The old girl is undergoing a facelift.

Work is well underway, colours picked out and the new seats are apparently in a container on their way through the Suez canal. Given how it looks, it seems impossible that screen one will be finished around October half term, but hopefully it will.

The Facebook page is proving very popular and gives a nice timeline of the work so far, it’s also a chance for people to interact and give their opinions about what’s going on.

Pile of Seats!

First to come up were the seats. My boy Joe and his mates toiled all night and did a great job, while I slept soundly in my bed. It’s good to be the king.

Notice just how Coca Cola stained the carpet had become, and this was only cleaned about six weeks before we started. The new seats have cup holders which should reduce that problem.

Screen comes down.

Then it was time for Powell & Co to pop in and take the screen and frame down. I would have done it, but would have probably killed myself and everybody else in the room. The speakers have gone into storage to avoid putting a foot through them.

All the timber surrounding the stage is out.

Old stage area now almost gone.

Screen and staging gone, floor coming out.

Cleared and ready to take up the floor.

Joists revealed. Weird.

Looking house right.

Taking the screen and stage out revealed the old colour scheme from when I was a kid and it was all one big (ish) cinema.

Sadly I have no pictures of the single screen auditorium. We will be on the hunt for them next year as we prepare for the 2016 centenary celebrations.

Echoes of versions past.

With floor right out, many of the original features were revealed. Remember the screen was on the wall to the right of the picture in the single screen days.
I posted this annotated picture on our Facebook page.

Joanna repository.

This is a close up of the well where the piano went during the silent days, which has been hidden under the floor for 35 years.

Extra wallage.

We’e had problems since the advent of turbo nutter six channel digital sound with breakthrough between screen one and two, which is actually the old balcony.

This new, incredibly dense (and expensive!) second wall between the theatres will eliminate most of those problems. I hope.

Door.

So the old entrance to screen one is now blocked by the extra wall. As part of the larger plan a new corridor will serve all the screens and the toilets, the new door into screen one off the existing corridor is the start of that process.

Scissor brothers.

The soundproof wall is now finished and the chaps make good the last remaining gap. This is the boxed in area that will house the new curtain and masking tracks.

At last.

Now the new, all stepped, groovy floor is finally going in. You can see that the back row will be quite a bit higher than before from the outline of the old one!

Meanwhile, outside…

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Redecorating and new roof tiles on the turret.  Also awaiting a replacement for the gnarled and rotten old flag pole.

Sunday 12th October sees the closure of screen three and the work on the new air conditioning begins.

So far so good, and by the first week in November we will have two refurbished screens out of three.

Good job I’ve got a full head of hair, For the moment.

New Ground Floor Layout. Subject to tweaking of course.

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed we submitted a planning application to Wealden District Council which has now been granted and after Easter 2014 we can start our big refurbishment.

There are two main objectives, the first being an overall refit, decor, seats, carpet, that sort of thing. It’s been a twelve years since we did any significant work and whilst still lovely, the place needs a refresh. When we are done the old girl will be even more gorgeous.

The second and radical part of the plan is a completely resigned  foyer and new entrance corridor to the theaters.

If you’re a regular customer you will know the foyer layout is not favourite. As soon as it gets busy, nothing moves and there’s no space to buy drinks and generally hang around. It’s intimate to say the least.

The kiosk is also outdated and a wee bit gnarly if I’m honest. The bar sales part is rather apologetic and not especially appealing, so Sean Albuquerque of ABQ Studio architects has come up with a plan so cunning etc.

In very simple terms we are going to remove the old, rarely used box office and make that the way up from the front door into the foyer. The old kiosk will be removed and a new entrance to the theatres will appear there, turning left into a new extension housing a wider corridor along the north side of the building. All the theatres and the toilets will be accessed from this new extension.

Foot traffic will no longer need to go through the centre of the foyer, meaning we can build a big sexy new bar along the back of the foyer with room to linger. I also plan to improve some of  the acoustics in the theatres.

It’s all very exciting and once I get the costs locked down, I can go and do the dance of the seven veils in front of the financiers. It’s not going to be cheap, seats alone are over £100 each, but by next summer we should be in great shape to meet the demands of modern audiences for both film and the increasingly important live events.

We’ve also been working hard on the new membership scheme that is going to be rather fab and a massive new design of the website. No wonder there’s been no time to blog properly, this isn’t as easy as it looks you know.

Keep checking back or better still subscribe for updates to the madness, stress, tears and triumph that is going to be 2014.

Oooh look, I’m on film!

As of April 2013 75% of the world’s cinemas have converted to digital and at the speed it’s going I would imagine that number has already increased considerably. I saw some figures at the recent Digital Cinema Conference that indicate the UK was sitting at 91% digital as long ago as January.

Any cinemas sitting on the fence, and incredibly there are still one or two, are going to have to pull their finger out. Almost certainly by the end of 2013 most of the major distributors will have made the decision to drop 35mm film imminently or have done so already.

A cinema without digital projection by the end of this year is doomed. Fortunately we went completely digital three years ago, one of the first multi screen independants to do so.

Three years is not long at all, but 35mm feels like a lifetime ago. The prospect of going back to film would be horrific. If it was discovered that digital projectors were ticking time bombs that could destroy the high street at any moment and all film projectors had to be restored, I would give serious consideration to changing my career. Something that would be less traumatic, say like cutting old ladies toe nails in the local retirement home.

Not having to lump the heavy transit cases up and down the stairs alone is a cause for rejoicing along with the other physical requirements which make every performance a potential hazard.

Perhaps I overstate the last point, but the fact I can run all three screens without leaving my office chair is perfect for a lazy git such as myself. I can even run the show from my iPhone should I so desire. Truly the future is now.

Inevitably though, the Luddites and nostalgia fans have already come out of the woodwork. I must admit to being rather surprised at just how quickly.

Already some cinemas are promoting 35mm screenings as if they are both special and superior. They pick themselves up a scratchy old join riddled print of say, Silent Running, and promote it as cause for celebration.

A celebration of all that is good about cinema. To paraphrase Adam Buxton, nonsense! nonsense! nonsense!

Everytime I sit and watch a film in my cinema I’m still staggered at how bright and sharp the picture is. How it doesn’t have marks on it and it doesn’t jump up and down. The framing remains constant and it doesn’t change colour every twenty minutes.

Film looks fantastic, when all the elements are right. When the laboratory work is spot on, which it rarely was in the last few years. When a popcorn monkey let loose in the projection box hadn’t inadvertently used the print as a stair carpet.  When the lamp was correctly lined up, the portholes and lenses were clean and the intermittent shaft wasn’t bent out of shape and the sprocket teeth not worn down to a nub.

Am I getting a bit technical? Sorry.

The point is that it’s very difficult for cinemas to sod up digital. Which is why it’s perfect for multiplexes, where often no one ever bothers looking out of the porthole to check the picture is actually on the screen let alone in focus or framed correctly.

It makes the customers experience far more consistently good. Which is the most important thing, not how much you like mucking about with strips of plastic.

Where has this affectation about 35mm come from? It feels pretentious and ill informed. 35mm projection is not better than digital projection, you may prefer it, but it’s not better, and the benefits far outweigh the perceived losses. I’m not even sure what we have lost, can someone explain?

There will always be a nostalgia for film, because it’s in the past. Like rationing and ricketts.

But don’t you dare suggest my cinema is inferior because I merely show films digitally.

I bet you probably paid £50 for an HDMI lead too.

Here it is then, our top ten of the year. No surprises what captured the number one spot, but the rest of it is a bit out of kilter with the world of multiplex that dominates the national chart.

1. Skyfall
We always punch above our weight with a Bond picture but this exceeded everyone’s expectations. The secret was simple, it was a cracking film.

2. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
This is where we start to veer off the national course. A film aimed so accurately at us it was never going to miss.

3. War Horse
The clue here is horse. Being a huge West End hit helped enormously, Spielberg was actually the least of it. Too much for me I’m afraid.

4. The Artist
Well done everybody, tremendous heartwarming fun. Everything about this film has been said.

5. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Huge hit for this gentle comedy that did better in Uckfield than almost everywhere else.

6. Ice Age 4
There seems to be no way of making these films not take money. Not even making rubbish ones.

 7. The Iron Lady
Let’s face it, around here this was always going to be in the top ten.

8. The Hobbit
Still playing, so probably would climb higher given the chance.

9. The Woman in Black
Slight surprise to see this here, but it performed well and scared the hell out of the teenagers.

10. The Dark Knight Rises
Just scraped in, Nolan’s great big noisy conclusion to his Batman trilogy.

Only two films in this list, Skyfall and Dark Knight Rises made the national top ten for the year. No Avengers you may notice, quite telling indeed.

The Wooden Spoon:

Fast Girls
Lowest first week gross of the year, what was I thinking?

So, thanks everyone for making 2012 a very good year indeed. Hopefully 2013 can keep the momentum going.

It’s possible..

Kev