Boxoffice-March.1988

Modern Theatre
Can 16mm Help the
Small Theatreowner?
The next big thing in exhibit imi
may be something much smaller
than we're used to seeing in theatres.
EXHIBITION — AS in most industries
IN— better usually means bigger: bigger
screens, wider print stocks, grander
sound design. But one of the more
interesting technological experiments
scheduled to take place this year takes a
defmite turn in the opposite direction.
toward small.
The idea is not new but it has been,
now, seemingly impossible to
For
up until
achieve: theatre-quality 16mm film.
years, distributors have been all too
aware of the sometimes crippling costs
of processing 35mm and 70mm prints,
while exhibitors have faced the increasing
expenses of shipping prints from
exchange to theatre and back again. It
never took a financial wizard to see that
16mm, both smaller in size and lighter
in weight, would drastically cut costs in
both lab work and in transportation.
The problem with 16mm has been
one of image size: the image projected
by a conventional 16mm projector becomes
completely unsatisfactory on a
screen any larger than what you would
find in a lecture hall, a school classroom
or a church basement. The idea of presenting
multi-million dollar feature
films on such an inferior system, and
then trying to charge money from an
increasingly -sophisticated public,
seemed impossible.
Enter Kenneth Richter, a well-known
lecturer and producer of travel films.
For decades, Richter had been presenting
high-quality 16mm films on
screens as wide as 30 feet, utilizing a
little-known projector that was designed
and then abandoned way bark in
the '60s: the Eastman Mwlel 2.S Over 20
years ago, Eastman Kodak had made a
major commitment to theatre-quality
16mm by designing the Mmiel 25, a
remarkably sturdy projector with ,sli;rco
capabilities and a relatively jjggle-frce
transport system. Unfortunately, it
By Tom Matthews
Managing Editor
turned out that no lab was willing or
able to come up with an equally-precise
16mm printing method. The project was
abandoned, and the Model 25 was consigned
to use on college campuses and
in other non-theatrical applications,
such as Richter's.
TTie story might end there, if it
weren't for a fortuitous coincidence.
While at a Harvard class reunion a few
years back, Richter bumped into Stanley
Durwood, a former classmate who is
now chairman and CEO of AMC Entertainment.
Inc Curiously enough, AMC
had been doing expenments of us own
with 16mm, trying to find some way to
work the more economical system into
its rapidly-growing chain of theatres. As
Durwood tells it, his engineers were
simply unable to achieve a projected
image that would not fall apart on a
screen that was wider than 20 feet.
When Durwofxi hi^ard Richter say that
he was getting a clear, sharp 30-footwide
image with the Eastman Model 25,
Durwood was intngued. In most of the
multiplexes that AMC was building, a
30-foot screen was the norm.
The two men put their heads together
and came up with Project HQ, an ambitious
enterprise that brought together
experts from all areas of theatrical presentation
to conquer the 16mm challenge
once and for all. Charles Swing,
who had developed the ELastman Model
25, was lured out of retirement to consult
on the project. A number of processing
labs were conferred with to ultimately
come up with a new 16mm print
that contains over 100 lines of information
per frame, a vast improvement over
conventional 16mm.
From Kintek Inc., Project HQ was given
a customized, four track optical system
that delivers a "punch" that is
remarkably similar to that of 35mm's.
Christie Electric designed a sjjecial xenon
light source that uses a quartz negative
lens to increase the f-number of its
light
Thf >a«lrTMn Model 2S projcdor
cone, while Isco Optik GMBH of
Gottingen, West Germany, manufac-
March. l'»H« 19