setting up an independent cinema (1 Viewer)

Froog

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just pondering the feasibility of this. if you found a cheap old warehouse or something, did it up a bit, dvd project old films on a big white sheet with a decent sound system, is it doable/profitable? how much is it to rent dvd's to project legally? if i knew of a place that played all sorts of old films that we never got to see in the cinema i would be there all the time, star wars, back to the future, or even episodes of the wire or twin peaks. would you?
 
With a lot of planning, it could be a workable idea.
People often say they want to see classic films in the cinema, but when you put one on during the week, no one shows - TV, being tired, annoying girlfriends etc. - and at the weekend everyone's in the pub.
I see these being your biggest problems.

Anyone remember this from a few years ago?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/filmnews.france

In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema


  • Jon Henley in Paris
  • The Guardian,
  • Wednesday 8 September 2004 10.42
    APcatacombs3.jpg
Them bones, them bones: Les Catacombes, part of the miles of tunnels underlying Paris. Photo: AP

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.
"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said.
"There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
The miles of tunnels and catacombs underlying Paris are essentially former quarries, dating from Roman times, from which much of the stone was dug to build the city.
Today, visitors can take guided tours around a tightly restricted section, Les Catacombes, where the remains of up to six million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the late 1700s.
But since 1955, for security reasons, it has been an offence to "penetrate into or circulate within" the rest of the network.
There exist, however, several secretive bands of so-called cataphiles, who gain access to the tunnels mainly after dark, through drains and ventilation shafts, and hold what in the popular imagination have become drunken orgies but are, by all accounts, innocent underground picnics.
The recent discovery of three newly enlarged tunnels underneath the capital's high-security La Santé prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, iden tifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work.
Patrick Alk, a photographer who has published a book on the urban underground exploration movement and claims to be close to the group, told RTL radio the cavern's discovery was "a shame, but not the end of the world". There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.
"You guys have no idea what's down there."
 
Getting licenced films for showing is crazy expensive.. I remember checking it out and it's about €250 for some DVD's and they're just bog standard arthouse films. Access Cinema has a lot of info on this for Irish local places..

http://www.accesscinema.ie/

access>CINEMA is the resource organisation for regional cultural cinema exhibition in Ireland. Our core activity is booking and despatching films, on both 35mm and DVD on behalf of our member groups.
 
We talked about doing something like this in our practice space, we have a big room that we pretty much just use for storage, if you're interested in tryin to get it started there send me a pm
 
What are your ambitions for the quality of the viewing experience? You could get some dvds and a sheet in a warehouse and project, but it would probably be rubbish.

To do it right you need that decent sound system, an expensive projector (you can do it digitally quite well), a better source than a dvd (probably a computer of some sort, ready to play the right kind of files), the proper space - acoustics, viewing angles all worked out. Also, the screen in a cinema isn't just a sheet, it's either a matte ridged synthetic cloth to prevent halation, or silvered, ridged cloth for maximum reflectivity (though the latter is usually for 3d and such).

Then distribution...for old stuff it should be easier, but then you may have trouble getting digital cinema distribution packages from distributors without some kind of deal - which would mean going back to dvds.

It's all doable, it's just a question of how far you're willing to go.
 
I'm surprised you say dvds wouldn't cut the mustard.Whats better than a Dvd?
 
Blurays or HD files would be best. Film reels would be even better but that's pretty expensive to set up. A DVD stretched over a big screen gets pretty ropey looking unless it's a really really well made DVD.
 
Yeah, bluray could work, but it's not ideal. A friend of mine had a projection setup in his flat connected to bluray that worked nicely. Film, as gambra says would be expensive - a good set of projectors (you need more than one) and trained people to work it cost a lot. Then you pay distribution costs for the reels, and that can be exorbitant.

Digital cinema projections typically run from a server, or a dedicated playback unit of some kind that plays a series of still images encoded to a very high standard. This can be replaced with a standard pc with swift drives. I've seen some very good, small setups in post-production houses that are very impressive and doable for the relatively low-cost cinema. However, "relative" is the operative word, since it's still pretty pricey.
 
Sounds complicated enough when you put it like that.
 
€50 to rent a projector.I've been looking into it.A backyard movie show would be flipping stunning for the kids especially but I've identified a problem.Unreliable weather.
 

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