Cinerama - History, Single-Film "Cinerama:" Ultra Panavision 70 and Super Panavision 70

One of the first systems of wide-screen cinema presentation in 1952, using three synchronized projectors to cover a very large curved screen in three blended panels. Its cost and complexity limited its use to showing travelogues in specially adapted theatres, and it ceased after 1962.

For the UK rock group, see Cinerama (band).

Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc, and for the corporation which was formed to market it.

The Cinerama screen is made of adjacent vertical strips, each of which faces the audience, in order to prevent light scattered from one side of the curve from impinging on the other side. (Aficionados, however, insist that the later processes were inferior.) Although one of Cinerama's single-film descendants, Ultra Panavision 70, used an anamorphic adaptor, neither three strip Cinerama or its other 65 mm descendant, Super Panavision 70, used anamorphic lenses, although 35 mm anamorphic reduction prints were produced for exhibition in theatres with anamorphic Cinemascope-compatible projection lenses.

History

Cinerama was developed by Fred Waller and Merian C.

The word "Cinerama" combines cinema with panorama, the origin of all the "-orama" neologisms. ("Cinerama" is also an anagram of "American.")

The first Cinerama film, This is Cinerama, premiered on 30 September 1952, at the Broadway Theatre in New York. (He comments on the unreliability of "numerous websites and other resources that will tell you that Cinerama had an aspect ratio of up to 3:1.")

In the theater, Cinerama projected from three projection booths shooting back in the same criss-cross pattern as the cameras. This was a big-ticket, reserved-seats spectacle, and the Cinerama projectors were usually adjusted carefully and operated skillfully.

In addition to the visual impact of the image, Cinerama was one of the first processes to use multitrack magnetic sound. The system, developed by Hazard Reeves, one of the Cinerama investors, played back from a 35 mm, 6-track (and later 7-track) sound film, through five speakers behind the screen for truly directional sound. If one of the films should break and be repaired with the damaged frames cut out, the corresponding frames would have to be cut from the other three films (the other two picture films plus the soundtrack film) in order to preserve synchronization.

Worthy of note is the special Cinerama screen, which consisted of hundreds of separate vertical strips.

During the fifties, Cinerama was presented as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs.

Although most of the films produced using the original three-strip Cinerama process were full feature length or longer, they were travelogues or collections of short subjects such as This Is Cinerama (1952), the first film shot in Cinerama. Other travelogues presented in Cinerama were Cinerama Holiday (1955), Seven Wonders of the World (1955), Search for Paradise (1957) and South Seas Adventure (1958).

Even as the Cinerama travelogues were beginning to lose audiences in the late 50s, the spectcular travelogue Windjammer (1958) was released in a competing process called Cinemiracle which claimed to have less noticeable dividing lines on the screen thanks to the reflection of the side images off of mirrors (this also allowed all three projectors to be in the same booth). Due to the small number of Cinemiracle theatres, specially converted prints of Windjammer were shown in Cinerama theatres in Cities which did not have Cinemiracle theaters, and ultimately Cinerama bought up the process. In order to make these films compatible with single film systems for later standard releases, they were shot at 24 frame/s, not the 26 frame/s of traditional Cinerama.

In 1961 and 1962 the Cooper Foundation of Lincoln, Nebraska, built three near-identical circular "super-Cinerama" theaters which were considered the finest venue to view a Cinerama film.

Single-Film "Cinerama:" Ultra Panavision 70 and Super Panavision 70

Rising costs in making three-camera wide-screen films caused Cinerama to stop making such films in their original form shortly after the first release of How the West Was Won. The use of Ultra Panavision 70 for certain scenes (such as the river raft sequence) later printed onto the three Cinerama panels, proved that a more or less satisfactory wide screen image could be photographed without the three cameras. Consequently, Cinerama discontinued the three film process, with the exception of a single theater (McVickers' Cinerama Theatre in Chicago) showing Cinerama's Russian Adventure, an American-Soviet co-production culled from footage of several Soviet films shot in the rival Soviet three-film format known as Kinopanorama in 1966.

Cinerama continued through the rest of the 1960s as a brand-name used initially with the Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process (which yielded a similar aspect ratio as the original Cinerama, although it did not simulate the 146 degree field of view.) Optically "rectified" prints and special lenses were used to project the 70 mm prints onto the curved screen. The films shot in Ultra Panavision for single lens Cinerama presentation were It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965) and Khartoum (1966).

Following the use of Ultra Panavision 70, the less wide but still spectacular Super Panavision 70 was used to film the Cinerama presentations Grand Prix (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969).

Two films were shot in the somewhat lower resolution Super Technirama 70 process for Cinerama release, these were Circus World (1964) and Custer of the West (1967). By now what was advertised as "Cinerama" was a pale reflection of the original three film process.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Cinerama name was used as a film distribution company, ironically re-issuing single strip 70 mm and 35 mm Cinemascope reduction prints of This Is Cinerama (1972).

Cinerama's premiere

Cinerama premiered on September 30, 1952.

Writing in the New York Times a few days after the system premiered, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote:

Somewhat the same sensations that the audience in Koster and Bial's Music Hall must have felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen were probably felt by the people who witnessed the first public showing of Cinerama the other night... the effect of Cinerama in this its initial display is frankly and exclusively "sensational," in the literal sense of that word.

While observing that the system "may be hailed as providing a new and valid entertainment thrill," Crowther expressed some skeptical reserve, saying "the very size and sweep of the Cinerama screen would seem to render it impractical for the story-telling techniques now employed in film....

It is unlikely that Cinerama was ever presented better than at its premiere.

Cinerama today

The Cinerama company exists today as an entity of the Pacific Theatres chain. In recent years hard work by dedicated enthusiasts has made possible showings of surviving and new Cinerama prints, notably at:

the Pictureville Cinema at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, England beginning in 1993 the New Neon Cinema in Dayton, Ohio from 1996 to 1999 the refurbished Seattle Cinerama in Seattle beginning in 1999 Pacific Theatres’ Cinerama Dome in Hollywood beginning in 2002.

In 1998, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchased Seattle's Martin Cinerama, which then underwent a major restoration/upgrade. In 1999 it reopened with a special multi-day program featuring screenings of most of the major Cinerama classics, which drew patrons from around the world.

As of 2004, the Pictureville Cinema, Martin Cinerama and Cinerama Dome continue to hold periodic screenings of three-projector Cinerama movies.

It is worth noting that the Cinerama Dome was designed for the three-projector system but never actually had it installed until recent years as it opened with the first of the single film 70 mm ersatz Cinerama films, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

A 2003 documentary, The Cinerama Adventure, took a look back at the history of the Cinerama process, as well as digitally recreating the Cinerama experience via clips of true Cinerama films (using transfers from original Cinerama prints). And Turner Entertainment (via Warner Bros.) has struck new Cinerama prints of How the West Was Won for exhibition in true Cinerama theatres around the world.

Cinerama is widely considered the most impressive wide-screen process ever to have achieved commercial success, and a process ahead of its time.

List of Cinerama features

The following feature films have been advertised as being presented "in Cinerama".

1952

This is Cinerama (3-Strip Cinerama)

1955

Cinerama Holiday (3-Strip Cinerama)

1956

Seven Wonders of the World (3-Strip Cinerama)

1957

Search for Paradise (3-Strip Cinerama)

1958

South Seas Adventure (3-Strip Cinerama) Windjammer (originally filmed in 3-strip Cinemiracle; later exhibited as Cinerama)

1962

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (3-Strip Cinerama) Holiday in Spain (aka Scent of Mystery) (originally filmed in Todd-70; converted to 3-strip Cinerama) How The West Was Won (3-strip Cinerama, although some sequences were filmed in Ultra Panavision 70)

1963

The Best of Cinerama (3-Strip Cinerama) It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (filmed in Ultra Panavision 70, presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1964

Circus World (filmed in Super Technirama 70, presented in 70 mm Cinerama) Mediterranean Holiday (filmed in MCS-70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1965

The Golden Head (filmed in Super Technirama 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only) La Fayette (filmed in Super Technirama 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only) The Story of the Flaming Years (filmed in Sovscope 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only) The Black Tulip (filmed in MCS-70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only) The Greatest Story Ever Told (filmed in Ultra Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama) The Hallelujah Trail (filmed in Ultra Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama) Battle of the Bulge (filmed in Ultra Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1966

Cinerama's Russian Adventure (filmed in Kinopanorama, presented in both 3-strip and 70 mm Cinerama) Khartoum (filmed in Ultra Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama) Grand Prix (filmed in Super Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1967

Custer of the West (filmed in Super Technirama 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1968

2001: A Space Odyssey (filmed in Super Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama) Ice Station Zebra (filmed in Super Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1969

Krakatoa, East of Java (filmed in Todd-AO; presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

1970

Song of Norway (filmed in Super Panavision 70; presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only)

1972

The Great Waltz (filmed in 35 mm Panavision, presented in 70 mm Cinerama, Europe only) This is Cinerama (original 1952 3-strip production presented in 70 mm Cinerama)

"Cinerama" video stretching mode

RCA uses the word "Cinerama" to refer to a display mode which fills a 16:9 video screen with 4:3 video with, in the words of the manufacturer, "little distortion."

There is no obvious connection between this video mode and any of the Cinerama motion picture processes.

In the U.S., RCA does not appear to have registered the word "Cinerama" as a trademark;