresponding data to a DTS processor, which then accesses cd-roms that contain the correlating sounds for a particular time in the film, Paulson continued.
Movie soundtracks in DTS consist of six tracks: right, left, center, left surround right surround and subwoofer audio tracks, and each of these tracks are compressed on to one or two CDs, Hawk Said. One CD can hold about two hours worth of audio in DTS format.
The most popular form of digital sound in movie theaters however, is Dolby Digital. This comes in three forms, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Audio Coding Design 3 (AC-3) and Dolby Spectral Recording Digital (SR-D).
"Dolby Digital uses the space between the sprocket holes to encode sound information onto the film. Most projectors these days have Dolby Digital information readers built in, so you don't have to worry about add-ons," Paulson said.
All forms of Dolby Digital use an optical reader that scans the film as it passed through, and sends the information to a Dolby Digital, Digital Sound Processing unit, that translates the scanned information into sound, Paulson said. Dolby uses the same number of separated tracks as DTS.
"People don't realize how much sound in a film matters until they sit in our theater," said Hawk. "We have one of the best, if not 'the' best, theater sound system in Illinois, with the exception of possibly Chicago. The sound system that we have has won awards," Hawk said.
The HPS-4000 is a custom built sound system by John Allen, a professional sound designer who currently does sound for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
"Once we agreed to install the sound system, John Allen himself comes here, and balances all the levels specifically, so that it doesn't matter where you sit -- you can sit right here dead center of the front row, you can sit right underneath any speaker -- and it's going to sound exactly the same no matter where you sit," Hawk said
"The very first week we were open, we had Chicago running, all week long for free, and we had people coming back, sitting in different spaces just to prove us wrong," he said.
The customized system at Boardman's Art Theatre consists of 10 SR-70 4-way (woofer, sub-midrange, midrange and tweeter) surround sound speakers, two 545 watt subwoofers, and three 545 watt stack screen speakers.
The system produces a sound that is near unbelievable, in intense scenes when the bass kicks; everything shakes, including the theater. Vibrations seep through every part of your body with every rumble, shot or explosion, and the clarity of the sound is at the very least impressive.
The HPS-4000 is an example of the power of digital surround sound at its very core. Its purpose is to put you in a specific moment and give you a specific experience in combination with the visual aspects of a film.
In addition to the projector and the sound, the seating arrangements and the screen play important roles in providing a complete experience at the theaters.
"Most movie screens are made out of a rubbery sort of matte white material, and are designed to present a great picture. And while it looks completely solid from far away, the screen is actually perforated with holes so that sound can come through the screen more effectively -- since the front right, left and center speakers always sit behind the screen." said Burneve.
Pearlescent or Silver screens are the most common screens a movie goer is likely to see. They create the best overall contrast and color for a projected image.
The seating arrangements in movie theaters in most theaters has been developed to provide the viewer with comfort, but also to help maintain viewabilitly and attentiveness. Most theaters have built in cup holders, moveable arm rests, thick chair padding, and stadium or slanted seating for just that reason, McFarlane said.
"People most definitely prefer stadium seating to flat seating, the only thing about it is, it fits fewer seats. If we took [our larger movie houses] to stadium seating, we'd probably have to drop [the number of seats] down to like 250, and that would leave 70 people that don't get to see the movie," Paulson said.
"For the best experience, people are always asking me where the best place to sit is. And if it's a standard multiplex theater, the best place to sit is always the same: 2/3 from the front of the theater, and two or three seats off the center of the row," Paulson said.
The reasoning behind this is, that visual and sound technicians, when calibrating the equipment always balance the audio and visual equipment from dead center 2/3 of the way back, giving the most equal balance of sound and video. By sitting two or three seats of the center, the effect of the surround sound stereo is much greater because it throws the balance of the stereo off, giving it a greater effect because the sound cancels itself less, so you notice it more, and gives you a greater feeling, Paulson finished.