cinema technology - march 2006 cinema technology - march 2006

“It is the first time that the award has gone out of the country” said BKSTS Patron Sir Sydney Samuelson, perhaps somewhat chauvinistically, as he presented the Dolby Sponsored ‘Projection Team of the Year Award’ to Andy Forrest, Chief Projectionist, and his team from the Edinburgh Filmhouse.The Dolby contingent were delayed en route due to problems with the railways, which gave Sir Sydney plenty of time to ‘fill in’ any awkward silences that might have otherwise occurred (not very likely at the CTC Party, is it?) by telling us tales of projection booths that have long disappeared, and the audience cheered loudly when he mentioned that earlier in December 2005 he had celebrated his

80th birthday, making him five years older than the BKSTS. Being obviously delighted to be entering what he described as his ‘ninth decade’ in such fine fettle, he said “I am constantly surprised to find that this guy who has been in the business since the 30s is still walking About!” Everyone wished Sir Sydney many happy returns, as he continues his indefatigable work for the industry, and, in particular, his ongoing support for projectionists.

The ‘Projection Team of the Year Award’ is made by the BKSTS Cinema Technology Committee to the team that it believes has made the greatest contribution to the professionalism and the maintenance of high technical and production standards in the cinema exhibition industry during the year. The projection team at the Edinburgh Filmhouse copes with an incredible range of film material during the year, on gauges from 16mm to 70mm, as it puts together lots of special events and ‘film seasons’ as well as hosting screenings for new moviemakers, ‘six of the best’ sessions which showcase the works of a particular cinema practitioner, and, of course, the world-famous Edinburgh International Film Festival, during which the projection team can be called upon to show almost any type of material from anywhere, often with very little notice. The Filmhouse is

Edinburgh Filmhouse teamjudged ‘best of the year’

renowned for the highly professional film presentations that it gives on a regular basis, and this is in large measure due to the work of Andy Forrest and his team, a mixture of youth and long experience which promises great things for the future of the exhibition business in Scotland.

Sir Sydney handed over the extremely smart carriage clock to Andy, and then congratulated him and the rest of his team, Dave Barclay, Denise McGee, Roy Ballantyne, and Ali Clark, who came forward to receive their personal congratulations from from Sir Sydney.

Andy thanked everyone involved in enabling Edinburgh Filmhouse to win the award, stressing that it was the efforts of his complete team that had counted, and also praising Peter Naples of Omnex Pro-Film for all his engineering work over the years, which he said had played no small part in ensuring the high quality of the Filmhouse showings and therefore in winning the award.

The Party was sponsored by Bell Theatre Systems, and the Award provided by Dolby. Thanks were also due to Dion’s wife Susan and daughter Clare for organising the food and wine and for doing all the ‘behind the scenes’ work that any successful party requires.

The award winning team.

L-R: Andy Forrest, Dave Barclay,

Denise McGee,

Roy Ballantyne and Ali Clark

Andy receives the award

from BKSTS Patron Sir

Sydney Samuelson

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It was good to see that the Edinburgh Filmhouse Journal for January managed to find a little space amongst the masses of film coverage to recognise the proud achievement of their projectionists.

As always the party was a great success with the Odeon Leicester Square’s Green Room full to capacity where everyone enjoyed themselves.

AND BY WAY OF A REMINDER...it’s not too early to think about 2006 award nominations - contact Dion and the Cinema Technology Committee at cinemaproj@aol.com or telephone 0116 279 3222

Recognise the partygoers?

BKSTS CINEMA TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEEServing the Cinema Industry

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Read more in ‘Meet the Chief’ and his team over the following pages.

award

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BKSTS Funds don’t allow for too much travel to foreign parts, so it was great to be able to get hold of Andy Forrest, the Chief at Edinburgh Filmhouse - ‘Home of the Edinburgh International Film Festival’ as their publicity brochure proclaims - and to carry out a completely impromptu ‘Meet the Chief’, when he and his team came down to London to collect their Projection Team of The Year award.

Edinburgh Filmhouse What is now the Filmhouse three screen cinema was founded in 1979 in a disused church donated by the City of Edinburgh Council to the Edinburgh Film Guild for provision of a public ‘arthouse’ cinema. This originally formed part of the circuit of Regional Film Theatres under the auspices of the British Film Institute, but became effectively independent of the BFI in 2000, although still reliant on grants

from a range of public sources, including the Film Council, Scottish Screen - the national body for film, television and related media in Scotland - and various educational organisations. Edinburgh Filmhouse still plays a major part in some of the BFI’s educational projects, as well as being fully involved with local schools and colleges at all educational levels. The well-respected Filmhouse Education project works both in-house and using outreach techniques to support formal education on a wide range of curricular topics. As well as taught courses, there are many discussion groups, lectures, presentations and study days laid on for students, with activities ranging from tours of the cinema building to helping young children make their own movies, the aim being to help children to learn about film by actually making one. . visits to the. The Filmhouse also acts as a resource centre, providing advice, support and resources for all who are interested in film, and the educational team work closely with other colleges and film centres throughout Scotland.The Cinema After the converted church building reopened as a cinema in 1979, there was just one screen, (what is now cinema 2) with two Philips DP70s providing the images. A second screen (now Cinema 1) was added in 1982 and a third in 1997. The pictures alongside are from 1981, when building work to convert the main church to the 280 seat cinema was being undertaken.

FlexibilityTotally different in its approach from any multiplex, the name of the game at the Filmhouse has to be ‘flexibility’ since its programme includes an ever-changing mixture of independent, arthouse, foreign language films, with many retrospectives and special seasons. The skilled projection team need to be able to cope, often at very short notice, with requests to project anything from 70mm, 35mm, 16mm film or video sources. The cinemas are also regularly hired for screenings, lectures, talks, and presentations, and a time when many cinemas are just starting to think about the ‘alternative content’ market it is good to see that that the Filmhouse has been earning a fair proportion of its

Meetthe chiefJim Slater meets Andy Forrest (and his team!)

at the Edinburgh Filmhouse

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income from such events for many years past. I was interested to discover that you can hire one of the smaller auditoria for a couple of hundred pounds during the daytime, which competes well with many of the hotels that I know of that offer ‘conference’ facilities. It is good to see that the Filmhouse takes ‘access’ seriously, with wheelchair access FOH and in the screens, assistance available, large print material, induction loops and infra-red, subtitling, provision for guide dogs, and staff training.

Filmhouse OneFilmhouse One, pictured right, has 280 seats on a single level sloping floor, plus space for a couple of wheelchairs. The two DP70s (below left and left centre) normally use reels, which means that the projectionists all need to be adept at changeovers, but a platter is available when required. Cinema 1’s DP70s are still frequently used to show 70mm films, and I was interested to see that in January they were showing John Carpenter’s 1982 70mm ‘The Thing’ as part of a ‘monster movie’ season. There is also a Fumeo HL 3000 16mm projector (below right centre) on standby, tucked away in the corner. This is used for a wide range of arthouse and documentary movies, although Andy says that this is used much less than it used to be since video came to the fore. It was great to see that each film listed in the informative monthly programme guide is accompanied by some historical details, as well as telling you whether it will be shown in 35mm, 70mm, 16mm, or even DVD format. There is Dolby Digital sound in Cinema 1 (below right) and Cinema 2.

Filmhouse TwoFilmhouse Two has 97 seats on a single level sloping floor, with wheelchair facilities. The projection room is equipped with two DP75s, with reels and a Kineton ST2000 platter, and a Fumeo HL2000 16mm projector with 500W xenon and mag/opt sound capabilities.

Filmhouse ThreeFilmhouse Three has just 70 seats, and an interesting combination of projectors.

The Philips/Kinoton FP30 is purely for 35mm, whereas the Kinoton FP38d can run 35mm as well as having 16mm capabilities on its other side. Both use 1.6kW lamps, and the projector can be run at variable speeds between 18 and 25fps. A Panasonic DLP projector and server are used for ‘Cinemanet’ programmes.Dolby SR sound provides good results in the modest Cinema 3.

With this wide range of equipment to operate and maintain, the Filmhouse projection staff need a great deal of knowledge and experience, so it is no surprise that our Chief and his team have a good many years of projection experience between them.

Destiny callsAndy Forrest says that he guesses that he was always destined to be a projectionist. At the age of six or seven he remembers hand-cranking an old 35mm projector, loading it with a 20 or 30 foot roll of sepia film of a ski-jumper taking off and landing.

“ I managed to work out loops and perfs, but what the light source was I have no idea. I just remember showing it

Filmhouse Two

Filmhouse Three

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on the painted walls of my Gran’s house time and time again on its two or three inch diameter spool. It was a left-over from when my Gran was caretaker of the local village hall, where they held concerts and the odd film show. Since then, I have had this fascination with film, a moment in time captured forever on a piece of celluloid.

“I later graduated to a 9.5mm Pathescope projector with a couple of Hopalong Cassidy ‘shorts’ and a Mickey Mouse cartoon - ‘Steamboat Mickey’, I think.”[Steamboat Willie is still available on Amazon.com - Ed.]

“ When I left school, having been a regular at the cinemas, two or three times a week, I phoned the ABC Regal in Edinburgh to see if they had any vacancies. Luckily, I managed to get an apprentice job at £2/17/0 a week.“ The first film that I rewound was called ‘Moment of Danger’, a black and white stinker with Dorothy Dandridge and Trevor Howard. That was in February 1960. The Regal at that time was still a one-screen cinema with 2700 seats.

Shortly before I started new Philips DP70 projectors had been installed, with Mole Richardson lamp-houses and a 54 foot screen, suitable for 70mm. In May 1960 we ran the first 70mm print - Oklahoma, at 30fps.

‘Proper’ Projection Training, and wide industry experience“ I was fortunate to attend the local college on a three-year projectionist course run by Trade Union NATKE and the local CEA, qualifying in 1964. I then worked in several cinemas in Edinburgh and Glasgow, to gain experience on different types of equipment - Ross, Kalee 20, Kalee 21, Simplex, and (again) Philips DP70. During this period, 1964-1969, I worked at the Regal Theatre Bathgate (an independent run by Lothian Star Theatres), The Casina Cinema Glasgow (Sir A.B. King Circuit), Poole’s Cinema, Edinburgh, the Monseigneur News Theatre, Edinburgh, later the Jacey Cinema (J.Cohen Circuit, Birmingham) and another independent, the Caley Picture House, Edinburgh. In 1969 ABC Regal was the first in the UK to convert to triple screen.

And so to Filmhouse...“ At this time I became involved with the Edinburgh Film Guild and Film Festival, which ran a cinema called Filmhouse in the basement of a block of offices in the West End. Projection involved part-time weekend work in the winter season with the Film Guild, and, from April to the end of June, viewing sessions for the selection committee of the Festival to choose films from submissions - there was no video in those days, of course! The Festival itself ran for two weeks in August. I was involved with this until 1982. By that time Filmhouse had moved to new premises in Lothian Road and had expanded to two screens, and I was taken on full-time when Cinema One opened under the old Chief, Eddie Wright, who retired in 1990. I have had the reins ever since, and staff have retired and joined us in the interim, until we now have our present excellent team.

And the Future?“ It looks like digital will be the long-term way forward. We have been granted two DLP projectors and servers by the

UK Film Council, through Arts Alliance. These should be installed this year in our Cinemas One and Two, but I am sure that film will continue to play a big part in our lives for years to come, since we screen such a varied range of international cinema product.

Things Change....“ The Cinema business has a long history of evolution, and things will undoubtedly change with the coming of digital - no matter how good the digital images are, they have a different ‘texture’, a different ‘feel’ from film, and the ‘which is best?’ arguments will go on. The same thing happened when Xenon took over from Carbon arc lighting, with arguments like ‘the light is not as white, the images aren’t as pure....’, but all that has long been forgotten, and I am sure that the digital debate will go the same way. I guess that the biggest changes since I started in the industry are the coming of the Xenon bulb as a light source (without which there wouldn’t have been any multiplexes), and the introduction of the simple tape splicer, making a difficult job relatively easy.”

Few hobbies, great staff, and an unsolicited testimonial...Like that of many a projectionist, Andy’s life is very much taken up with the job, and the only hobbies he will admit to are ‘pottering about the garden, reading, and watching TV’. He is obviously proud of his hard-working staff and their achievements, and, unusually in these days when much projection equipment is just expected to work and to keep on working, Andy made of point of saying how much the Filmhouse’s reputation for technical excellence depends upon the superb technical service that they receive from Omnex Pro-Film. Peter Naples of Omnex carries out the bi-annual equipment servicing at Filmhouse, and Andy says that Peter is all you could ask of an engineer, and that The Filmhouse Team’s winning of the Projection Team of the Year award is in no small part down to him.

The Winning TeamDave Barclay joined Filmhouse in 1993, having been involved in the Edinburgh Film Guild for many years, during which he spent long hours many hours assisting

Left and left centre

- Filmhouse Two.

Right centre and right

- Filmhouse Three

The Edinburgh Filmhouse.and below

The ABC Regal - only the facade remains -

eventually the current Odeon

Lothian Road was built in

the basement, but the site is

underthreat by

developers

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with projection, always keen to ensure that the shows were of the highest quality. He has a passion for film, and Andy says that Dave is invaluable in helping to solve the many different problems which occur at any cinema. Dave has always made it his business to stay fully up to date with the latest in audio-visual technologies, and intends to become totally involved in the forthcoming digital revolution.Roy Ballantyne has been in projection since leaving school, working with a local independent cinema in Stenhousemuir in the early days, before transferring to the Odeon cinema, Falkirk, and then moving on to the ABC Falkirk. Andy says that Roy, whose hobbies are bowling and hill-walking, when shift patterns permit, is totally dedicated to excellent film presentation, and is a valuable member of the Filmhouse team.

Denise McGee has been in the trade for eleven years. She started at the UCI Edinburgh under Chief Bill Shearer, who is well known to many Cinema Technology readers. Denise later transferred to the Odeon cinema, Edinburgh, which is the scene of many Festival Premiers and Gala performances. She says that she was fortunate to attend the now defunct Odeon Training School at Burton on Trent. Before joining Filmhouse in 2000, Denise worked for a time at the then recently-opened UGC Cinema in Edinburgh, and she brings a great deal of experience to her current role.

Ali Clark joined the Filmhouse team in 1998, where she trained ‘on the job’, under Andy’s watchful eye. Asked why she wanted to work in the cinema business, she said that, sadly, she is unable to offer any completely rational

explanation for wishing to become a projectionist! She obviously thoroughly enjoys the job, though, and says that the Filmhouse environment is one in which she thrives. Ali welcomes the diversity of programming that she comes across and the varying demands of working in the Filmhouse ‘box’. Any free time is spent listening to music, reading, and, of course, going to the pictures.

Thanks to Andy and the team for sparing the time to help me put together this piece - throughout the process their sheer enthusiasm for their jobs shone through, and it is no surprise to me that they became worthy winners of the 2005 BKSTS Projection Team of the Year Award.

Jim Slater

From left:

Dave Barclay

Roy Ballantyne

Denise McGee

Ali Clark

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