Institute of Contemporary Arts

Is everything illuminated?

Date: 6 October 2006

Well, another project reaches installation stage; I’ve had lighting engineers in this week fitting new dimmers to our lighting in cinema 1.  For those who have noticed, we have been switching the lights on and off crudely for a few months now.  This was entirely due to a (unnamed) contractor frying our dimmer earlier this year!  You would not believe how hard it has been to get a lighting contractor to even quote on a new system!!  Anyway, they are in now at last and some new lighting control is coming our way, thank the maker. 

We open our 1^st digital feature today (The Perverts Guide to Cinema) and the new Christie digital projector has been quite a challenge.  At first installation it was seemingly fine but teething problems have meant we’ve had to swap out 2 sound cards on the server, reconnect the digital audio lines, fix an incomplete installation of the touch panel control……blah blah blah.  This is probably quite dull for you so I’ll get to the point; we now finally have a fully working system, audio and picture are both 100% as of the last service visit.  It looks and sounds absolutely amazing!  Picture quality is fabulous, but for me it’s the audio quality that really stands out.  Well produced material sounds fantastic through our new sound system and I’m very much looking forward to launching it later today.

Our new Christie CP2000 DLP projector, delightfully modelled by our newest projectionist. Just happy to be on the team!!

The projection room now has some new members too, we have taken on a new full time projectionist and two freelancers in recent weeks.  They are all very nice people and skilled workers to boot.  We make unusual demands of our staff here at the ICA when compared to the average multiplex.  Other London independent cinemas will know what I mean by that, we all run many more formats and ratios than a high street major chain.  I am equipped for 4 x 35mm film ratios at present with 2 more planned, 5 video formats plus off air and the ability to screen digital content, 16mm film, 5 x 35mm sound formats etc.  That’s not including computer presentations, microphones and more……so you get an idea that our staff have to handle more than just one type of projector, one type of film and only two picture ratios.  All this serves to make the ICA cinema a great place to work, it’s never dull (in projection terms) and we always have some great events every month to give me plenty to organise and plan.

Oh dear, this is starting to sound like an advert for the cinema now…..I’ll leave that to the press department!

So, it’s back to my lighting and DLP projector for now; I’ll post a bit more about the DLP next time for those interested in the newer technologies here.  Till then…