Motion Picture Herald (1954)

PARAMOUNT SHOWS NEW VIST A VISION PROJECTION SUPERSCOPE COMPATIBILITY WITH CINEMASCOPE CITED “ White Christmas ” Opens at Music Hall Oct. 14 With Horizontal Method by WILLIAM R. WEAVER HOLLYWOOD : While Century Projector Corporation engineers and Radio City Music Hall technicians were striving ’round the clock to install the first two completed horizontally-fed projectors in that colossal cinema for the world premiere of “White Christmas” October 14, Paramount Monday demonstrated the new special-purpose system to trade and lay press at its studio here. Century Projector TV«s Converted by Ryder The screen was the same one — 60 feet by a little over 30 — on which the VistaVision was, in a sense, born, and the projector used for the Monday demonstration was an orthodox Century to which Paramount’s distinguished Loren L. Ryder had done a number of unorthodox things. He had turned it over on its side, magazines and all, and had replaced its orthodox sprockets, with their four-hole pull-down, with bigger ones that pull eight holes instead of four, and pull the film sidewise instead of downward. Using a positive print taken directly from the sidewise-moving VistaVision negative that commonly is optically reduced to fit a standard 35mm filmstrip, the reclining Century gave out with a picture that compares with regular VistaVision about the way regular VistaVision compares with “wide screen”. Radio City Music Hall’s a mighty lucky exhibitor to get a first go at it. The Century projector that Engineer Ryder converted for experimental purposes, and used for Monday’s demonstration, is not much like the Century projector on which that company has been working at lightning speed, but the principle is identical. Whereas the new Century will feed the film upwards from the bottom magazine to the top, instead of the usual way, and crosses it over past the aperture plate on the way, the improvised projector at the studio just fed it straight across from one horizontal magazine to the other, for expediency. Projector Head Cost Set Between $1,500 and $2,000 There will be other departures, naturally, and the side-wheeling Century head is expected to cost an exhibitor about $2,000 the copy, if the quantity required is small, and about $1,500 if the demand grows. That’s for the head. The cost of lamphouses and the other required equipment (if, as seems likeliest, theatres installing the equipment will retain their present regulation projectors intact, since the side-wheelers can show nothing but side-wheeling prints of Vista HOLLl'WOOD: RKO’s “The Big Rainbow,” in color by Technicolor and starring Jane Russell, will serve to introduce the Superscope anamorphic process to the world, it was announced here this week by C. J. Tevlin, vice-president in charge of operations at the RKO studio. The film will have its world premiere at the Fox theatre in St. Louis December 21, to be followed shortly thereafter by its New York opening at the Criterion theatre. Mr. Tevlin also announced that Superscope will be fully compatible with CinemaScope projection equipment, whether the exhibitor uses a CinemaScope projection lens or any other anamorphic lens set to “unsqueeze” the anamorphic print to the ratio of 2:55 to 1. The Superscope screen image, however, will come out with a ratio of 2 to 1, the ratio which RKO has decided “represents the most practical width-toheight ratio for the entire industry.” Superscope, developed by Joseph and Irving Tushinsky at the RKO Studios, is a method whereby anamorphic prints can be made from conventional photography. RKO will make available to exhibitors two kinds of prints on “The Big Rainbow,” the standard print for conventional projection and the anamorphic or Superscope print for projection in the 2-to-l ratio. Release of Vision pictures) is not different than in other instances, so far as can be foreseen now. It is not necessary, however, as Y. Frank Freeman, Paramount vice-president, emphasized, for any exhibitor ever to buy any of this equipment unless he simply wants to give his customers the ultimate, extra and special last word in pictorial quality. For any exhibitor anywhere can provide a perfectly satisfactory screen result with the regular VistaVision print on his standard equipment, Mr. Freeman pointed out. The special purpose of the side-wheeling prints and projector is to serve in the best possible fashion those exhibitors whose screens, ranging upward from 50 feet in width, can do nicely with a little more filling-in of pictorial image than even the regulation VistaVision provides. There are not a great many such screens around. Mr. Freeman declined to make a definite estimate of the number there may be, but his speculation on the points ran to scores or hundreds, not thousands. Mr. Ryder, "Rainbow,” incidentally will be accompanied by what the company describes as “one of the most extensive advertising campaigns in RKO’s history, both to the industry and to the public.” In his announcement this week, Mr. Tevlin also revealed that Technicolor has been cooperating with the studio in developing •Superscope, and has delivered to the studio final perfected test reels in its imbition printing process which will be the method employed in making the regular release prints. A spokesman for RKO denied that the studio has taken over Superscope from the Tushinskys, saying that the studio simply has “an interest” in the process which was developed with RKO facilities. Technicolor shortly will deliver 30 test reels of Superscope prints to RKO which will make them available to exhibitors throughout the country that the exhibitors may see for themselves how Superscope looks with their regular CinemaScope equipment. Mr. Tevlin further disclosed that Superscope officials currently are negotiating with Hecht-Lancaster Productions for the making of Superscope prints of their “Vera Cruz,” which United Artists is set to release. Both RKO and Superscope, Inc., welcome the use by other companies of Super scope for major pictures. whose aides toured the country and the globe a while back to survey the situation, couldn't be pressed to estimate beyond 500 at most. And none of these, both men declared, actually needed the side-winding print and projector to satisfy their patrons. The subjects used for the demonstration were sequences from “To Catch a Thief,” “Two Captains West” and “Air Command,” a FitzPatrick short photographed in Norway to eye-dazzling advantage, and some miscellaneous black-and-white footage which shows conclusively the power of the process in that flat-out field of photography. All the subjects showed up brilliantly. Paramount officials made it emphatically clear to the demonstration audience that the bringing out of these strictly optional and decidedly luxurious-type means and method does not constitute a violation of the original policy declaration that VistaVision would never require any exhibitor to spend any money for equipment.. There is nothing at all required about this new development, although it is desirable. 10 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, OCTOBER 9, 1954