Mr. Opinionated

Although posting this in November, Theater 2.0 was fully functional back in February. From tear down to functional finish, it took me just about 11 months. I learned a lot of new skills along the way and am very proud of what I’ve accomplished.

The final touch to the theater and hallway were the lighted posters. In addition to standard backlit posters, I wanted to build a marquee poster box as well, to go at the end of the hall.

For the standard boxes, I wanted to use fluorescent lighting again, similar to the boxes from my last theater. Fluorescent lighting provides a nice color and diffuses easily. This time around I used snap frames from Spotlight Displays and attached them to some DIY boxes. This makes changing out the posters so much easier than my last set.

For the marquee box, I started with the basics of a standard box, but then built a secondary box to hold the string lights. Using standard xmas light sockets, I strung the lights around the box and connected them to a chase controller.

Here are some pics of the hallway leading into the theater. Our popper and fridge are in their spots and are ready for enjoyment!

With all the components in place, all that was left to do was the base and chair trim around the room. I decided to use flat black this time and think it came out great.

Despite having the projector and chairs since the end of December, the theater was essentially useless since we didn’t have a screen. Due to the holidays and other delays, my custom made screen from Jamestown Screens didn’t arrive until February. 🙁

The free time, however, allowed me to work on building the screen wall supports which are just 2x4s screwed and glued and setup like goal posts. In the pictures they’re painted white, but later I repainted them black as they were reflecting light and could be seen through the screen.

Once the screen arrived, construction went quickly. The material is the Seymour AV Center Stage XD. It’s an acoustically transparent screen that allows for the speakers directly behind the screen with very little attenuation. This time around I wanted to go with a Scope sized screen or 2.37:1 aspect ratio. It’s 130″ wide and 54″ tall which equates to a 141″ diagonal screen for Scope format movies. For standard HDTV or 1.78:1 movies it’s approximately 110″ diagonal. The surrounding panels were cut to size and wrapped with black-out velvet.

You may recall two large cutouts in one of the the hallway walls. These are where the shelving units will be located. To build the units, I used pre-made shelves, MDF and backer board. All the pieces were painted prior to construction and then the completed units were slid into place and secured. As a final touch, trim was installed around the edges.

In order to tame reflections and make sure the proper frequencies are transmitted to the listeners’ ears, acoustical treatments were installed on the walls. OC703 rigid fiberglass boards were secured to the walls up to ear level and standard cotton batting was used above. Behind where the screen will go, the entire surfaces were treated. Next, GOM (Guilford of Maine) acoustical fabric was then installed over the treatments to polish off the look.