We have mentioned this worthy project before as you can see from the article below. However Michael Horton from the LACPUG has sent us some more information about their goal to fund and install their new projector.
Michael at the LACPUG has provided a monthly meeting for creative film & video folk who live in Los Angeles for many years now. As mentioned, we have often featured his videos right here on FCP.co. He's just sent us some more information about the projector that we thought was worth sharing:
Recently, Michael Cioni of Light Iron here in Hollywood approached me about replacing our 10 year old projector with a used Christie 2K they are getting rid of. Cost was $5,000.00. This is a considerable savings over the original price of $130K.
Our current projector cannot handle the demands of modern software. It is native 1024x768 and we are forced to use a scaler device which always produces a soft image. Most software nowadays requires high resolution outputs. And we can't do it. We have not been able to do it for the past 4-5 years. At least do it with a sharp image.
I had a meeting with the Gallery Theater and Light Iron reps checking to make sure we could fit this projector, (see specs and rendered drawings of this beast in the above link) in the booth. We can. So I bought it. Or should I say my credit card bought it. It was just too good a deal to pass up. So now I've got to pay this credit card off! DVCreators stepped in to help and we feel its at very least a start on raising the funds to pay this thing off.
The Gallery Theatre is owned and run by the City of LA. Our deal with them for the past 10 years has been that anyone and everyone who rents the facility has use of the digital projector and all digital equipment that we have provided and installed. Meaning the projector is not just for lacpug but for ANYONE who rents the Gallery Theatre. This includes Film Festivals, Multimedia Theatre productions, Dance companies, Students, Indie filmmakers, Musicians and yes, the City of LA itself who often hold meetings here. Over the past 10 years thousands of people have made use or enjoyed the benefits of our equipment, including Adobe.
If for any reason the City kicks us out of the Gallery we have reserved the right to take all of the equipment with us. That's the deal and would remain same with this new projector.
So there you have it. Somehow and someway I am going to make this happen, and the deal with DVCreators will help. And again, just to be clear, this projector is not just for us. It's for everyone in LA who rents this wonderful facility.
Thanks for reading this and hope we can make this happen
Michael Horton.
We should also mention that Michael has Arthur Schmidt as guest speaker at the next LACPUG this coming Wednesday November 19th. He's edited a few films you might have heard of such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and Pirates of the Caribbean to name a few. If you are in LA, well worth a night out.
One thought we had and one that we have shared with Michael is that he should set up a page where people could donate money directly for the projector. We think a lot of readers would quite happily chip in dollars if there was an easy way to do so online. We will let you know more when we hear back from Michael.