{"id":229,"date":"2016-04-14T10:58:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T14:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/04\/14\/hollywoods-big-new-technology-is-90-years-old\/"},"modified":"2016-04-14T10:58:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T14:58:00","slug":"hollywoods-big-new-technology-is-90-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2016\/04\/14\/hollywoods-big-new-technology-is-90-years-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood&#8217;s big new technology is 90 years old"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As movie theaters search for new technology to drag people into theaters, the latest promise comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/4\/13\/11424138\/star-trek-beyond-barco-escape-jj-abrams-ben-rosenblatt\">Barco Escape, a three-screen technology<\/a> designed for &#8220;immersive cinema&#8221; with a panoramic view or, potentially, action on three different screens at once.<\/p>\n<p>But as Dennis Duffy once said, technology is cyclical. These ideas have come up before \u2013 in spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the 50s, the Cinerama format had a similar concept, using three projectors on a wide-angled screen to create a broader picture. The technique seemed so unusual at the time that the first Cinemera film, <i>This Is Cinerama<\/i>, is basically a commercial for the format; it opens with an educational lecture about the history of film to prepare viewers for what will come next. Flicker Alley released <i>This Is Cinerama<\/i> on Blu-ray a few years ago, complete with a fake curved screen. (Available from the AU Library under <a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=12382794\">HU BLU 10798<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Other movies have used multiple projectors to show several scenes at once, maybe none more famously than the 1927 silent film <i>Napoleon<\/i>. The 5-hour-long behemoth of a movie includes a sequence with three different projectors running at once. Because of the changing size of the screen and length, <i>Napoleon<\/i> is nearly impossible to watch correctly at home. You&#8217;ll have to catch one of the rare theatrical screenings, held only 14 times since the 1930s. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theartsshelf.com\/2016\/01\/28\/abel-gances-napoleon-to-receive-nationwide-theatrical-and-home-entertainment-releases\/\">A Blu-ray will also come out later this year<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe, if Barco Escape catches on, you can watch <i>Napeleon<\/i> there. Everything old is new again!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As movie theaters search for new technology to drag people into theaters, the latest promise comes from Barco Escape, a three-screen technology designed for &#8220;immersive cinema&#8221; with a panoramic view or, potentially, action on three different screens at once. But as Dennis Duffy once said, technology is cyclical. These ideas have come up before \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,377],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-inevitable-march-of-time","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}