88-465: Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, subtending 146-degrees of arc. The trademarked process was marketed by the Cinerama corporation. It was the first of several novel processes introduced during the 1950s when the movie industry was reacting to competition from television. Cinerama
176-407: A 16:10 aspect ratio (e.g. 1920×1200), but nowadays they are 16:9 (e.g. 1920×1080, 2560×1440, 3840×2160). Widescreen was first used for The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897). This was not only the longest film that had been released to date at 100 minutes, but also the first widescreen film being shot on 63 mm Eastman stock with five perforations per frame. Widescreen was first widely used in
264-833: A 16:9 aspect ratio, allowing them to display a 16:9 picture without letterboxing . Japan saw its first commercially available widescreen TV models in 1992 and TV networks began broadcasting in EDTV widescreen in 1995, starting with NTV . The first widescreen TV sold in the United States was the Thomson Consumer Electronics RCA CinemaScreen, released in 1993. In Europe, the PAL and the French SECAM Standard Definition systems employed higher resolutions than
352-578: A 2:1 aspect ratio . In 1926, a Natural Vision film of Niagara Falls was released. In 1927, the Natural Vision process was used in the production of The American a.k.a. The Flag Maker . It was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and starred Bessie Love and Charles Ray , but was never released theatrically. On May 26, 1929, Fox Film Corporation released Fox Grandeur News and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 in New York City in
440-863: A Harkins theater, then closed in 1989 to make way for the Scottsdale Galleria. Venues outside the United States included the Regent Plaza cinema in Melbourne, Australia, which was adapted for Cinerama in 1960 to show This Is Cinerama and Seven Wonders of the World . The Imperial Theatre in Montreal and the Glendale in Toronto were the Canadian homes for Cinerama. A Cinerama temporary venue
528-402: A bit of improvisation on the part of the film producers. It was not possible to film any scene where any part of the scene was close to the camera, as the fields of view no longer met exactly. Further, any close-up material had a noticeable bend in it at the joins. It was also difficult to film actors talking to each other where both were in shot, because when they looked at each other when filmed,
616-415: A black slug exactly equal to the missing footage. Otherwise, the corresponding frames would have had to be cut from the other three films (the other two picture films plus the soundtrack film) in order to preserve synchronization. The use of zoom lenses was impossible since the three images would no longer match. Perhaps the greatest limitation of the process is that the picture looks natural only from within
704-507: A broadcast as a 16:9 image letterboxed to 4:3, with a small amount of color noise in the black bars; this "noise" is actually the additional lines which are hidden inside the color signal. Clear-Vision supports an equivalent widescreen system for NTSC analogue broadcasting. Despite the existence of PALplus and support for widescreen in the DVB -based digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasts in use across Europe, only Belgium , Ireland ,
792-623: A ceiling which routed air and heating through small vent slots to inhibit noise from the building's ventilation equipment. It was demolished in 1994 to make way for a Barnes & Noble . The second, also called the Cooper Theater, was built in St. Louis Park at 5755 Wayzata Boulevard. The last film presented there was Dances with Wolves in January 1991. At that time the Cooper was considered
880-457: A few days after the system premiered, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: Somewhat the same sensations that the audience in Koster and Bial's Music Hall must have felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen were probably felt by the people who witnessed the first public showing of Cinerama the other night...the shrill screams of the ladies and
968-474: A limited number of blockbuster films. Paramount's VistaVision was a larger gauge precursor to 70 mm film. Introduced in 1954, it ran standard 35 mm film through the camera horizontally to achieve a widescreen effect using greater negative area, in order to create a finer-grained four-perforation 35 mm prints in an era where standard monopack stock could not produce finer results. Negative frames were eight perforations wide. Eight-perf photography
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#17327726132861056-513: A non-anamorphic widescreen process developed by Paramount Pictures and Technicolor which could be adjusted to present various flat aspect ratios. Masked (or flat ) widescreen was introduced in April 1953. The negative is shot exposing the Academy ratio using spherical lenses, but the top and bottom of the picture are hidden or masked off by a metal aperture plate, cut to specifications of
1144-506: A rather limited "sweet spot." Viewed from outside the sweet spot, the picture can look distorted. Furthermore, while the screen was a continuous curve, the projected image itself was a polygonal triptych , which often resulted in the combined image appearing bent or creased. Finally, any mis-alignment of the two intersections of the three films was quite noticeable which prompted the use of a vertical element at these intersections (tree, lamp pole, etc) to hide this flaw. The system also required
1232-646: A set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than 4:3 (1.33:1). For TV, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was in 4:3 (1.33:1). Largely between the 1990s and early 2000s, at varying paces in different countries, 16:9 (e.g. 1920×1080p 60p) widescreen displays came into increasingly common use by high definitions . With computer displays, aspect ratios other than 4:3 (e.g. 1920×1440) are also referred to as "widescreen". Widescreen computer displays were previously made in
1320-541: A system using a single camera and 70mm (~2.75 inch) prints. The latter system lost the 146-degree field of view of the original three-strip system, and its resolution was markedly lower. Three-strip Cinerama did not use anamorphic lenses , although two of the systems used to produce the 70mm prints ( Ultra Panavision 70 and Super Technirama 70) did employ anamorphic lenses, 35mm (~1.38 in) anamorphic reduction prints were produced for exhibition in theatres with anamorphic CinemaScope -compatible projection lenses. Cinerama
1408-488: A unique look. Super gauges – The full negative frame, including the area traditionally reserved for the sound track, is filmed using "full" aperture, which was standard for silent, but also common for most anamorphic negatives. The print is then shrunk and/or cropped in order to fit it back onto release prints, which include a sound track. The aspect ratio for Super 35 , for example, can be set to virtually any projection standard. Large gauge – A 70 mm film frame
1496-401: A vertical Venetian blind , to prevent light projected to each end of the screen from reflecting to the opposite end and washing out the image. This was a big-ticket, reserved-seats spectacle, and the Cinerama projectors were adjusted carefully and operated skillfully. To prevent adjacent images from creating an over-illuminated vertical band where they overlapped on the screen, vibrating combs in
1584-457: Is frankly and exclusively "sensational," in the literal sense of that word. While observing that the system "may be hailed as providing a new and valid entertainment thrill," Crowther expressed some skeptical reserve, saying "the very size and sweep of the Cinerama screen would seem to render it impractical for the story-telling techniques now employed in film...It is hard to see how Cinerama can be employed for intimacy. But artists found ways to use
1672-541: Is not clear why the name is used unless the nonlinear stretch alludes to a curved screen. (Ironically, some widescreen cinema processes—not Cinerama—displayed a fault known as "anamorphic mumps," which consisted of a lateral stretch of objects closer to the camera). In the U.S., RCA does not appear to have registered the word Cinerama as a trademark; conversely, a number of trademarks on Cinerama, e.g. SN 74270575, are still "live" and held by Cinerama, Inc. Widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within
1760-738: Is not only twice as wide as a standard frame but also has greater height (five perfs versus four perfs). Shooting and projecting a film in 70 mm therefore gives more than four times the image area of non-anamorphic 35 mm film providing a major improvement in image quality. Few major dramatic narrative films have been filmed entirely on this format since the 1970s; the three most recent are Kenneth Branagh 's Hamlet , Paul Thomas Anderson 's The Master and Quentin Tarantino 's The Hateful Eight . For many years, large budget pictures shot anamorphically used reserve stocks of 70 mm film for SFX shots involving CGI or blue-screen compositing as
1848-435: Is nothing new about these stereophonic sound effects. The Bell Telephone Laboratories and Professor Harold Burris-Meyer of Stevens Institute of Technology demonstrated the underlying principles years ago." Kaempffert also noted: There is no question that Waller has made a notable advance in cinematography. But it must be said that at the sides of his gigantic screen there is some distortion more noticeable in some parts of
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#17327726132861936-472: Is obsolete. The original screen ratio for TV broadcasts was 4:3 (1.33:1). This was the same aspect ratio as most cinema screens and films at the time TV was first sold commercially. 1930s and 1940s films in 4:3, such as Gone with the Wind , have always been displayed on television in 4:3, filling the entire frame. When preparing a film that was originally intended to be displayed in widescreen for TV broadcast
2024-418: Is provided to widescreen TVs either in high-definition format, which is natively 16:9 (1.78:1), or as an anamorphically-compressed standard-definition picture. Typically, devices decoding Digital Standard-Definition pictures can be programmed to provide anamorphic widescreen formatting, for 16:9 sets, and formatting for 4:3 sets. Pan-and-scan mode can be used on 4:3 if the producers of the material have included
2112-516: Is sometimes used for shooting special effects in order to produce a finer-grained matte that can be used in optical printing without image degradation, and is notable for its use in Lucasfilm 's original three Star Wars films, among others. Another similar system with horizontal orientation was MGM's Arnoldscope . Multiple lens camera/multiple projectors – The Cinerama system originally involved shooting with three lens camera, and projecting
2200-726: Is used for CinemaScope , Panavision , and several other equivalent processes. The film is essentially shot "squeezed", so that the actors appear vertically elongated on the actual film. A special lens inside the projector unsqueezes the image so that it will appear normal. Films shot in CinemaScope or Panavision are usually projected at a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, though the historical aspect ratio can be 2.66:1 (original separate magnetic sound aspect ratio), 2.55:1 (original four-track magnetic sound aspect ratio) or 2.35:1 (original mono optical sound aspect ratio, and much later "stereo variable-area" aspect ratio, also called Dolby Stereo). The negative
2288-442: Is usually 2.66:1 or, in rare cases, 2.55:1 or 2.35:1. The sole purpose of the change to 2.39:1 and, later, to 2.40:1, was to better hide so-called "negative assembly" splices (splices employed in the composited camera negative. This was not a production change, rather it was a recommended projection change.) A Chilean film, Post Mortem , used anamorphic lenses with 16 mm film , to be projected at an ultra-widescreen 2.66:1 for
2376-457: The 70 mm Fox Grandeur process. RKO Radio Pictures released Danger Lights with Jean Arthur , Louis Wolheim , and Robert Armstrong on August 21, 1930 in a 65 mm widescreen process known as NaturalVision, invented by film pioneer George K. Spoor . On November 13, 1930, United Artists released The Bat Whispers directed by Roland West in a 70 mm widescreen process known as Magnafilm. Warner Brothers released Song of
2464-554: The Fox Grandeur process. Other films shot in widescreen were the musical Happy Days (1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater , New York City, on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and a 12-year-old Betty Grable as a chorus girl; Song o' My Heart , a musical feature starring Irish tenor John McCormack and directed by Frank Borzage ( Seventh Heaven , A Farewell to Arms ), which
2552-509: The Great Depression had forced studios to cut back on needless expense and it was not until 1953 that wider aspect ratios were again used in an attempt to stop the fall in attendance due, partially, to the emergence of television in the U.S. However, a few producers and directors, among them Alfred Hitchcock , were reluctant to use the anamorphic widescreen size featured in such formats as Cinemascope . Hitchcock used VistaVision ,
2640-893: The Netherlands , Austria , Germany , the Nordic countries and the UK have adopted widescreen on a large scale, with over half of all widescreen channels available by satellite in Europe targeting those areas. The UK, in particular, began moving to widescreen with the advent of digital terrestrial television in the late 1990s, and commercials were required to be delivered to broadcasters in widescreen as of 1 July 2000, on their widescreen " C-Day ". Widescreen televisions are typically used in conjunction with Digital , High-Definition Television (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD players and other digital television sources. Digital material
2728-471: The Southcenter Mall of Tukwila, Washington. It closed in 2001. Cinerama also purchased RKO-Stanley Warner (consisting of theaters formerly owned by Warner Bros. and RKO Pictures ) in 1970. Stanley Warner Corporation acquired 35 percent of the company—as well as the exhibition, production and distribution rights to Cinerama—in 1953 during the production of Seven Wonders of the World , which
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2816-545: The "flagship" in the Plitt theatre chain . Efforts were made to preserve the theatre, but at the time it did not qualify for national or state historical landmark status (as it was not more than fifty years old) nor were there local preservation laws. It was torn down in 1992. An office complex with a TGI Friday's on the west end of the property is there today. The third super-Cinerama, the Indian Hills Theater ,
2904-422: The 26 frames/s of traditional Cinerama. The following feature films have been advertised as being presented "in Cinerama": RCA uses the word "Cinerama" to refer to a display mode which fills a 16:9 video screen with 4:3 video with, in the words of the manufacturer, "little distortion." Manuals for products offering this mode give no detailed explanation. One online posting says it consists of "a slight cropping at
2992-713: The Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won , were filmed in three-camera Cinerama, and several sequences from the latter were actually filmed in Ultra-Panavision . With the exception of a few films created sporadically for use in specialty Cinerama theaters, the format is effectively obsolete. A non-Cinerama, three-projector process was pioneered for the final reel of Abel Gance 's epic film Napoléon ( 1927 ) The process, called Polyvision by Gance, consisted of three 1.33 images side by side, so that
3080-675: The Brothers Grimm ) before switching to a 70mm single lens in December 1963, and the Royalty had two runs of Brothers Grimm separated by a run of The Best of Cinerama before also switching to 70mm single lens in mid-1964. These London venues were directly operated by Cinerama themselves; elsewhere in the UK three-strip Cinerama venues were operated by the two main UK circuits, ABC at ABC Bristol Road, Birmingham and Coliseum, Glasgow, Rank at Gaumont, Birmingham, and Queens, Newcastle and by independents at
3168-757: The Bulge (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965) and Khartoum (1966). The less wide but still spectacular Super Panavision 70 was used to film the Cinerama presentations Grand Prix (1966); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which also featured scenes shot in Todd-AO and MCS-70); Ice Station Zebra (1968); and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969), which also featured scenes shot in Todd-AO. The other 70 mm systems used for single film Cinerama (Sovscope 70 and MCS-70) were similar to Super Panavision 70. Some films were shot in
3256-529: The Flame and Kismet (both 1930) in a widescreen process they called Vitascope . In 1930, after experimenting with the system called Fantom Screen for The Trail of '98 (1928), MGM came out with a system called Realife. MGM filmed The Great Meadow (1930) in Realife. However, it is unclear whether it was released in that widescreen process due to declining interest of the movie-going public. By 1932,
3344-574: The Park Hall, Cardiff, Theatre Royal, Manchester and Abbey, Liverpool. Most of these conversions of existing cinemas came just as Cinerama was switching to single lenses and thus had short lives as three-strip venues before switching to 70mm. Roman Cinerama Theater (now Isetann Cinerama Recto ) at Quezon Boulevard in Recto, Manila and Nation Cinerama Theater in Araneta Center , Quezon City were
3432-483: The US NTSC Standard Definition system, which meant the quality issues of letterboxed or matted movies on TV were not as severe. There is also an extension to PAL, called PALplus , which allows specially equipped receivers to display a PAL picture as true 16:9 with a full 576 lines of vertical resolution, provided that the station employs the same system. Standard PAL receivers will receive such
3520-487: The Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process (which yielded a similar 2.76 aspect ratio to the original Cinerama, although it did not simulate the 146-degree field of view). Optically "rectified" prints and special lenses were used to project the 70 mm prints onto the curved screen. The films shot in Ultra Panavision for single lens Cinerama presentation were It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Battle of
3608-637: The Waller Gunnery Trainer, was used during the Second World War. The word "Cinerama" combines cinema with panorama, the origin of all the "-orama" neologisms (the word "panorama" comes from the Greek words "pan", meaning all , and "orama", which translates into that which is seen , a sight , or a spectacle ). It was suggested in the documentary Cinerama Adventure (2002) that Cinerama could have been an intentional anagram of
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3696-676: The West Was Won had its World Premiere at the Casino on November 1, 1962, and ran until April 1965 after which the Casino switched to 70mm single lens Cinerama. London had two other three-strip venues, making it the only city in the world with three Cinerama theatres. These were the Coliseum Cinerama , from July 1963, and the Royalty Cinerama from November 1963, like the Casino, both converted live venues. The Coliseum played only one film in three-strip ( The Wonderful World of
3784-400: The West Was Won (1962) for exhibition in true Cinerama theatres around the world. In 2008, a Blu-ray disc of How The West Was Won was released, offering a recreation of Cinerama for home viewing. The three Cinerama images were digitally stitched together so that the resulting image does not have the visible seams of older copies. Furthermore, as a second viewing option, 3D mapping technology
3872-478: The anamorphic format creates problems with said effects. It has also been used to sometimes strike 70 mm blow-up prints for "roadshow" tours in select cities from the 35 mm camera negative in order to capitalize on the extra sound channels provided. The introduction of digital sound systems and diminishing number of installed 70 mm projectors has made a 70 mm release largely obsolete. However, blowups from 35 mm formats to IMAX have been used for
3960-409: The audience, to prevent light scattered from one end of the deeply curved screen from reflecting across the screen and washing out the image on the opposite end. The display is accompanied by a high-quality, seven-track discrete, directional, surround-sound system. The original system involved shooting with three synchronized cameras sharing a single shutter. This process was later abandoned in favor of
4048-755: The camera at an angle, move away at an angle, and then repeat the process on the other side of the screen. The first Cinerama film, This Is Cinerama , premiered on September 30, 1952 at the Broadway Theatre in New York City. The New York Times judged it to be front-page news. Notables attending included New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey , violinist Fritz Kreisler , James A. Farley , Metropolitan Opera manager Rudolf Bing , NBC chairman David Sarnoff , CBS chairman William S. Paley ,; Broadway composer Richard Rodgers , and Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer . In The New York Times
4136-447: The center picture met the side pictures, resulting in what appeared to many viewers to be jittering vertical lines at one-third and two-thirds of the way across the screen as the two touching images constantly moved around relative to each other. Cinerama projectors used a device to slightly blur the join lines to make the jitter less noticeable. Future systems such as Circle-Vision 360° would correct for this by having masked areas between
4224-423: The company with Mike Todd, was still raving about the process in his memoirs thirty years later. In addition to the visual impact of the image, Cinerama was one of the first processes to use multitrack magnetic sound. The system, developed by Hazard E. Reeves , one of the Cinerama investors, played back from a fully coated 35 mm magnetic film with seven tracks of sound targeting a speaker layout similar to
4312-481: The extreme top and bottom cropped slightly to hide anomalies". He further comments on the unreliability of "numerous websites and other resources that will tell you that Cinerama had an aspect ratio of up to 3:1." In theaters, Cinerama film was projected from three projection booths arranged in the same crisscross pattern as the cameras. They projected onto a deeply curved screen, the outer thirds of which were made of over 1,100 strips of material mounted on "louvers" like
4400-591: The finest venues in which to view Cinerama films. The theaters were designed by architect Richard L. Crowther of Denver, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects . The first such theater, the Cooper Theater, built in Denver, featured a 146-degree louvered screen (measuring 105 by 35 feet (32 by 11 meters)), 814 seats, courtesy lounges on the sides of the theatre for relaxation during intermission (including concessions and smoking facilities), and
4488-514: The following venues: The modern Cinerama company exists as an entity of the Pacific Theatres chain. Cinerama Adventure (2003), a documentary directed by David Strohmaier, looked at the history of the Cinerama process, as well as digitally recreating the Cinerama experience via clips of true Cinerama films (using transfers from original Cinerama prints). Turner Entertainment (via Warner Bros.) has struck new Cinerama prints of How
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#17327726132864576-446: The full unmasked frame is sometimes used for television, known as an open matte . In such an instance, a photographer will compose for widescreen, but "protect" the full image from things such as microphones and other filming equipment. Standardized "flat wide screen" ratios are 1.66:1, 1.75:1, 1.85:1, and 2:1. The 1.85:1 aspect ratio has become the predominant aspect ratio for the format. 35 mm anamorphic – This type of widescreen
4664-457: The house than in others. The three projections were admirably blended, yet there were visible bands of demarcation on the screen. Although existing theatres were adapted to show Cinerama films, in 1961 and 1962 the non-profit Cooper Foundation of Lincoln, Nebraska, designed and built three near-identical circular "super-Cinerama" theaters in Denver, Colorado; St. Louis Park, Minnesota (a Minneapolis suburb); and Omaha, Nebraska. They were considered
4752-529: The human field of vision, including peripheral vision. The image was photographed six sprocket holes high, rather than the usual four used in conventional 35 mm processes. The picture was photographed and projected at 26 frames per second rather than the usual 24 FPS. According to film historian Martin Hart, in the original Cinerama system "the camera aspect ratio [was] 2.59:1" with an "optimum screen image, with no architectural constraints, [of] about 2.65:1, with
4840-440: The image, the left camera shooting the right part of the image, and the center camera shooting straight ahead. The three cameras were mounted as one unit, set at 48 degrees to each other. A single rotating shutter in front of the three lenses assured simultaneous exposure on each of the films. The three angled cameras photographed an image that was not only three times as wide as a standard film but covered 146 degrees of arc, close to
4928-530: The late 1920s in some short films and newsreels , and feature films, notably Abel Gance 's film Napoleon (1927) with a final widescreen sequence in what Gance called Polyvision . Claude Autant-Lara released a film Pour construire un feu ( To Build a Fire , 1928) in the early Henri Chrétien widescreen process, later adapted by Twentieth Century-Fox for CinemaScope in 1952. The experimental Natural Vision widescreen process developed by George K. Spoor and P. John Berggren used 63.5 mm film and had
5016-441: The material was often edited with the sides truncated, using techniques such as center cut or pan and scan . Sometimes, in the case of Super 35, the full film negative was shown unmasked on TV (that is, with the hard matte removed). However, this causes the 4:3 image not to be what the director intended the audience to see, and sometimes boom mics, edited out of the shot when the picture is matted, can be visible. Current TVs feature
5104-401: The more modern SDDS . There were five speakers behind the screen, two on the side and back of the auditorium with a sound engineer directing the sound between the surround speakers according to a script. The projectors and sound system were synchronized by a system using selsyn motors. The Cinerama system had some obvious drawbacks. If one of the films should break, it had to be repaired with
5192-537: The movie. They may well give us something brand-new here." A technical review by Waldemar Kaempffert published in The New York Times on the same day hailed the system. He praised the stereophonic sound system and noted that "the fidelity of the sounds was irreproachable. Applause in La Scala sounded like the clapping of hands and not like pieces of wood slapped together". He noted, however, that "There
5280-526: The necessary panning data; if this data is absent, letterboxing or centre cut-out is used. HD DVD and Blu-ray players were introduced in 2006. Toshiba ceased production of HD DVD players in early 2008. Consumer camcorders are also available in the HD-video format at fairly low prices. These developments will result in more options for viewing widescreen images on television monitors. Venetian blind Too Many Requests If you report this error to
5368-531: The only Cinerama theaters built in the Philippines in the 1960s. Both theaters are now defunct as Roman Super Cinerama burned down in the late 1970s and became Isetann Cinerama Recto in 1988 while Nation Cinerama closed down in the early 1970s it is now Manhattan Parkview Residences built by Megaworld Corporation. The last Cinerama theater built was the Southcenter Theatre in 1970, opening near
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#17327726132865456-418: The pop-eyed amazement of the men when the huge screen was opened to its full size and a thrillingly realistic ride on a roller-coaster was pictured upon it, attested to the shock of the surprise. People sat back in spellbound wonder as the scenic program flowed across the screen. It was really as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time...the effect of Cinerama in this its initial display
5544-408: The projectors, called "jiggolos," alternately blocked the image from one projector and then the other; the overlapping area thus received no more total illumination than the rest of the screen, and the rapidly alternating images within the overlap smoothed out the visual transition between adjacent image "panels." Great care was taken to match color and brightness when producing the prints. Nevertheless,
5632-431: The resultant image showed the actors appearing to look past each other, particularly if they appeared on different films. Early directors sidestepped this latter problem by only shooting one actor at a time and cutting between them. Later directors worked out where to have the actors looking to create a natural shot. Each actor was required not to look at their fellow actor, but at a predetermined cue place instead. Finally,
5720-498: The same booth.) Due to the small number of Cinemiracle theatres, specially converted prints of Windjammer were shown in Cinerama theaters in cities which did not have Cinemiracle theaters, and ultimately Cinerama bought up the process. Only two films with traditional story lines were made, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won . In order to make these films compatible with single film systems for later standard releases, they were shot at 24 frames/s, not
5808-475: The screens. The jitters continued, but viewers were less aware of them with the adjoining pictures no longer so close together. The impact these films had on the big screen cannot be assessed from television or video, or even from 'scope prints, which marry the three images together with the seams clearly visible. Because they were designed to be seen on a curved screen, the geometry looks distorted on television; someone walking from left to right appears to approach
5896-400: The seams between panels were usually noticeable. Optical limitations with the design of the camera itself meant that if distant scenes joined perfectly, closer objects did not. ( parallax error). A nearby object might split into two as it crossed the seams. To avoid calling attention to the seams, scenes were often composed with unimportant objects such as trees or posts at the seams, and action
5984-493: The somewhat lower resolution Super Technirama 70 process for Cinerama release, including Circus World (1964) and Custer of the West (1967). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Cinerama name was used as a film distribution company, ironically reissuing single strip 70 mm and 35 mm Cinemascope reduction prints of This Is Cinerama (1972). In recent years, surviving and new Cinerama prints have been screened at
6072-464: The theater's screen, in the projector . Alternatively, a hard matte in the printing or shooting stages may be used to mask off those areas while filming for composition purposes, but an aperture plate is still used to block off the appropriate areas in the theater. A detriment is that the film grain size is thus increased because only part of the image is being expanded to full height. Films are designed to be shown in cinemas in masked widescreen format but
6160-482: The three cameras. Consequently, Cinerama discontinued the three film process, except for a single theater (McVickers' Cinerama Theatre in Chicago) showing Cinerama's Russian Adventure , an American-Soviet co-production culled from footage of several Soviet films shot in the rival Soviet three-film format known as Kinopanorama in 1966. Cinerama continued through the rest of the 1960s as a brand name used initially with
6248-417: The three individual films would jitter and weave slightly as the films moved through the projectors. This normal frame-to-frame movement is typically imperceptible to cinema audiences where only a single projector is in use. However, in Cinerama, this resulted in the center picture constantly moving slightly relative to each of the side pictures. The shifting displacements were perceivable at the two points where
6336-450: The three resulting films on a curved screen with three synchronized projectors, resulting in an ultrawide aspect ratio of 2.89. Later Cinerama movies were shot in 70 mm anamorphic (see below), and the resultant widescreen image was divided into three by optical printers to produce the final threefold prints. The technical drawbacks of Cinerama are discussed in its own article . Only two narrative feature films, The Wonderful World of
6424-420: The top & bottom combined with a slight stretch at only the sides," and praises it. The posting suggests that other vendors provide a similar function under different names. Mitsubishi calls it "stretch" mode. The RCA Scenium TV also has a "stretch mode" as well as a 4:3 picture stretched straight across. There is no obvious connection between this video mode and any of the Cinerama motion picture processes. It
6512-570: The total aspect ratio of the image is 4:1. The technical difficulties in mounting a full screening of the film, however, make most theaters unwilling or unable to show it in this format. Between 1956 and 1957, the Soviets developed Kinopanorama , which is identical in most respects to the original three-camera Cinerama. Anamorphic 70 mm – 70 mm with anamorphic lenses, popularly known as " Ultra Panavision " or " MGM Camera 65 ", creates an even wider high-quality picture. This camera process
6600-456: The tradition, although its screen is taller and often less wide. All but two of the feature-length films produced using the original three-strip Cinerama process were travelogues or episodic documentaries such as This Is Cinerama (1952), the first film shot in Cinerama. Other travelogues presented in Cinerama were Cinerama Holiday (1955), Seven Wonders of the World (1955), Search for Paradise (1957) and South Seas Adventure (1958). There
6688-410: The word American; but Dick Babish, present at the meeting when it was named, says this is "purely accidental, however delightful." The photographic system used three interlocked 35 mm cameras equipped with 27 mm lenses, approximately the focal length of the human eye. Each camera photographed one-third of the picture shooting in a crisscross pattern, the right camera shooting the left part of
6776-421: Was also one commercial short, Renault Dauphine (1960). Even as the Cinerama travelogues were beginning to lose audiences in the late 50s, the spectacular travelogue Windjammer (1958) was released in a competing process called Cinemiracle which claimed to have less noticeable dividing lines on the screen thanks to the reflection of the side images off mirrors. (This also allowed all three projectors to be in
6864-416: Was blocked to center actors within panels. This gave a distinctly " triptych -like" appearance to the composition even when the seams themselves were not obvious. It was often necessary to have actors in different sections "cheat" where they looked to appear to be looking at each other in the final projected picture. Enthusiasts say the seams were not obtrusive; detractors disagree. Lowell Thomas, an investor in
6952-606: Was built in Omaha, Nebraska. It closed on September 28, 2000 as a result of the bankruptcy of Carmike Cinemas and the final film presented was the rap music-drama Turn It Up. The theater was demolished on August 20, 2001. A fourth, the Kachina Cinerama Theater, was built in Scottsdale, Arizona by Harry L. Nace Theatres on Scottsdale Road opened on November 10, 1960. It seated 600 people. It later became
7040-606: Was built on the location of the 1958 World Fair in Brussels, for the whole duration of the fair, from April until October 1958. This Is Cinerama received its London premiere on September 30, 1954, at the Casino Cinerama Theatre (now the Prince Edward Theatre ), Old Compton Street, formerly a live theatre. The film ran for 16 months and was followed by the other three-strip travelogues. How
7128-430: Was invented by Fred Waller (1886–1954) and languished in the laboratory for several years before Waller, joined by Hazard "Buzz" Reeves, brought it to the attention of Lowell Thomas who, first with Mike Todd and later with Merian C. Cooper , produced a commercially viable demonstration of Cinerama that opened on Broadway on September 30, 1952. The film, titled This Is Cinerama , was received with enthusiasm. It
7216-436: Was planned as the follow-up feature. Rising costs of making three-camera widescreen films caused Cinerama to stop making such films in their original form shortly after the first release of How the West Was Won . The use of Ultra Panavision 70 for certain scenes (such as the river raft sequence) later printed onto the three Cinerama panels, proved that a more or less satisfactory wide-screen image could be photographed without
7304-447: Was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening. The Cinerama projection screen, rather than being a continuous surface like most screens, is made of hundreds of individual vertical strips of standard perforated screen material, each about 7 ⁄ 8 inch (~22 millimeters) wide, with each strip angled to face
7392-523: Was shipped from the labs on March 17, 1930, but never released and may no longer survive, according to film historian Miles Kreuger (the 35 mm version, however, debuted in New York on March 11, 1930); and the western The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne and Tyrone Power, Sr. which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on October 2, 1930, all of which were also made in
7480-720: Was the first film photographed in the Cinerama process in almost 50 years. This sequence is part of a 12-minute production filmed entirely in the three-panel process. The new film, In the Picture , was presented at a Cinerama festival at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California on September 30, 2012. Cinerama successors, Todd-AO , CinemaScope, and the various 70 mm formats, all attempted to equal or surpass its grandeur while avoiding its problems to greater or lesser degrees of success. The large format IMAX system continues
7568-518: Was the outgrowth of many years of development. A forerunner was the triple-screen final sequence in the silent Napoléon (1927) directed by Abel Gance ; Gance's classic was considered lost in the 1950s, however, known of only by hearsay, and Waller could not have viewed it. Waller had earlier developed an eleven-projector system called "Vitarama" at the Petroleum Industry exhibit in the 1939 New York World's Fair . A five-camera version,
7656-428: Was used for the remake of Ben-Hur (1959), resulting in an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest projected images ever used for a feature film. The 70 mm anamorphic format was not commonly used, due to the very high production costs, although it was favored for epic films such as Ben-Hur in order to capture wide panoramic landscapes and high-budget scenes with thousands of extras and enormous sets. This system
7744-557: Was used to produce an image that approximates the curved screen, called "SmileBox". Since then, other Cinerama films, including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm , The Golden Head , and South Seas Adventure have also had "SmileBox" edition blu ray home-media releases. On January 14, 2012, an original Cinerama camera was used to film a sequence at the Lasky-DeMille Barn , the original home to Famous Players–Lasky , later to be renamed Paramount Pictures . This
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