Cinerama Film Technology: Harnessing the Heightened Immersion
My first exposure to Cinerama technology was in my Film Studies class in college in Pittsburgh, PA. There are only three Cinerama theaters left in the world and Pittsburgh is not one of them. As you can now deduce, my first exposure to Cinerama was, in fact, not really Cinerama. Our class watched a film meant for the beautifully curved Cinerama screen on a boringly flat surface with a low-quality projector. To say that it was entirely underwhelming is most certainly an understatement.
What I had been taught in the weeks leading up to this screening was that Cinerama was the thrilling new entertainment sensation of the 1950s. Marketed as a way for films to compete with the rising popularity of television, this big-ticket spectacle promised an innovative immersive technology. The huge, deeply curved screen set itself apart from the flat continuous surface of most screens. The Cinerama projection screen is made up of hundreds of individual vertical strips of screen material. This was the only way to achieve this curved arc while preventing light from being scattered and reflected across the screen. Each strip is about 7/8 inch, ~22 mm wide, angled to face the audience. This widescreen process originally demanded projecting from three synchronized 35 mm projections, stitched together to create a magnificent experience across the long curved screen. And the cherry on top? The Cinerama experience included a high-quality, seven-track discrete, directional, surround-sound system. Talk about the height of the movie-going experience!
I moved to Seattle a few short months ago, home to misty winters, evergreen trees, and one of the last three Cinerama theaters on earth. This theater has 2 screens: one that is a wider screen format, curved, meant to imitate the original Cinerama screen. This screen can project 70 mm film, compared to the standard 35 mm that many theaters project today. The 70 mm film format has a much wider aspect ratio and higher resolution, creating wider, sharper, brighter, and more detailed images. The second is the classic Cinerama screen, a 97-foot curved screen consisting of the 2,000 vertical strips. According to the Seattle Cinerama theater, “Taking down our main screen and erecting the Cinerama screen takes a full day,” and is only done for special event presentations. I experienced Cinerama in its “modern day” form, the 70 mm film projection screen.
You can imagine that when I bought my tickets to see BlacKkKlansman (2018) at the Cinerama theater downtown, I thoroughly prepared myself to be underwhelmed. Could Cinerama’s curved screen compete with the wildly immersive and exciting VR technology of present-day? How could it hold up against the dome-like scale of IMAX theaters? After all, this was groundbreaking technology for the 1950s, an invention from almost 70 years ago. And the snowballing momentum of technology has only increased tremendously since then. I prepared myself to be underwhelmed. I was ready to relish the history of the theater, even if the movie-watching experience left much to be desired.
And I was completely wrong.
I love it when I’m both wrong, and also wildly impressed. BlacKkKlansman is an electrifying, powerful, and extremely emotional film on its own. But the curved “Cinerama-esque” screen and the new Dolby Atmos audio system heightened every bit of BlacKkKlansman’s sensation. I sat in the 5th row of the theater, where the curved screen’s sheer width and size drew me into the world onscreen. Its 70 mm crispness and detail made the characters spring to life. I cannot rave enough about the Dolby Atmos audio and Meyer Sound speaker system experience enough. Candidly, it rivals if not surpasses the impressiveness of the screen. With 110 speakers placed throughout the theater, including overhead speakers installed into the theater’s iconic shimmering ceiling, this audio system allows sounds and dialogue to travel throughout the theater in multidimensional space. It felt like I was there, in Colorado during the 1970’s, somehow thrown into this mission with Ron Stallworth and Flip Zimmerman. I was floored.
I went to my local Cinemark theater a few days after the Cinerama. It was thrilling to re-realize the immersive-ness of Cinerama while sitting in the standard theater, audio barreling straight at me from speakers at the front of the theater, watching the story unfold on the narrower screen in standard aspect ratio. I still often ask myself if BlacKkKlansman would have been the same powerful, emotional, and transformative experience that it was for me had I seen it in a standard theater, let alone on my 13-inch laptop screen. I often think about the films I have seen and wonder what it would be like in the Cinerama theater: Birdman (2014)? Whiplash (2014)? Roma (2018)? Capernaum (2018)? These powerful films deserve a powerful platform.
Heightened immersion can make for some kick-ass entertainment experiences. But I like to wonder about its implications for heightened empathy. After all, isn’t this one of the superpowers of filmmaking? Films have this wildly exciting ability to induce radical empathy. They illuminate the struggles, victories, and desires of people or places that are far, far away or entirely unfamiliar. And yet, in the case of BlacKkKlansman, perhaps it has done so for a people and place that has been right under our noses this whole time.
The iconic Cinerama lived up to the hype and provided a truly breathtaking experience for this film nerd. For film lovers, this is an experience that shouldn’t be missed out on. For emotional and thoughtful films, there’s no better screen to see it on than the Cinerama.
Listen to our review of BlacKkKlansman on The Strategic Whimsy Experiment here: https://apple.co/2DH63Vv.
