BOSTON – Boston Light & Sound, which supports numerous film festivals including The Doha Tribeca Film Festival, The Turner Classic Movies Film Festival and The Traverse City Film Festival, had "been looking for a device that could be encoded for screen washes, sponsor tags and trailers" for years, according to company president Chapin Cutler, who also serves as technical director of the Sundance Film Festival. {mosimage}"We needed something that was easy to program, ingest content and was reliable for the almost 1000 programs we present in little over a week," Cutler said. A solution came in the form of Alcorn McBride's Digital Video Machine DVM 8400/HD.
"We typically install one DVM 8400/HD in each venue to play back screen washes, trailers, sponsor tag packages and static screen washes for Q&A sessions," said Michael Rome, a projection engineer with Boston Light & Sound. "Every unit is in a projection booth with the projectionist. Most of the units are operated via AMX control systems customized to integrate into the projection environment; alternatively they can be operated from laptops."
The Alcorn McBride systems feed Barco digital cinema projectors and Christie Roadster HD12K and HD18K projectors as well as DPI 45 HDs, which screened films from HDCAM sources.
"A lot of these festivals have always been on the cutting edge of technology," noted Rome. "Moving from DVD players to this type of device is an example of that. We needed a better solution than DVD playback. We needed something with higher definition that could be controlled in a presentation environment."
As an Alcorn McBride dealer, Boston Light & Sound was confident that the system would be well-suited to demanding film festival venues. "We have been using it for over a year and have employed it at festivals ever since," Rome said. "We have adapted the system to a live presentation environment, with manual and AMX controls, and it's been working great."
He added that Alcorn McBride "has always been right there when we have questions to address, so we're pleased with their support. We're really excited to have a new tool like the DVM 8400/HD that helps us give the best presentation possible at film festivals in terms of format resolution and controllability."
For more information, please visit www.alcorn.com.
