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A brief look at of some of the trust's recent activities.
Mike Astley working on a ​Cinemeccanica V5 for a new screening room in Wakefield. The pictures show the V5 with just an analogue reader, then Mike assembling the digital reader on the bench and finally fitting it to the machine. The machine will be on long term loan.
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Installing a new sound system in the Picture House Keighley ready for an up and coming premiere in July. The photos show the speaker kit (stage and surrounds) ready for shipment, Allan Foster checking out one of the power amplifiers, a shot of the auditorium where they are going, the new centre channel in place, the old Westrex centre channel pulled out of the way, the new sub driver fitted in the old cabinet before placing in an upright position, the new power amp rack sited below the original sound rack which now only houses the cinema processors and non synch. equipmen, blanking panels yet to be fitted and Dion aligning the new sub woofer. The cinema owner is Charles Morris of Northern Morris Cinemas, a PPT life member we are helping out.
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Urban-Smith Kinemacolor projector now back home on display in the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum in Birkenhead following restoration by the PPT in Elstree.
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A 20,000 sq ft sound stage enclosure was constructed close to the
Dreamland ex-cinema for filming of Empire of Light by director Sam Mendes whose
work includes two James Bond films, Skyfall and Spectre. The film stars Olivia
Colman and Micheal Ward and revolves around an old cinema in the 1980s.
Dreamland had new temporary signs erected for the film showing the
cinema as the Empire, and, with filming completed, these were removed and the original signs reinstated.
PPT member Brian Smith-Stewart took these photos.
Bob Mandry writes
I started
collecting cinema equipment plates after my first visit to the Cinema Museum in
2018. Ronald Grant had two boards full of incredible plates that brought back
memories of my youth working at the Ritz and Odeon in Southend.
It was a very
modest affair for the first year as I scoured Ebay and other places for new
additions but as I became more involved with the PPT, Cinema Museum and the CTA
other sources of material presented themselves. People like Nigel Wollard and
Alex Cooper have been very helpful in assisting me with several of these items
but others have come from as far away as the USA. Thus the door to my office
has gone from very humble beginnings with a lot of duplication to the present
state where I am approaching full capacity and only two items duplicated.
There are
plenty of items I would like to place on the door if they can be located but I
am now having to think what provision to make when the door is full. I do have
one or two items that do not fit on the door such as a Peerless Magnarc nameplate for which I have made a small
lightbox to display it. A lot of the items I am searching for will fit on
easily such as the badges for Brenkert, Walturdaw 5, Ross GC and DP70 mechs, a
Vulcan Arc nameplate and a Duosonic Cabinet badge. However the white back plates
from Lightmaster and President Arc lamps
will need to be displayed elsewhere - and who knows what else might turn up
apart from these items!
If you can
help Bob with his search for badges please email him at bm@theppt.org
Click on any image to enlarge:
PPT member Fred Fullerton has produced a large number of videos over the years and we are grateful to Fred for allowing us to feature many of them here.
Visit Fred's pageThese specials are versions of our Rewind magazine covering selected subjects produced for online viewing.
Click on an image to view/download. Not all browsers display pdf files correctly. You may prefer to download files and view in Adobe Acrobat viewer (downloadable here).
David has provided a large number of articles, on a variety of subjects, for the PPT and the collection can be discovered by clicking the button.
Film projection has a long and storied history. There is a romance
to film projection that is not shared with its contemporary
replacement Digital Cinema–the idea that there is someone in a
darkened booth cleaning and lacing the projector, changing reels
and keeping an experienced eye on the focus and sound levels is a
reassuring throwback to times gone by. Indeed, it took the cinema
industry longer than most other entertainment industries to embrace digital technologies, but when, in the mid 2000s it finally
did, the change from film to digital projection was rapid and in the
space of five years digital cinema dominated the industry.
The Independent Cinema Office (one of the websites featured on our Other websites page) has published a booklet giving an overview of film projection. It was written by Dominic Simmons, and photographed by Alexa Raisbeck and Dominic Simmons.
The booklet can be viewed on the ICO website or viewed directly here.
Click on a sponsor to visit their website
Our listing of other websites has been expanded to contain more websites and more information and now has its own page.
Other websites
