The Cue Dot - Media | Cinema

This ‘article’ is not directly related to ‘Cue Dots‘ as in the things which appear just before a reel change, instead it is about a website which I think you should visit.

Why do I think you should visit it? Well because it is full of the most beautiful artwork relating to the art of projection that I have seen on the Internet, and where you are able to purchase it as a print to hang on your wall at home.

Look at this example below:

Taylor, who took these photographs, has very kindly allowed me to use these few examples of his work in this article to illustrate exactly why I think they are so fantastic:

If you don’t believe me then, go and have a look at: http://shop.tmu.co/. There are many fantastic photographs of the world of the film projection room, but I do think that this seems to capture the magic of it all in away which I haven’t really seen anywhere else.

While I was emailing Taylor to get permission to use some of his beaultiful photographs to help illustrate this article and to demonstrate why you really should visit his shop, I asked him about his background and why he started taking the photographs.

To answer your question about my background, I was indeed a projectionist for many years during art school and after I graduated. I attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, where I studied film and animation. During that time, I started working as both an IMAX 1570 film projectionist and a 35mm film projectionist, and became friends with the owner of the local cinema where I worked, a small single screen third-generation cinema specializing in first-run independent and foreign films. Projecting films on my way to becoming a filmmaker was a great way to support myself and fund my early projects. It also gave me an incredible chance not just to see but to study many great films.

But when I learned that the theater was going to be converting from film to digital projection, part of the larger waved necessitated by the shrinking availability of film product, I stopped my other screenwriting and film projects and took the chance to document the projection booth and projectionists who worked there before it all changed forever. That projection booth was unique. The carbon arc projectors had been in continuous daily use since 1938 when the theater opened, all the way through to the last shift running film on the night of March 21, 2013.

It’s inspiring just to think about the amount of cinema history that has spun through those machines. It was important to me that I do what I could to create a time capsule of that little unseen world before it vanished. The documentation of the projection booth took several forms, the first of which is the photography that I’ve recently published online and made available as high quality archival giclee prints.

Publishing this work has been a great experience and connected me with many people who have a shared passion for cinema. It’s been wonderful to hear from people who have bought prints about their own background in exhibition and appreciation for what the work means to them. It’s exciting to hear the enthusiasm, because down the road there’s an entire second part of this project that I’m hoping to announce at some point this year.

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