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Author Topic: Cinespia Cemetery screenings Todd McCracken Master Film Handler Posts: 263 From: Northridge, CA, USA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 07-14-2008 12:31 PM                    Cinespira is doing cemetery screenings this summer Just went and saw Valley Girl last night with 2000 people or so. Man is it allot of fun, its held in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Bring your own food and beverages of your choice (alcohol is permitted) Next weekend they will have Clockwork Orange on Sat. and Get Carter on Sunday. Really fun scene, they show the movies on the side of one of the Mausoleums  |  IP: Logged Andy Frodsham Expert Film Handler Posts: 238 From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK Registered: Nov 2006 posted 07-14-2008 01:38 PM                     Wow, what a venue! Is this serious? I'd have though 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' and 'Dawn of the Dead' would have been appropriate titles!  |  IP: Logged Todd McCracken Master Film Handler Posts: 263 From: Northridge, CA, USA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 07-14-2008 01:46 PM                    Yup, quite serious. Here is some video footage.  |  IP: Logged Andy Frodsham Expert Film Handler Posts: 238 From: Stoke on Trent, Staffs, UK Registered: Nov 2006 posted 07-19-2008 01:10 PM                     I'm actually very envious Todd! Envious of any country that has the kind of weather where you can screen films outside and not risk being washed-away! All the other UK members of this site will know what I mean by this statement! We (certainly in the Midlands) are presently experiencing one of the most miserable summers I can recall. I really wish I was sitting, glass in hand, in that cemetery!  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-19-2008 02:23 PM                        This will be our 30th year of an outdoor summer festival in Brooklyn's Prospect Park -- 6 years of adding film to the roster of live events. We get between 4000 to 7000 people (we don't let them bring in food either -- we have very good quality food in three concession stands -- beer too. I've only had one show stopped for the rain -- DRACULA with Philip Glass ensemble playing live. We had to stop when it started to rain in earnest but thinking we could wait it out. Backstage we always have the weather map tracking the storms live. The producers are always watching were storms are threatening. We could see that that this particular storm would be passed in only about 20 minutes, but during that time the wind was blowing so hard that the rain was coming down sideways and infiltrating the booth (a three story scaffold tower with "skins" for covering). Seemed like the crowd was willing to sit there UNTIL the lighting bolts started hitting -- the map started to show something like 30 strikes a minute. Then one hit just across the hill and knocked down a tree which crushed a car in the parking lot. Then they started to run. Just two days before two young people were killed in Central Park by lightening and I guess that was fresh in the mindes of the audience. A hit so near by did it for them. It really got pretty scary -- the crowd, I mean. With that many people, panic is a very dangerous thing. There was a lot of pushing and shoving and we have lots of kids in our audience. The producer was on the system telling everyone to leave orderly without pushing. Me and some of the crew scrambled to cover the equipment, but it soon became evident a metal tower that was the highest point in an open field, probably wasn't the best place to be when lighting was striking! We were off there lickity-split. Two other times we had a slight drizzle but we just kept the show running; the audience, much to my amazement, came prepaired -- they pulled raincoat parkers and even opened umbrellas and sat there thru the drizzle to watch WEST SIDE STORY. So yah, Andy, we in the USA we are not immune to getting rained out. And our rain is allot less predictable than the way it rains in the UK.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-19-2008 02:23 PM                        'Nosferatu' would be a good one, as would virtually any of the cacky Universal horrors of the early '30s or Hammers of the '60s...  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-19-2008 03:24 PM                  About 6 years ago, I stumbled across the Cinespia at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery when I was picking a location for the final resting place of my body. I'm sure my soul will be sent to a MUCH warmer place... Since the cemetery "BUTTS" up against Paramount Picture Studios, I thought it appropriate that I requested to be buried with my ass facing south...ummmm, towards Paramount mooning them. HA! Anyway, I have seen many great/classic films at Cinespia and it's a trip to eat din-din with the dead 6ft below ya ...YIKES!  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 07-19-2008 03:40 PM                        We pretty much have the same thing here in Hawaii but not in a cemetery but at a beach. Most of the shows are at world famous Wakikiki Beach and other times at various locations around Oahu. The films that are shown are pretty much recent movies that have become available on DVD. There are times when special films are shown such as the first episode of LOST before it is aired on national television. Most of the stars of the show are there and there is always a huge turn out. All of the "Sunset at The Beach" showings are free and people can bring their own food and drinks but can also buy them from various vendors. Movies are projected from video source and the picture is always a pan and scan version and are never shown in their original aspect ratio. The sound is mono. Because all of the movies are presented this way, I have never bothered to go to the showings. How are the cemetery films shown? Is it from 35mm / 16mm film or video, Todd? If it is video, is it in the original ratio or in the cropped version like it is here in Hawaii? -Claude  |  IP: Logged Todd McCracken Master Film Handler Posts: 263 From: Northridge, CA, USA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 07-20-2008 02:16 AM                    Claude, They show them via video projector usually in original aspect. All in all its not too shabby. Ill let you know what they show Get Cater in tomorrow, Ill take my camera to give you a better Idea [ 07-20-2008, 03:47 AM: Message edited by: Todd McCracken ]  |  IP: Logged Mike Heenan Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1896 From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-20-2008 10:01 AM                     I went to the outdoor screenings at Waikiki and it was pretty fun. They were showing Whale Rider, and I ended up taking a nap most of the time, couldn't get into that film, but the whole experience is p;retty cool with the preshow and the vendors and laying on the beach etc. They did show Whale Rider letterboxed as you can see from my pic, I'm sure the sound was mono, but I dont think people go to these screenings care much about presentation.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-20-2008 02:06 PM                        quote: Mike Heenan I dont think people go to these screenings care much about presentation. Yah, it's pretty much a picnic for most people, but then again, it depends on what you are showing. When we showed WEST SIDE STORY there were quite a few inquiries in the week before the show if were were running it in stereo -- not a huge percentage, mind you -- but still..... Our audience last night seemed more excited that we added corn on the cob and cold gaspatcho to the menu at the concessions than they were that we were running video instead of film. It was ENTER THE DRAGON, so they pretty much were there for laughs anyway. We didn't break any records -- something like 3500, and all of us hoping they would heed our preshow admonition to drop the cobs in the trash. It worked out pretty well -- seems like both the menu and the video will be permanent.  |  IP: Logged Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 07-20-2008 06:43 PM                        Yes, Mike, I can see the showing of Whale Rider" at the beach in Waikiki was letterboxed but I was told that many movies there are not because an effort is always made to get a full screen video version to fill the entire 1;33.1 ratio screen they have. I have seen the screen at the site many times and I would think the letterboxed picture would be too small for the large audience that turn out for the showings. -Claude  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 07-21-2008 12:52 AM                     What happened to running film, Frank? Did you show it on BluRay (or better)? --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-21-2008 03:32 AM                        We still run film; the Barcos were purchased because this venue does a lot of esoteric stuff from independent filmmakers (videomakers, to be more precise) and we needed to have the flexibility. We will still run film for everything that we can get on film. They had to do ENTER THE DRAGON with this particular event because it was a commissioned score and live accompaniment. I wasn't directly involved with this event because it was more about the commissioned work. I am assuming that it had to be on video because they had to make a version that was dialog and effects elements only, sans the original music track. The musicians played their score live with the film and the video only had the dialog and effects only. All I can say is, it was a terribly botched job. Whoever "authored" the DVD did so without knowing what they were doing. We got a DVD that was both letterboxed and pillared, i.e., there was black on the side of the image as well as top and bottom with a small image sitting in the center of the raster, black all around it. The image had to be enlarged so it would fill the 55ft wide screen top to bottom. Even with loosing all that light from the black areas without image, the Barcos produced a passable amount of light -- probably in the 10-12ftL range -- I've seen DIs with a darker image. My guess is that with a proper video source such as blue-ray, video might it will look quite good. This halfbaked DVD image that was handed to us had so much video garbage -- shimmer on all horizontal lines, pixals clearly visible, and add to that, it seemed to be time-compressed -- any horizontal movement created this stuttering effect, making it look like frames were being dropped; if I suffered from epilepsy, I would be on the floor in convulsions -- I can't watch that artifact....it makes me crazy. One of the technicians asked me how I thought it looked -- I answered, if it were 35mm film, I would be frantically trying to focus the projector....and that's from our 110ft distance from the screen. I feel sorry for the audience who sat closer than our control tower, but at least the first rows don't start for about 30 ft. from the screen; and there is an equal number of people sitting behind our booth, so they are quite a distance. It would look really good if they were sitting in Staten Island. In short, it was very hard to assess the quality of the Barcos without a decent hi-rez source. I will try to get a blu-ray DVD and player over there next week so after our screening of POWAQQZTSI (35mm), I'll be able to feed a high quality video source to the stacked Barco R6+'s and see what they can really can do.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-21-2008 06:11 AM                        DVD?!?! They did a screening for 3500 on DVD?!?! I bet that it was a DVD-R, too. That's scary. I hope that they at least had two copies of the disk and two players in case something went wrong with one of them. Personally, I wouldn't trust Blu-Ray any more than I (don't) trust DVD for public exhibition.  |  IP: Logged

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