Projection Booth

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Our tour of the Loew’s will bring you to an area of the Theatre that most patrons never get to see: the projection booth.

But the booth was not in such good condition when we began working in the Loew’s. This view shows the booth as we first saw it. It had been stripped of its equipment. A window had been left open, and pigeons were roosting. Leaks had damaged the walls.

All of the repair work was performed by volunteers, and all of the new equipment was donated

This is Robert Eberenz, an Academy Award-winning engineer and technician he is also the Theatre’s Chief Technical Director.

He rebuilt the 1950s era carbon arc lamphouses you see here. (They had been found on the stage.)

These units don’t use light bulbs to generate the bright light needed to shine through the film and project onto the screen. Instead, DC electricity is used to burn a carbon rod (or arc) in a way very similar to a welding torch. The light from the burning arc is concentrated and reflected by the parabolic mirror shown here.

This light source is very intense and very white. Many people believe that the light of the carbon arc makes movie images sharper and brighter than the light from any bulb.

Mr. Eberenz secured the donation of two new studio grade projectors to work with the restored carbon arc lamphouses.

We also secured from a private collector a 16-millimeter projector (pictured at left), which will come in useful for film students who wish to show off their work outside the classroom.

A vintage Vitaphone projector has also been donated to the Loew’s. Vitaphone equipment was the first form of practical motion picture projection to include sound and was installed in the Loew’s projection booth when the Theatre opened. Vitaphone worked by having a large wax record playing in sync with the film; this system was called “sound on disk.” It’s said that a good Vitaphone projectionist was expert at nudging the phonograph stylus along so as to keep it in sync with the moving image.

Note the turntable in the photo. Within a few years of the Theatre’s opening, an alternate to the sound on disk system was developed that put the soundtrack of a movie on an optical strip next to the pictures on the film itself.

Called “sound on film,” this system proved superior to the old Vitaphone equipment, and was the movie industry standard until it was replaced by a magnetic strip in the 1950s, which has only recently been phased out by the introduction of digital sound and, even more recently, digital imagery.

Bob Eberenz is equipping the Vitaphone projector in the Loew's with a dual projection head so that the machine can be used both for presenting archival Vitaphone films as well as movies using the standard sound on film format. Interestingly, the Loew's will be the only restored Movie Palace to be equipped to show Vitaphone films in their original format.

These machines do not project movie images, but instead are early special effects projectors call Brenographs. They were used to project color dissolves, the image of snow and rain falling, the words and accompanying “bouncing ball” for audience sing-alongs, and other special effects. These units have been in the Loew’s projection booth since the Theatre was opened. Time and neglect, however, have left them in poor repair. But FOL is committed to their ultimate restoration.

In this photo, Mr. Eberenz is seen in the distance installing Dolby sound equipment. The Loew’s booth is also equipped with Altec vacuum tube amplification equipment and with Perspecta Stereophonic sound, a three-track directional sound system developed in the 1950s. Mr. Eberenz has also installed interlocks necesary for dual-projection polarized 3D presentations. All this is part of FOL’s goal to be able to present classic films in their original formats.

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