As the James Bridges Theater opens its doors Wednesday for this
fall’s public screenings, patrons will experience the
luxuries of a massive renovation project that brought the
theater’s sound system up to the standards of a
state-of-the-art movie theater.
The project, which took 18 months of planning, was the
theater’s first major renovation since 1976. With the
outdated mono sound replaced by an industry-standard digital system
and restored seats, carpet and walls, the theater staff expects the
overhaul to do proper justice to the films they screen. They also
hope it will encourage studios to sneak preview more films on
campus.
“We basically realized that we couldn’t keep going
with the mono-sound or the antiquated look,” said Director of
Operations Chris Coppel. “Now it doesn’t look like the
same theater at all ““ or sound like it.”
To help fund the project, which on its own would have cost over
$750,000, Coppel acquired donations from DTS, Dolby, THX, QSC Audio
and JBL. With contributing aid in the form of equipment, discounts
and services, the renovation cost less than a quarter of the final
estimate.
The sound upgrades are even visible to the naked eye. While the
theater previously had one speaker behind the screen distributing
sound down the middle of the room, the new acoustic design includes
24 surround speakers, five towers behind the screen and two
subwoofers. After the theater’s first official sound test
Tuesday, senior studio projectionist Steve Perlmutter compared the
James Bridges’ new capabilities to those of the theater at
the Director’s Guild of America.
“I work (at the DGA) too, so I know that sound
system,” he said. “And our picture’s always been
better than the DGA’s, so the (sound upgrade) was long
awaited.”
Despite the delay, chief studio projectionist Jess Daily sees
some benefits for the late technological update. Since the 1970s,
studios have changed their sound standards and phased out older
ones. And since the James Bridges programmers choose their films
based on their content as opposed to the theater’s
technological capabilities, this quick summer overhaul will likely
tide James Bridges’ patrons over for a long period of
time.
“I’ve been pushing for this for 20 years,”
Daily said. “But I’m glad we did it now, because if we
did it in the ’80s we’d have to redo the system for
digital again.”
The Melnitz Movies fall schedule will be posted today at
http://gsa.asucla.ucla.edu/melnitz/. Visit
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/ for information on the UCLA Film and
Television Archive’s upcoming season.