While shooting films on 70 mm became less common from the '80s onward, there are still many titles that were blown up to 70 mm for a better picture and six-track magnetic sound.
Judge recalls that naysayers told him, "This is pointless, you’ll never find prints to run, it’s a dead format." Last year, the Somerville ran several 70 mm screenings to troubleshoot glitches and now, Judge says, “We can run virtually every format ever made with rare exceptions.” As an example, there are 10 different sound formats for 70 mm alone. Tweaking sound capability, including finding and installing processors, was far more complicated. Judge says that Boston Light & Sound helped him track down a pair of Norelco DP-70s from the home of film restorationist Robert Harris about a decade ago. They’ve been plotting ways to screen 70 mm ever since.įirst they needed projectors. He says Ian Judge, the Somerville's director of operations and programmer, pulled him out of retirement in 2004 (about two years after Judge took the reins). Most don't exist anymore,” Kornfeld says of a projectionist career that started in 1978 and fizzled out as systems became automated, unions broke down and, in his opinion, quality control disappeared. Putting together a festival that celebrates all that widescreen formats can offer has been a dream of his for at least a dozen years. But he didn’t do it alone. You can spend a lifetime and still learn something.” “Film stocks, projectors, cameras, lenses, special effects, the history of sound … it goes on and on,” he says. Kornfeld is die-hard about film tech history, with a rabid fondness for 70 mm in particular. 70 mm film as seen at Boston Light and Sound.
It’s a first for the theater, as well as the region, and the showings will take place from Friday, Sept. “You should not miss these.”īoth classics will screen in 70 mm along with 14 other films as part of the Somerville’s 70 mm & Widescreen Festival. “The 70 mm frame is bigger than your iPhone!” Kornfeld points out, referring to the size of the image on a film print. So says David Kornfeld, the head projectionist at the Somerville Theatre. From left to right in a jam-packed movie palace, that is, not toward a tiny personal screen.Īnd unless you’ve seen them in 70 mm - the most robust of all motion picture film formats, popularized in the late '50s and '60s to lure people away from TV - you haven’t seen them at all. They were shot to wow audiences with a picture so enormous it would literally turn heads. When you think of widescreen cinema there’s a good chance “Lawrence of Arabia” or “2001: A Space Odyssey” come to mind. (Amy Gorel for WBUR) This article is more than 6 years old. Somerville Theatre presents the 70mm and Widescreen Festival starting Friday, Sept.
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