Random videos

[Ryan Gallagher]

It's probably been posted here before, but there is a relatively internet famous railroad overpass in North Carolina simply called "11ft 8", made famous first in blog form and then via it's youtube archive of every crash. It lacks the catchy slapstick music though. ;-)

in 2020 they finally raised it, the railroad was being pretty stubborn about it, but only 8inches, so it's now the "11ft 8 + 8" bridge, and still catches drivers unaware, but less dramatically so.

https://www.youtube.com/@11foot8plus8/videos

[Frank Cox]

So the idea is that buses are allowed to drive through but no other vehicles?

I hope they have good signage stating that. I would be really annoyed if that happened to me and there wasn't a whole lot of warning ahead of time.

[Leo Enticknap]

Continuing on the vehicular theme...

The song is called Tijuana Taxi, but, somewhat ironically, the footage was shot in the rather less exotic location of Manchester, England.

[Frank Cox]

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

..........

These two are very original. I've enjoyed their videos on Facebook. I just hope they don't have a crash!!

[Martin McCaffery]

Tom Waits would kill to have those in the studio

[Frank Cox]

..........

[Frank Cox]

duplicate, please delete

[Ryan Gallagher]

Ryan, selsyn motors used for cinerama will lock to each other with considerable torque, so much so that if one projector jammed to a very abrupt halt, the others and the dubber would do the same. They will track precisely during ramp up and ramp down as well. The audio reel will still stay locked perfectly to at least one of the picture prints.

I got to go to a post house in the old days of mag dubbers and high speed rock and roll 35mm projectors. (Had to repair a dubber with a burned out servo drive module). They were working on a final mix for a shot, with 28 mag sound elements. The shot was around 45 seconds long. They could stop and reveres that shot back to the pop frame in under 3 seconds, will all the dubbers following to the sprocket hole. The noise of that many dubbers (They had 40 they could use at one time) had my ears ringing.

As for the visual references to fix a sync'd multi print setup, there are edge numbers found at regular intervals on each print (minimum every 2 feet, usually every foot or sometimes less) that you'd match up to get things back in line.

Now if the mag track broke or you lost all three prints good luck. I don't recall ever seeing reference numbers on mag tracks...most of the time you'd have to start over at the opening sync marks. (Or the beginning of a reel, IF the mag track wasn't recorded as separate reels.) And to repair mag tracks missing footage, it was back to the bench with a ganged synchronizer with sound head, and sometimes blank mag material to splice in missing frames (for single pic/track reels, though most common was black frames in the picture roll) OR you'd splice in black frames to each print in the exact same spot for multi-pic films.

Thanks for the extra insight. Yeah I guess if your motors couldn't keep sync during ramp up (let alone ramp down), then the whole exercise would have been pointless to begin with. I was thinking more along the lines of maintaining a speed sync, not so much a turn for turn synchronization, which was in fact what is needed.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

That was a pretty nice technical overview, I've only got rudimentary familiarity with Cinerama setup, definitely learned some things. For one now I want a historical or custom breakdown "reel" we can play on our DCI system. ;-) I'll have to count my blessings how easy it is to recover from breaks on a two projector changeover non-audio-dubbed system.

That is one thing they didn't explain in the recovery, they mentioned using frame pictures to find/align a restart point, but how does one find the sync point for the audio reel for the recovery? Edge code frame numbers?

Edit, oh wait... presumably two projectors did not fail, so you just try to image sync back to those two and presumably the audio position is still synced? (though maybe not if motors don't ramp down the same). And if the reference frames are not helpful for visually syncing you have to skip ahead to something that is?

Ryan, selsyn motors used for cinerama will lock to each other with considerable torque, so much so that if one projector jammed to a very abrupt halt, the others and the dubber would do the same. They will track precisely during ramp up and ramp down as well. The audio reel will still stay locked perfectly to at least one of the picture prints.

I got to go to a post house in the old days of mag dubbers and high speed rock and roll 35mm projectors. (Had to repair a dubber with a burned out servo drive module). They were working on a final mix for a shot, with 28 mag sound elements. The shot was around 45 seconds long. They could stop and reveres that shot back to the pop frame in under 3 seconds, will all the dubbers following to the sprocket hole. The noise of that many dubbers (They had 40 they could use at one time) had my ears ringing.

As for the visual references to fix a sync'd multi print setup, there are edge numbers found at regular intervals on each print (minimum every 2 feet, usually every foot or sometimes less) that you'd match up to get things back in line.

Now if the mag track broke or you lost all three prints good luck. I don't recall ever seeing reference numbers on mag tracks...most of the time you'd have to start over at the opening sync marks. (Or the beginning of a reel, IF the mag track wasn't recorded as separate reels.) And to repair mag tracks missing footage, it was back to the bench with a ganged synchronizer with sound head, and sometimes blank mag material to splice in missing frames (for single pic/track reels, though most common was black frames in the picture roll) OR you'd splice in black frames to each print in the exact same spot for multi-pic films.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Here's a cool look at a Cinerama Cinema in the UK:

That was a pretty nice technical overview, I've only got rudimentary familiarity with Cinerama setup, definitely learned some things. For one now I want a historical or custom breakdown "reel" we can play on our DCI system. ;-) I'll have to count my blessings how easy it is to recover from breaks on a two projector changeover non-audio-dubbed system.

That is one thing they didn't explain in the recovery, they mentioned using frame pictures to find/align a restart point, but how does one find the sync point for the audio reel for the recovery? Edge code frame numbers?

Edit, oh wait... presumably two projectors did not fail, so you just try to image sync back to those two and presumably the audio position is still synced? (though maybe not if motors don't ramp down the same). And if the reference frames are not helpful for visually syncing you have to skip ahead to something that is?

[Ed Gordon]

It was interesting to see how the Bradford cinema has adapted the Cinerama process to use the platter system to exhibit Cinerama films. I don't think this was ever done for the Seattle Cinerama. I was wondering when the last new print of a Cinerama feature was made. This lead me to a page, "https://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/kimblepage8.htm" which states:

This fall, it happened at last. Made at the order of Michael Forman, head of Pacific Theaters, a new print of This Is Cinerama, struck from the original negative by Crest Lab, was shown on September 30th , the 50th anniversary of the original premier in New York.

Unfortunately, there is no date on the article.

Now that the Seattle Cinerama has been saved (again!), we will have the chance to see Cinerama again in the US.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Here's a cool look at a Cinerama Cinema in the UK:

[Ryan Gallagher]

Makes for some slippery thieves!

[Frank Cox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gryiWwIW6kY

Due to Canada's dairy cartel, prices for milk, ice cream, butter and the like are far above their actual market value, so I can understand why butter would be an attractive target for thieves.

I put real butter on the popcorn in my theatre and the current price for that butter is about $8 per pound, though I watch for sales and can occasionally get it for as low as $5.49. That's when I buy a bunch and freeze it.

I know that topping oil would be an order of magnitude cheaper than butter, but I don't want to do it that way.

When I opened my theatre I was paying about $1.00 per pound for the same butter that I'm buying today for $8.