Forces of Nature - The IMAX Experience

Skeptical of the pricing of a IMAX movie show, I went to the IMAXtheatre in San Jose Downtown Area. It is basically situated in thecentrical area of Downtown San Jose - The heart of Silicon Valley.People in San Jose take a lot of pride when they say about theirResidential Address. SAN JOSE.

The Tech - HackWorth IMAX Theatre has a dome like structure fromoutside view. Illiterate people like me, should think that it is onemore Planetarium. :)) LOL. But the experience of getting into the IMAXTheatre is a different one. We bought three tickets, myself, Rohithand Ramana.

The show was scheduled at 3 PM. So still 30 mins go to feel the IMAXexperience. US Shopping centres or Areas of Attraction of a typicalidea of advertising the richness of that geographical area, bypublishing different kinds of toys, gift articles, T's etc.. It ispretty obvious that people will not come right in time to any of theshow. So the remaining time, they have to spend time in either seeingthings or chatting. Henceforth, the malls opened within make a lot ofbusiness in this way. But, myself do not fall to the trap, admirethings, thats it. Diplomatically saying, Window Shopping.

Finally, the wrist watch showed 3 PM. Time to enter the podium.Entrance to the theatre was a bit surprising, it was almost semicircular entrance to the main theatre. Finally the big second ofendeavour. I did not see any flat white screen at any side of the Hugeroom. I only saw a lightish green see through spherical structurewhich engrossed almost every wall corner of the room. Wowww.. that wasawesum. The seating arrangement too was very technical in nature sothat each and every viewer gets the max out of it. It had all thebasics and fundaes of Accoustics and Video Display. We took the lastrows as we felt it would be comfortable viewing as always THE BALCONYSeat.

Now the technicalilty involved behind the theatre : The production process of an IMAX theatre is itself unique. A film 10 times the sizeof the standard movie images is loaded into 52 Pound camera.Astonishing !!.340 perforated aluminuim panels are pieced togetherlike an igolo to from the projection dome.Most of the domes insidesurface is tiny holes, put there to allow sound to pass through from44 speakers concealed behind the panels. Projecting the film is a featon its own. The movie is stored on reels the size of tractor tires.The loading process is done beneath the theatre inside a dust - freeprojection. At the start of the show, entire two-ton projectionpackage is lifted on an elevator some 22 feet into a box called a "doghouse", built into the theatre's seating area.

The 15000 watt Xenon lamp used to project the image onto the screen isso bright that, if it were placed on the moon, it could be seen fromearth. The lamp's surface reaches 1300 degrees F, requiring a coolingsystem to pump five gallons of water and 800 cubic feet of air aroundthe bulb each minute. Unlike typical movies, an IMAX film sound isplayed from a compact disc and is sync with the images by a specialaudio controller. Sound system outputs a sound of 44K watts of Waves :o

Now with all these technalities involved sit back and feel theexperience of a earthquake in Turkey or a tornado in Oklahama or aVolcanic eruption. Its awesumm just have no words to put down as myvocab is too pooor for it.. Feel it guyyysssss..No further explainingabout the movie.
Thanks to Ramana for recommending this. it was worth paying $9 from mypocket, a lifetime experience. IMAX - you are the BEST. After watchinga movie in IMAX DOme, people may feel weird to watch any other moviein a normal theatre.

PS : Thanks to www.thetech.org/imax for the technical details. Orelse, my RAM would not have stored so much inside it.