But here's the delemma: this was a VistaVision picture, correct? even though it wasn't Paramount but MGM. So that should mean that the 35mm standard print would be a hard-matted to 1.85, correct? Well, this print was a full frame, Academy aperture. So how do they get a 1.37 Academy image from a VistaVision original negative? Are they cropping the sides? And if that is the case, then I should have run it in 1.37, otherwise I would be cropping a portion of the original image, top and bottom resulting in not only loosing what was cropped from the width but cropping the top/bottom as well -- talk about looking through a keyhole! What am I missing here? Why would they print this as a 1.37 Academy frame? I ran it in 1.66 and it looked OK, but at times the heads were being shaved by the top of the frame. Then there was one scene where Cary Grant and two other guys are sitting in the back seat of a car and both guys on either side of him were only half visible the frame edge cutting them right in half; I can't believe the shot was purposely composed that way. Seems to me all three would have been fully visible in the VV version.

We lost power to the booth during the show. A breaker tripped either because of the humidity or the heat or both, or it was just faulty --it certainly wasn't because of anything in the booth -- it is a 20A circuit feeds only a powerstrip with a 15a breaker in it and the 15A didn't trip. I though I was going to loose the bulb because naturally the fan stopped also. But they had a guy sitting right by the breaker and he threw it within a minute; the lamp's auto-strike lit it as soon as the power came back on. I had a stage hand sit next to the breaker box for the rest of the show. It tripped a second time, but he had it back on in 10 seconds. This makes me think it might be wise to put an aux fan in the lamphouse smokestack powered by a separate circuit so that if the lamphouse breaker trips, the bulb will still get air-flow.

The Brooklyn audience was very good about it (they can be very vocal if they choose). No cat-calls or whistling, even though the second break was in the last reel's fairly suspenseful part. I must say, just another reason why the park is a great venue to work.

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BTW, the only two plastic split reels among the bent metal shipping reels in NBN, *both* arrived in pieces.

The Vista Vision print you have is made to show in 1:66. Look closely at the first 15 seconds of each reel. In the upper right corner you will see a funny F icon. This is the FRAMING CUE which was printed there to assist the projectionist in framing the image properly.

If you show these in 1:37 you will probably see some microphones.

Look at the print of VERTIGO and see what Alfred did during each changeover. I covered the port window except for the very right top corner. Two can play at that game.

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I have a diagram somewhere. Let me see if I can dig it up.

Ahh.... Here is is: I put in in my public_html directory for y'all:
VistaVision Diagram GIF Image

Note: This image is rather large in size (1536x1322), but is only 56KB in size, since it's only 2-color. Also, I don't know where I got the image. If anyone recognizes it, let me know where it came from.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

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I'm getting senile! Time scale from mid 'fifties for heyday of VV including the two films mentioned which I screened about 1956.