THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606200642
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: SPECIAL EDITION: A VISITOR'S GUIDE TO THE EXPANDED VIRGINIA MARINE
SCIENCE MUSEUM
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT
ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 69 lines
With the opening of The Family Channel IMAX 3-D Theater in the museum's main building, movies will be bigger than ever before in Hampton Roads.
Frames in IMAX films are 10 times the size of those on conventional 35mm film. The theater seats 300 and is housed in a six-story-high building.
With the help of 3-D glasses - which have larger lenses and are much more comfortable than those cardboard horrors of the 1950s - screen images at the new theater appear to have depth.
The theater is only the ninth IMAX 3-D installation in the country. With the IMAX 3-D system, films are run through a projector with two lenses. The glasses blend the two images into one, tricking the brain into interpreting the images as three-dimensional.
The opening film, ``Into the Deep,'' takes viewers beneath the ocean. It stars thousands of Spanish mackerel, plus sea lions, an opalescent squid and a shark or two. It depicts birth (a lobster escaping from its shell) and death (thousands of squid die on the night they mate).
It is narrated by actress Kate Nelligan, an Oscar nominee for ``Prince of Tides.''
The 38-minute film was shot during 186 dives off the coast of Southern California at a cost of $4.8 million.
The pre-show effect is the sound of waves gently washing against the shore. At test screenings, the sound sent elementary-school students rushing for the rest rooms; sensory involvement, after all, is the goal.
In the projection room of the new theater, the two giant lenses, operating from the single projector, look something like two huge eyes looking toward the screen.
The screen, which is 63 feet high and 84 feet wide, is only slightly curved, but you'd never know it when you wear the polarized glasses during the films. Images appear to extend out into the audience.
The film runs horizontally through the projector - a marked difference from the usual vertical-load projectors. The lamps have their own water-cooled system to handle the tremendous heat they generate.
``Into the Deep'' and the other 3-D movies are filmed with two lenses placed 2.5 inches apart, about the same distance as our eye spacing. The picture is produced by the most powerful projectors yet designed.
A six-track digital sound system features four speakers behind the screen and two speaker arrays in the back left and right corners of the auditorium.
A gift of $1 million from The Family Channel - the Virginia Beach-based cable-TV outfit - helped secure the completion of the theater.
The first permanent IMAX projection system, a two-dimensional version, was installed in Toronto in 1971. It was an effort to make the film look ``big'' without the cumbersome three-camera inconveniences of Cinerama, an earlier technology.
The Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton has a two-dimensional IMAX theater.
At the Marine Science Museum, admission for the IMAX3-D screenings will be separate from the museum.
``Into the Deep'' is scheduled to run into the fall.
The second film to play the theater will be ``The Last Buffalo.'' Waiting in the wings are such films as ``Across the Sea of Time'' and ``Wings of Courage,'' the first 3-D IMAX film with a ``plot.'' It stars Val Kilmer, the former Batman.
Also available is ``House Guest,'' the microscopic world of a charming old house as seen in 3-D. In production is ``L5#.#.#.#First City in Space.''
The theater will also screen two-dimensional IMAX films, at reduced admission charges. by SS