The Roxy Theatre's marquee promotes its new purchase of a digital projector on Wednesday afternoon in downtown Morton. The theatre will unveil its new, $42,000 projector on Friday with a showing of Spiderman 2.
Brad Nelson, the Roxy Theatre movie manager and board member of the Fire Mountain Arts Council, shows an example of the old 35mm film used at the theatre prior to the purchase of its new digital projector. Nelson explained that it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find good, new films on 35mm.
Brad Nelson starts up the Roxy Theatre's new digital projector on Wednesday afternoon in downtown Morton.
After nearly a year of waiting, the Roxy Theater in Morton has finally taken a step into the future with a digital projector.
Friday at 7 p.m., the new projector will make its debut by showing “The Amazing Spiderman 2.”
“It’s a huge deal. We’re not used to such high tech equipment, the whole thing is a huge deal,” Brad Nelson, movie manager, said. “A lot of people have put a lot of effort into making this thing happen.”
Since it reopened by the Fire Mountain Arts Council in 2007, the Roxy has become a community gathering center and an entertainment hub for the residents of East Lewis County.
The theater’s original projector was a heavily-used machine that used 35-millimeter film. It was pushing 40 years old, and finding movies for it was getting very difficult.
“They stopped making 35mm prints in January. Anything new was digital. If you didn't have equipment, you were out of luck,” Nelson said. “Things were pretty tight for the last few months.”
Things were tight because the Roxy didn’t have the equipment. The new projector was built in Belgium and designed for small theaters. The film format conversion created a surge in demand, forcing theaters around the United States to make the switch to digital.
“It’s happening all over the countryside to small theaters,” Betty Hutchinson, of the Fire Mountain Arts Council, said. “There was about 3,500 small theaters in the country that had to change over, or else they’d only get a movie every now and then.”
The Roxy is owned by the Fire Mountain Arts Council, a volunteer organization that brings visual and performing arts to Morton. The organization operates on a shoestring budget. So at $45,000, the new projector was a huge investment.
Starting last June, the group spent seven months knocking on doors and hosting community dinners, golf and bowling tournaments and asking for donations. They ordered the projector in January but, due to the backorder, didn’t receive it until last week.
Despite it all, Nelson said it was worth the wait.
“It’s an amazing difference. The difference in picture amazing,” Nelson said. “It’s brilliant. The sound is mind blowing.”
The theater was closed last weekend so the crew could install and learn how to use the new projector. Once the projector and the fans are fired up, a hard drive issued by the movie studios is loaded into it. Then the studio will email a code to allow the theater to play the show. The whole process takes about an hour.
As for the old projector which served The Roxy so faithfully over the years, it will live out its days polished and on display in the theater lobby.
“It does seem like another art form that’s been lost to all the progress of technology,” Nelson said. “But from a standpoint of trying to show old quality great movies, I’m not mourning the loss at all.”
