Cinema

Start here 😉

ouch

ouch is right…jeez blue. go easy. we are here to help and further the growth of knowledge of architecture through discussion but if a student needs a wee bit of help starting off then why shouldn’t he/she ask people who are in the profession for help. i would call that Initiative rather than laziness.
now, amir! u can start with acoustics and work from there. and please don’t have it a box like here and in britain..well the new ones anyway. horrible k******n wall paneled box (i read a previous thread and amn’t going to name products):D sorry paul only taking the piss 😉 …. but they are horrible, functional but shite. their is a lovely one being built in galway now designed by douglas wallace. i will source a pic tomorrow.

There’s a lot to be said for having the cinema as an architectural flight of fancy – going to a movie is afterall an escape from reality. The designers of the old fashioned “atmospherics” understood this. Unfortunetly now, cinemas are a little more utilitarian.

they are brutal aren’t they…cheap and un-cheerful…bloody disgrace

Good luck.

There is a relatively recent book called “Cinema Designers” which feature mostly recent american multiplexes. It was / is on sale in Chapters Books in Abbey St Dublin.

However the best books on cinema design are probably from the 1930’s, there is for example a book by P Morton Shand (called Cinema Buildings or similar, the exact name escapes me at present) long out of print but in some Irish University Libraries.

Have a look also at the website of the US Theatre Historical Society, which links to a book section on Amazon .Com

What do people think of the one in Stillorgan…. at least they had the grace to give the ceiling a bit of height there…. and the one in Parnell Street now…. has a pretty acceptable bar upstairs I think… at least now you can go to the cinema, and if you are way too early…. you can have a drink etc, and not feel like you are ‘justing standing’ around hoping that some bum doesn’t approach you….

We’re forgetting the IFI in Temple Bar. While not a major fan of the circulation areas (they have worn quite poorly in my view), I quite like the actual theatres – mind you they’re not really modern cinemas, rather old spaces converted….

Much harder to design a new cinema from scratch that is different from the black box…

On that very point Paul, I noticed on lately, that the IFI also hosted ‘a very hidden kind of institution’….. the only ‘give away’ is the little windows visible from the courtyard… up at the very top…. you will notice from this vantage there is actually a whole office space, or other institution operating out of that high up tier in the complex…. which while it benefits from views down into the courtyard… the actual public are never really conscious of its presence up there near the rafters…. a bit like that ‘hidden private garden’ idea you often mention…. but a different kinda slant on it.

This is usual nowadays, since we have become just so accustomed to this ‘trumpet blast’ IDA big symbolic Leopardstown office park,…. which has all kinds of trees and scrubs around it… but you cannot walk next or near it, owing to the security ‘goons’ who will come out and ‘rugby tackle’ you if they feel like it. I mean, here is a classic instance of an Irish Film Institution which doesn’t have the mandatory slick curtain wall details and the half acre of green lush prime development land as its front garden….

I could also imagine that the IFI people actually hold their ‘conference meetings’ in the cafe downstairs and all. 🙂

Brian O’ Hanlon…

Crap Cinemas I Have Known in Dublin will be a chapter in my autobiography:
1. The one on Cathal Brugha Street – a hideous dump
2. The Screen on the Green – an armpit on St Stephen’s Green until the late 1980s when they finally took it out of its misery and built a shopping centre
3. The Lighthouse on Dame Street – arty farty fare and not room enough to swing a cat
4. Harold’s Cross – the late and unlamented. Where every flick had a break in order to force you to buy overpriced drink and choccies from their shop.
5. The Stella in Rathmines. Amazingly, still open. Is there a worse extant cinema anywhere in the western hemisphere?

A Few With Character:
1. The Odeon on the quays – saw The Life of Brian there when they finally unbanned it
2. The Adelphi – not the worst
3. The Carlton – had a bit of character, I seem to remember. Screen 1 there was good in the old days (i.e. before they discovered surround sound etc.)

Harold’s Cross – the late and unlamented. Where every flick had a break in order to force you to buy overpriced drink and choccies from their shop.

LOL!

Down in Limerick, they used to deliberately ‘cut’ the film itself about half ways through the film… and pretend to be ‘fixing’ it… you could see the the end of the film flying of the reel on the screen and you knew it was time for pepsi cola… 🙂

Amazingly, still open. Is there a worse extant cinema anywhere in the western hemisphere?

No, that would have been Listowel in Co. Kerry I think… until they converted the barn, with hay bales into something more ‘upgraded’…. 🙂 The crucial things to know about Cinema though are these:

1) In the earliest days of Cinema it was not the young audience, but a more mature audience who went – then TV came, the mature people stayed in and watched the small screen and the young ones ‘escaped out of the house’ to their domain… the local cinema… so movie/markets/contents reflect this shift around 1960s onwards.

2) Womens protrayal in cinema early on was very different to the present – in that women were actually very strong, independent individuals early on in the B+W days and later just became ‘victimised stage props’ late on, for the young audience to watch….. this trend sort of peaked I think with Drew Barrymore’s performance in Scream.

3) Mikey Rooney said, recently in Parky interview, that cinema used to be cheap… now it is expensive… not exactly pocket friendly anyhow… and is all just special effects… interesting comment I thought, coming from such a great old actor as him.

4) Then you had a cinema too, in the early days in America, which was like the ‘freak show’ on the boardwalk sort of thing… where you could go in to see ‘slasher’ style movies which never appeared in mainstream cinema… in fact, apparently at one stage in America these types of non-mainstream movies were grossing more than the mainstream hollywood features.

Hence why Hollywood changed to capitalise on this market.