Moviegoers in the Energy City will be happy to hear the Orpheum Theatre has installed a brand new, state of the art 3D projector along with a new silver screen.
The new equipment was installed last week prior to the showing of Due Date and according to Orpheum owner Alan Dougherty, they will be showing movies in 3D as early as this week.
Dougherty, and his wife Jocelyn, have been pondering the idea of installing the new projector and screen for about a year, and they finally decided to bite the bullet and get it done to stay current with the way movies are being made these days.
"We just thought it was time to do it. When we played Avatar - we had seen it ourselves in 3D - and when we played it here it was a few weeks old, but we thought we did better with Alvin and the Chipmunks than we did with Avatar, and we felt that if we had it in 3D, instead of people going to Regina or Minot, they would be able to watch it right here in Estevan."
The upgrades to the movie watching experience at the Orpheum don't stop at the visual and audio aspects. They have also been doing renovations to the building as of late, and plan on doing quite a bit more, but they felt that "what people see - the movie experience" was the most important aspect of their upgrades.
Dougherty said they wanted to get it finished before any of the other things they'll be doing in the future.
Not only is the new projector capable of showing movies in 3D, it also makes the whole process of acquiring and presenting the films much easier for the operators. Showing movies with their old system, Dougherty said, was quite a labour-intensive process.
"I had to go to the bus to pick up the movie, then it takes about an hour to put the movie together and put the trailers on," he said. "Then on Thursday night we have to wait for the movie to be over and then we have to take it apart."
With the new system, they get the movie on a hard drive, Jocelyn downloads it into the unit and it's ready to go. They pick the trailers and it's all done using the Internet.
According to Dougherty, they still have some issues to sort out with the movie companies, as naturally when you're presenting 3D movies, they want more money, which in turn requires the Orpheum to charge more at the door.
In the future, the Orpheum plans on showing NASCAR races and Monday Night Football in 3D, but that may still be a ways down the road.
"I have a lot of friends looking forward to that, so hopefully we get that together with the theatre companies," Dougherty said. "They've already done the World Cup in theatres, and somewhere in the United States, they had a basketball game in 3D. People were all standing on their chairs like they were part of the audience, so apparently it went over quite well."
As far as future renovations and upgrades go, Dougherty said they have many plans in the works, but they aren't ready to divulge them just yet.
