John Stewart returned to the Paramount!

[Ryan Gallagher]

I meant to share this sooner but...

John Stewart, our former long time 35/70mm projectionist, with the help of staff here, managed to arrange a field trip from his hospice care facility to come catch a summer screening of "Empire Strikes Back" for it's 45th anniversary last week!!! John left our booth after a stroke in 2018. John was also active here on the FT forums back in the day, and most of our photos in the albums were provided by him. While he was able, he was an avid photographer and visitor of cinemas, drive-ins, and booths both operating and abandoned. His Flickr photo stream is still testimony to those adventures and you may find many of yourselves depicted in his photos.

John's Photography Albums on Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12335678@N00/albums/

Right now John holds the only active "life-time film pass" for admittance, I hope he makes some more field trips... if his hospice care-givers get to see an amazing movie I'm sure they won't mind! Ahead of the screening Stephen Jannise, our film programmer, said a few words in appreciation for John on behalf of everyone, ahead of his usual introductory comments before most films with this slide behind him.

JohnStewart-slide-2048x858.jpg

He showed up 30 minutes before doors and although wheelchair bound, got to visit with all staff present that day. Unfortunately carrying him up 6 flights of stairs to the booth was not in the cards this time, but I've been meaning to cut together a booth tour video so he can see how little has changed, rows of film cans waiting to be screened etc. Maybe next time he visits he can critique our film preservation presentation efforts.

Once I became aware Stephen was going to thank him on stage, and marketing was putting together a slide. I figured now was the time. Us projectionists don't get many opportunities to recognize our fellows and seniors, while they are still around to appreciate it, so on a day off I learned enough After Effects to put something together for our friend John and the 1200 strong sold out crowd sitting with him. It is pretty obvious what to make. Stephen pitched to it mid introduction as "something the projectionists wanted you to see"... (Hint, full screen it or the starfield nuance will get interpolated into oblivion).

(unlisted YT video, will probably swap it with a no-audio version soon)

Aaron Tucker was in my booth yesterday for a Netflix premiere, his father George Tucker was our former regional 35/70mm film tech, Aaron got to see it after the fact on our booth laptop and immediately wanted to show his dad, who knew John well, so I figured you all would get a kick out of it too, after all, it does thank everyone here too in a way.

Thank you John Stewart.

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Separately, it is really starting to feel like our film series is firing on all cylinders, for example marketing is now able and very willing, after a little coaching, to make slides that are tuned to the feature aspect ratio (or designed to be multi-aspect ratio friendly). Example:

FilmSeries-week1-_2048 x 858.jpg

That and this is the 3rd year in a row we are putting out sizzle bumpers that precede the intro/films, our 50th anniversary started that trend, and it's stuck around! Here is our May/June sizzle for your enjoyment, and I'm glad this incarnation of production value is the one John Stewart got to witness!

Even Robert Rodriguez has dressed up his curated and hosted double features for his sub-series with a hand cut trailer bumpers for his other installments, minus spoilers, and with a bit of grindhouse flare.

John's only disappointment will likely be that he didn't see the main curtain open to reveal the start of the film, or close as the credits conclude. Our pre-film on screen loop and intro programming doesn't really present a convenient opportunity to close and re-open it, even if the control box wasn't mid-repair when he came for his visit. :-(

[Aaron Tucker]

Richard loved it! It’s moved a lot of fellow projectionists who have also seen it on Instagram. It’s been a pleasure working with Walter, John Stewart, you and the rest of the crew at Paramount. Made me feel a lot of pride we still have such a great venue going strong in Austin!

[Ryan Gallagher]

Richard loved it! It’s moved a lot of fellow projectionists who have also seen it on Instagram. It’s been a pleasure working with Walter, John Stewart, you and the rest of the crew at Paramount. Made me feel a lot of pride we still have such a great venue going strong in Austin!

Heya again Aaron! Glad to hear Richard got a kick out of that. It's funny, my first draft of the crawl leaned in a lot harder on the analogy of Digital being the "dark side", booths being "hidden bases" etc, but I was convinced to tone it down a bit by my programmer since Digital is still 90% of what we book. lol. I'm just glad they were all on board once they saw it, I made it without pitching it, the draft render was the pitch. ;-)

If you have Instagram, a few photos of John made it to the Paramount feed:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DKQLImCp3p1/?img_index=3

[Leo Enticknap]

This is wonderful to read. I met John on a visit to Austin in, I would guess, 2005 or '06, and was very sorry to read about his health issues from Ryan.

The curtain issue seems to be the same the world over. In one of my first movie theater jobs in the early '90s, we used curtains as part of the presentation. Then, one day, three Kodak Carousel slide projectors were delivered, one for each auditorium, and thereafter were used to project static local ads during walkins. The curtains never moved again (at least, not for as long as I worked there), and the ultra low budget and cheesy local 35mm ads that were a local institution became a thing of the past, too ("Ahmed's Tandoori - guaranteed no lumps of fat or gristle in our curry!" announced by the owner himself, standing in the entrance to his restaurant, is one that sticks in my mind).

[Ryan Gallagher]

This is wonderful to read. I met John on a visit to Austin in, I would guess, 2005 or '06, and was very sorry to read about his health issues from Ryan.

The curtain issue seems to be the same the world over. In one of my first movie theater jobs in the early '90s, we used curtains as part of the presentation. Then, one day, three Kodak Carousel slide projectors were delivered, one for each auditorium, and thereafter were used to project static local ads during walkins. The curtains never moved again (at least, not for as long as I worked there), and the ultra low budget and cheesy local 35mm ads that were a local institution became a thing of the past, too ("Ahmed's Tandoori - guaranteed no lumps of fat or gristle in our curry!" announced by the owner himself, standing in the entrance to his restaurant, is one that sticks in my mind).

The controller being busted was unrelated to the venues desire or need to use it. Just bad timing, the new controller box had a temperamental contactor module and some physical access hurdles were encountered in replacing it, and the final repair kept having to be pushed back for parts or schedule reasons. Hopeful to have it working by Space Odyssey, at full speed. (at time of writing it is working again, but has a slow section during the close sequence that needs further investigation and access again).

That and yes, we do run walkin loops and have preroll now, something we rarely did in John's era. Granted it's all very tasteful, just static slides promoting upcoming shows, and a topic relevant sizzle reel that acts as a trailer for the film season. I'm fortunate there are no ads, just occasionally a sponsors card done relatively tastefully. Ours became a norm for the year or more where we had no main curtain option, and it was preferable to showing an empty screen. The covid re-opening period also meant a lot of pre-recorded video intros from our programmer.

I've talked about it before, but our curtain situation is a mixed bag, at least for roadshow films with overtures and intermissions I fully intend to use it. But being a live theatre primarily, it's not an acoustically transparent cinema type curtain, it's a main freakin rag (a two layer one now at that, after the dry-rotted old one was replaced when a taping using the venue managed to tear it). I expect the old one passed some high frequencies a bit better, cause I tried to use the new one as background to a live intro a few times and it certainly wasn't ideal with just the L,R,C options for the intro vocals. I remember the old rag well, just was not in this role back then so don't have a comparison point acoustically.

Short of crewing our Audio Dept and turning on the Live PA, right now our best film option if we want to use the curtain is maybe to reroute the stereo walkin music to more directly involve surrounds, but a live person on stage is another story, as are overtures and entr'acte music. Once I get around to making those adjustments I might experiment more with curtain placement on the front side of films again. Maybe there is some work within a custom EQ that can be done to get L,R,C passable for a vocal mic even with a curtain in the way.

Best IMHO would be slide loop for 55min of doors, then curtain closes for 5 min before film (or intro speech then film). The loser might be our sizzle bumper (which is too bad cause they are doing a really good job with these). I'd rather open directly to the film and not a trailer or bumper. The only way to keep it involved would be to play it a couple times within the doors sequence, but that feels a bit close to audience abuse in my mind. Maybe another option would be to play it right before closing the curtain, but that would feel extra weird if there is no live intro or we are not at start time yet. I feel like the curtain needs to close for a "reason" too, if there is no live intro, closing after walkin just for the sake of starting a film with it closed feels a bit forced.

I've also toyed with opening it to an animated reveal of our series card (matching the curtain timing), but that fun idea is kinda waiting on the ability to fire the curtain from automation. I would feel more comfortable letting the sizzle follow that, and then the film, because of the showmanship being covered in other ways.

The showman in me, given shortcomings of a few of our control systems for "roadshows", lighting included, wants to ask them to bring in the full house crew for the one or two films a year that warrant the full effort. But they've always gotten away with something slightly less than ideal for those, so adding crew is tough ask to get any traction with.

Apologies for long post, but sometimes typing out our situation gives me other thoughts and directions to consider. Another showmanship obstacle is that it is somewhat awkward for a human to enter from the wings with it closed. Done "proper" you'd have a stage person available to "page" the center of the main for the entrance and exit. But again, skeleton staff for film events! Our current film programmer can certainly manage the offstage entrance, but an elder person, or when he has other guests less familiar, might not fare so well.

I'm also mindful of not spawning a billion variations of show flow based on all the variables... because sometimes someone other than myself has to operate a show too. Even if we do implement all these other possibilities, there needs to remain a "simple" version one can default to.