Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Updated: 10/28/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 03/31/08.
PETER APRUZZESE
The Lafayette Theater's website can be accessed through: http://www.bigscreenclassics.com/.
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: February 14, 2004.
Meeting Site: Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 31.
Meeting Program: Talk by Movie Theater Film Programmer.
Notes:
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter Account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2004 Philip J De Parto:
The February 14, 2004 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the Bergen Highlands United Methodist Church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Peter Apruzzese, the Director of Film Programming for the Lafayette Theater in Suffern, New York, was the evening's speaker.
The Final Frontier and our Anime Associates groups met before the main event. Barry Weinberger lead a discussion fo filmed adaptations of the works of J R R Tolkien for the former, while Charles Garofalo screened an anime version of DRACULA for the latter.
The Lafayette Theater is a classic movie palace dating back to the 1920's and seats 1000 people. The current management took over the theater in 2002 and has refurbished the building and broadened the film program. It still serves as a first run neighborhood movie hall, but it also shows a wide variety of movie classics and smaller niche films. A list of upcoming programs can be found at their website, http://www.bigscreenclassics.com.
The first part of the talk consisted of a discussion of the nature of 3-D film technology. There are basically two ways to do this. The most widely used approach is to impose two images on one film print. The viewer wears a set of glasses--one side tinted red, the other side, blue--to decode the double exposure into a 3-D image.
The other process is to use polarized glasses. With this technology, two slightly different film prints are synchronized and broadcast together. The glasses enable the brain to resolve the set of two two-dimensional images into one three-dimensional picture.
A highly successful 3-D film extravaganza in California last year has provided an impetus to revive this technology. Both the Lafayette Theater and the New York City Film Forum are gearing up to present 3-D festivals. Fortunately, the technology of movie projectors is essentially unchanged for the past 80 years, so theaters do not have to make a major investment of money to show these flicks. A feature length 3-D film using the polarized process will always have an intermission because two projectors have to be running simultaneously instead of sequentially to create the 3-D effect.
There was a lot of discussion on the economics of operating a movie house and how things have changed over the years as well as discussions of a variety of "gimmick" movie technologies and upcoming films on the theater's schedule.
Thanks to all who helped with the set up, clean up, etc, and to Barry Weinberger for showing the LOTR Easter Eggs after the meeting.