Freaky Film / why one used to need a licence to be a projectionist.

I posted about one of these videos way back when I started this blog but I think I can load it up here now. The other one I found on youtube.

Film used to be nitrate based which was highly flammable. It's now basically plastic based so melts but doesn't burn.

The film was so highly flammable it took special training to deal with it. It was a bad combination, highly flammable film and light so bright it would burn right through the film if it stopped moving.

Anyone who's seen Cinema Paradiso will have an idea what I'm talking about.

Nitrate film is also a reason that if you read through the history of movie theatres you'll notice how many of them burned down.

England trip- Cinemas- annoyed at myself a little.

I finally got to downloading the hundreds of photos I took in England and was surprised how few of them were movie related. I guess I was so interested in the movies and cinemas I forgot to take pics. There were things I thought I had done but I guess I didn't. I thought I had taken some pics of the big cinemas in Leicester square at night but don't see any. The cinemas looked nice lit up, especially the Empire.

Movie Theatre teaser for Pink Panther 2.

I thought the first Steve Martin Pink Panther was okay but obviously nowhere near as good as the Peter Sellers series. A lot of people around here wonder why a sequel is being made when it didn't do great here. The reason is it did big business in the rest of the world. According to boxofficemojo.com it did 82 million in North America, not bad but not great. However it did 76 million overseas. A large amount compared to the domestic gross. Hence we get a sequel.

This is the first teaser for the film. I can't quite tell if it's part of the film or footage shot just for the teaser. I'm inclined to believe the latter. It's self-contained and takes place in a movie theatre. The end part seems a little long to be inside a movie and there's something at the very end that's obviously not in the film.

P.S. I love the Marquee on the theatre. I wish theatres still had those fancy Marquees.

Why I would go crazy if I owned my own movie theatre.

One good thing about being a one screen theatre is attention I can put to the little things. I can be very picky that everything is done just right, just ask my staff. I had a thought the other day that I would probably go crazy if I ever owned my own theatre. Right now if there's anything I can't do it's usually because someone else won't let me spend the money etc. If I had my own theatre I'd have to tell myself I couldn't do things. Every time I go to the Hyland I think of what I would do to the place but I tend to think big. When a friend and I were thinking of buying it many moons ago we noticed the really cool original ceiling was still there above the dropped ceiling. The dropped ceiling was probably put there to save on heating costs. If it was taken out the screen could be made bigger and the original ceiling would be visible but it would cost a lot to do all that. I tried to find a picture of the kind of old ceiling it has but couldn't. I'm mildly surprised since at least two of the old theatres in London had the same ceiling. The Mall theatre on Clarence St which was recently torn down had one. It had been a video arcade for a long time but the ceiling was still visible.