Memories of the Projection Room

A local resident who used to work in the Regal as a projectionist brought this fantastic picture in to us and we wanted to share it with you.

It's a photograph of the projection room at the Regal in its early years. The two projectors in the picture are the original Kalee 11s which were in place at the cinema's opening in July 1937.

Some of those original features are still in the projection room today, most notably the fire shutters on the far wall. We've even still got one of those tall chairs, especially tall so that the projectionist could see down into the auditorium through the high portal you can see next to where the projectionist is standing in the photograph.

We've been recording the memories of people who have worked in and visited the Regal over the years. These audio recordings will be available on our interactive website soon at www.regaltenbury.org.uk and we're also in the process of transcribing some of them as well. A few of the people we've interviewed so far have been those who used to work as projectionists, and we thought this blog post would be a great place to share some of those little snippets about life in the projection room.

Once the films arrived, usually Monday or Tuesday, you'd go down to the cinema, and you had to take the films out of the transport cans and put them onto the spools, the projection spools, and what you were doing was to check them over to make sure that they were alright. Because the distributor would send a running sheet down with the films telling you that they'd checked them and they were all satisfactory... but you never took their word for it.

- David Griffiths

The projectors in the photograph were 'carbon arc' projectors, which meant that instead of having a bulb in them to generator light as more modern projectors do, they actually burnt carbon inside them which gave off a bright light. This is one of the reasons that projection was such a dangerous occupation - that, and the very flammable nitrate film that was used, which has been known to spontaneously combust from only the friction of moving through the projector!

Tom Dallow tells us a little about the carbon arc projectors that he worked with at the Regal;

The thing with carbons... if you let them burn too far apart, they'd go out. But if they burn too close together, the picture would go brown! So, then there used to be some fun and games if you hadn't put enough carbon in there because you'd got to get your hands in the archouse, open it up, tap them up a little bit more with something so that it'd last... they've been out many a night.

- Tom Dallow

We hope you've enjoyed this brief journey into the projection room of years gone by! We'll share some more memories of the Regal over the summer. If you've got any photographs of the Regal that we could feature here, please do let us know!

Object of the Week 6: Revealed

Congratulations to Steve on twitter who recognised the shutters in the projection room and guessed at a use for fire prevention!
The picture was indeed of a black shutter from the projection room. You can see a wider angled shot of it here:

There are four windows which look from the projector room down into the auditorium, two for each of the two original projectors. They're set at different heights because the lower one was for the projector to shine through and the higher one for the projectionist to look down into the auditorium and check how the screening was progressing. In early cinema, the quality of the film projection depended very much on the skill of the projectionist. There were many different things that could go wrong with a film, from the speed of the film to the brightness of the light, even the colour of the light in the early days, so it was important that the projectionist had a good view of what the audience were seeing so that they could fix anything that was wrong.
Each of the four windows into the auditorium has its own shutter, branded 'Kalee' - Gaumont Kalee made the original projectors that were installed in the projection room of the Regal in 1937. They are all attached to the horizontal bar you can see in this picture:

And what were they for? Well, they had various uses, but their main purpose was to act as a fire break between the projector room and the auditorium. Early film was very flammable; the fumes were toxic and the fires very hard to put out. It wasn't unusual for film to heat up travelling through the projector and catch fire.
If that happened, the projectionists could pull a lever which would immediately drop the four shutters, which are heavy iron slabs, down in front of the windows to stop the smoke from entering the auditorium for long enough for the public to be evacuated. The wires which connect the shutters to the top bar also contained a metal with a low melting point, so that if the fire had incapacitated the projectionists or they hadn't noticed, the wires would melt and the shutters would come down automatically.
Down in the auditorium, there is a handle which connects to the horizontal bar. It is next to the usher's seats at the back, so that in case of an emergency, the ushers could release the shutters and effectively stop the film's projection.

Have a look for it the next time you're in the auditorium! If you ask one of the staff or volunteers, they should be able to point it out for you.

We hope you enjoyed this week's mystery object! A mystery film will be up on Friday...

Object of the Week 6

Happy Friday everyone!

We've got another object from in situ at the cinema for you to guess at today. You might recognise the picture, but do you know what it was used for?

Happy guessing! Remember, you can submit your answers through the comments here on the blog, or over on our facebook page, or on twitter. We'll have the answer up early next week.

Object of the Week 5: Revealed!

Just the one guess this week, but one that was spot on! Steve on the blog correctly identified the mystery equipment as being a sound amplifier. By the time the Regal opened in 1937, the most widely accepted type of soundtracks for film were included on the film itself, rather than on a record that was played alongside the film.

Here are a couple of close photos of the switches. The word 'Duosonic' referred to the sound input coming from both of the projectors; you can see the switch at the top of the left-hand picture, which was used to swap the sound input from the left to the right projector as you changed reels. The right-hand photo shows the model name of the amplifier.

The projectors and the sound equipment fitted into the cinema originally were of Gaumont-Kalee manufacture. Although we don't know exactly when this amplifier was fitted into the cinema, we know it was in use by 1951. The wear marks on the top of the amplifier are a particularly nice reminder of the many times a projectionist has leant onto the box during a show.

The short video below is a promotional film reel which would have played in cinemas using Gaumont-Kalee equipment; it may have played at the Regal.

We hope you enjoyed this week's mystery object, the last of 2011! There'll be a mystery film to last you over the Christmas break and we'll be back again with more objects from the Regal in the New  Year.

Object of the Week 5

Another in-situ object today. I think this is probably one of those 'you either know it or you don't' type of objects, but we'll see how well you all do!

I know it looks a bit like a vending machine, but I promise you it isn't! What do you think it is?

Guesses anytime between now and about midday on Monday, either through facebook, twitter or the blog comments here.

Happy guessing!

Object of the Week 4: Revealed

We had some excellent thoughts this week on what that mystery record was all about. Well done to Ian and Stephen on twitter and Kate on the blog for knowing that it was a record and making some good guesses as to its use.

No-one quite managed to guess the real story behind the record though, so here goes!

The record lives in a cabinet in the projector room, which has this fantastic notice on it:



That's right - the record was the fire alarm! A lot of early cinemas weren't fitted with fire alarms for fear that it would panic the audience if it went off. At the Regal, staff would be made aware of a fire by the playing of 'Going Home' from the film 'Local Hero' across the cinema's audio system. We're not sure what happened before the release of Local Hero, or whether they had a back-up song for when Local Hero was showing that week!



As you can see from the picture above, the record was a special cinema release. Cinemas were sent music from films by the film distributors to play before and after the presentation reel, to set the mood for the films and, we suppose, to act as some kind of advertising.

Film soundtracks were (and still are in some cases) read on an optical track from the film itself. After Christmas I'll put up a blog post all about film soundtracks, for those of you who are interested!

Back to the fire alarm; you'll all be glad to know that the Regal does have a proper fire alarm these days, with flashing red lights and noisy sirens. The record still lives in the cabinet though, just in case.

We hope you enjoyed this week's mystery object; this Friday we'll have a Christmassy mystery film for you to guess!

Object of the Week 4

This week we've got a photograph of an object in-situ at the cinema for you.

This might seem like an odd choice of object, but there is a story behind it! Guess away and see if you can figure it out.

We'll post up the answer on Monday.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Object of the Week 3: Revealed!

We've had lots of correct guesses this week from all over the web, so well done to TC from Artrix, Stephen and Ian on twitter, David on facebook and Beaver on the blog, all of whom knew it was a film splicing machine, for joining together pieces of film. Or, as TC put it: "It's a splicy film reel fixy togethery machine!"

This is another picture of it, this time with the handle lifted up. You can see the little notches in the centre of the plate; these would have allowed the projectionist to perfectly align the two pieces of film so that the join was straight. The roll on the right hand side of the picture is tape, very much like sellotape but designed specially for sticking film together. 

Tools like these are still used in cinemas that show film on projectors. This one was still being used to join together film reels in the Regal right up until the closure for restoration.

Thanks to everyone who took part; we'll have another mystery film for you to mull over this weekend.

Object of the Week 3: Return of the Object

Welcome to another addition of Object of the Week. We've found some pretty cool things whilst we were taking everything out of the Regal to prepare the building for the restoration work, so every other Friday I hope to be able to show you something from the cinema and give you the weekend to figure out what it is. On Monday I'll let you know the answer. Feel free to post your guesses in the comments here, or send them via twitter. Correct guessers will be appropriately praised in Monday's post!


Here's this week's object. Lots of possibilities here, I think... looking forward to hearing your ideas.

What is it?

If you've not yet added your voice to our survey of film history then now is the time to do so. By answering four very quick questions you can help us to shape the exhibition in the Regal. What are you waiting for? Go do it now!

Object of the Week 2: Revealed

Thank you to everyone who took part in this week's object of the week!

Credit for the correct answer goes to Stephen on Facebook and Miles on Twitter, who guessed that it is indeed an ash tray. Consolation prizes to those who thought it was a drawer handle; it certainly looks like one!

Smoking in cinemas used to be considered completely normal, despite the issues to projection that the smoke hovering in the auditorium must have caused. It was one of the reasons that ventilation was built into the cinema; you can see ventilation grilles in the Regal still today.

There's still a little evidence in the cinema of these lost artefacts. Check out this photograph of the radiators on the wooden partition in the middle of the auditorium:



That's an ash tray just like the one in this week's challenge! Only that one is a bit squashed, obviously. There are two still in situ in the cinema, one on each of the sides of the auditorium. None survive in the middle section, as there are no radiators there to protect them. Originally, ash trays would have been found on the back of every seat.

We hope you enjoyed this week's object of the week. There will be another a week on Friday; this Friday's challenge will be another guess-the-film.

Also coming up this week on the blog we'll have the first of the photographs from inside the cinema during the restoration work. Things are beginning to change inside...

Object of the Week 2: The Sequel

Welcome to another addition of Object of the Week. We've found some pretty cool things whilst we were taking everything out of the Regal to prepare the building for the restoration work, so every other Friday I hope to be able to show you something from the cinema and give you the weekend to figure out what it is. On Monday I'll let you know the answer! Feel free to post your guesses in the comments here, or send them via twitter. Correct guessers will be appropriately praised in Monday's post!

Here's this week's offering. We've got a few of these. They're an interesting shape.

What is it?

If you've not yet added your voice to our survey of film history then now is the time to do so. By answering four very quick questions you can help us to shape the exhibition in the Regal. What are you waiting for? Go do it now!

Object of the Week: Revealed!

Well, we didn't have any online guesses this week but I'm hoping you were all playing along at home.

If you guessed that our mystery object was a projector lens then congratulations! You can give yourself a pat on the back. That fabulously sci-fi-looking piece of equipment was indeed one of many projector lenses that we've got in store now. Some of them don't belong to the current projector, but to previous projectors from the cinema.

You might be wondering why a projector needs lots of different lenses anyway. Different types of film, such as widescreen and cinemascope, need different shaped lenses to make sure that the image on the film looks correct up on the screen. The projectionist would be responsible for making sure that the right lens was on the projector before the film started; sometimes this meant swapping the lenses over after the adverts before the feature film started!

We'll have another 'object of the week' up on Friday next week.

Welcome to... Object of the Week!

We've found some pretty cool things whilst we were taking everything out of the Regal to prepare the building for the restoration work. Every other Friday, I hope to be able to show you something from the cinema and give you the weekend to figure out what it is. On Monday I'll let you know the answer! Feel free to post your guesses in the comments here, or send them via twitter.

There are no prizes at the moment I'm afraid, other than the satisfaction of knowing you got it right, but I will announce the names of everyone who guesses correctly here on the blog, unless you ask me not to.

Some weeks will be harder than others. We're starting off with something fairly easy, since it's our first week...

So... it's not one of WALL-E's eyes, and it's not a part of R2-D2.

What is it?