This is Cinerama!

  Long before Imax, there was Cinerama! A 146 degree curved screen featuring seven speaker surround sound with some screens reaching 100 feet wide and 30 feet high way back in 1952? Believe it.    

  Those of us old enough to remember pre-1994 Denver may recall the Cooper on Colorado Boulevard, one of the original three Cinerama theaters built from the ground up in the US in 1961.


    Cinerama was the brainchild of Fred Waller, an inventor and visionary who sought to create an irreproducable cinematic experience to rival the growing influence of television. Three 35mm projectors running simultaneously projected a full 146 degree arc on a curved screen in a close approximation of the human range of vision, including peripheral vision. Seven speakers, five behind the screen, two on the sides and back, delivered immersive sound to the audience (a sound engineer was required to monitor and adjust levels during the shows). 

When This is Cinerama premiered in New York in September 1954, audiences screamed in fear at the first person perspective roller coaster ride.

 The technical difficulties of the medium are clear. The three projectors displaying the film had to be run in sync, and any frames lost from a print had to be replaced by by black slugs, or the same frames had to be removed from the other two prints, so all three would remain in sync. Where the projectors overlapped, a small vertical band of distortion was visible. Scenes were often composed with a tree or other vertical object in these areas, and actors were carefully staged away from them.
  Filming in Cinerama was likewise challenging. Three cameras sharing a single shutter were used, arranged in the same overlapping arcs as the projection system. Closeups would show bends where the images joined, and actors talking in the same shot appeared to be looking past each other. The latter problem was solved by the actors facing a cue when delivering their lines, rather than the person they were supposed to be talking to.
 Despite the initial excitement about Cinerama, few films were made, and profits were minimal or non-existent. How the West was Won in 1963 was the last film produced in true Cinerama. Movies advertised as “Cinerama” were still made through the early 1970’s, but they were filmed and projected in some single camera/projector variation of 70mm.

  Almost no Cinerama theaters are standing today. Beloved icon of my childhood film viewing, Denver’s Cooper, was knocked down in 1994 to make way for a Barnes and Noble.  
 

  However, August 2012 saw the long-awaited Blu-Ray release of This is Cinerama, a travelogue style documentary and the first film shot and displayed in three camera/projector Cinerama, so modern audiences can still get at least a glimpse of this intriguing bit of film history.