While driving down State Street in Santa Barbara last month
I noticed banners advertising the city’s Film Festival: simulated strips of
Academy leader featuring its famous numbered countdown. It’s an eye-catching
image, but I wonder how many people under the age of 25 have a clue what it
means.
(I first became familiar with Academy countdown “leader” when I worked for the audio visual department in my high school. We provided 16mm projectors on rolling carts to classrooms where 16mm films were to be screened. That countdown footage wasn’t ever supposed to be seen by viewers, but amateur projectionists didn’t always take the time to run the prints past that leader to the opening frame of the film itself.)
Today, Los Angeles’ Laemmle Theatres chain runs clever introductions to trailers and the main program using the Academy countdown, complete with the sound of an old-fashioned projector.
Come to think of it, do young people have any acquaintance with projectors,
reels, sprocket holes or any of the visual symbols that have been synonymous
with motion pictures throughout the 20th century? They may never
have seen a dust-coated beam of light emitting from a projection booth, except
in a movie like Cinema Paradiso.
But as far as I can tell, there are no icons that evoke the
idea of movies in the digital age, so graphic designers and set decorators have
little choice but to fall back on familiar symbols and hope that people get the
idea.
When I was in Park City, Utah for this year’s Sundance Film
Festival, my eye caught some striking pieces in an art gallery on Main Street.
A Utah-based artist named Deveren Farley uses his imagination, and skill in
metalwork, to create mock movie cameras and projectors. I love these fanciful
pieces, which are on display at Artworks Park City. They sell
from $600-1200 and are worth every penny, it seems to me.
Meanwhile, the company that has been synonymous with movie
reels since the early 20th century, Goldberg Brothers, uses its
expertise to craft various forms of décor (as well as supplying professional
theaters). I have one of their glass-top tables and a 70mm
reel-turned-wine-holder, and they put a smile on my face.
For an even bigger smile, I encourage you to visit the Los
Angeles Metro Station at Hollywood and Vine, if you haven’t already. The late
Los Angeles-based painter, muralist and sculptor Gilbert "Magú" Luján
designed the
station, with architects Miralles Associates and used vintage projectors,
lights, and objects associated with Hollywood to create a wonderful
environment.
The pièce de résistance is the curved ceiling, covered with hundreds (or is it thousands?) of 35mm film reels. You know, the kind that used to hold motion picture film.
