Cinerama

:For the UK rock group, see: Cinerama (band)

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The original Cinerama system is a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146º of arc. The screen is made of adjacent vertical strips, each of which faces the audience, in order to prevent light scattered from one side of the curve from impinging on the other side. The spectacular display is accompanied by a high-quality, six-track, stereophonic sound system.

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The original system involved shooting with three synchronized cameras sharing a single shutter, but this was later abandoned in favour of a 65 mm system, shot with a single camera. (Aficionados, however, insist that the later processes were inferior.) Although one of Cinerama's single-film descendants, Ultra Panavision 70, used an anamorphic adaptor, neither three strip Cinerama or its other 65 mm descendant, Super Panavision 70, used anamorphic lenses, although 35 mm anamorphic reduction prints were produced for exhibition in theatres with anamorphic Cinemascope-compatible projection lenses.

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