One More Reason Arclight is Amazing

Friday, October 28, 2005, at 08:24AM

By Eric Richardson

Tonight Kathy and I are headed up to Hollywood to see How the West Was Won at the Arclight. The film is a restored print screening in the original 3-strip Cinerama format.

Now, likely you've never or only vaguely heard of Cinerama. I knew it was a 3-strip process (meaning three film strips -- three cameras & three projectors), but that was about it. A couple articles I read since buying the tickets really left me amazed at the process. This piece written by a USC film grad gets into some technical details, while this 20 year old piece from in70mm gets into some amazing shooting details from this particular film. I found this particularly fascinating:

"During early tests of the Cinerama camera, it was glaringly apparent that the huge format revealed fine detail to an extent no one could have imagined. Machine-sewn costumes were reassembled by hand and thousands of yards of authentic homespun were ordered from India. Fifteen hundred pairs of moccasins arrived from Indian reservations across the country, and an entire studio department was created to handcraft 2300 pairs of period shoes."

It will probably help to see a diagram of how the camera works. The whole setup with three lenses and a single shutter is crazy to think about, but yet it's actually a cool solution.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to say after seeing the film tonight.