Monday, September 19, 2011

Big Sky Drive-in

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

I spent an hour and a half earlier today trying to deal with this venue in mid-morning sunlight and changing cloud cover, one 8x10 and three different 7x17 attempts. The first problem is that there are a whole bunch of different elements that make this theater a delight to encounter from the road, but they are spread all over the map. Pick out just some of the stuff, and it's only generic. All or nothing, to get the sense of this venue. Perhaps because the light got worse, not better, this very first "scouting shot" frame gets a lot of what I needed, though certainly without organizing it enough. What I'm afraid of is that the harsher light later on will have kept me from getting quite what I wanted. Very late day light would be better, but the way the theater sits on the points of the compass makes me think no light would ever be perfect. I made "an executive decision" not to spend the entire day waiting to see if the light would be better in the evening, and moved on to the next venue.

5 comments:

lyle said...

actually, i kinda like this one....

lyle said...

The thought crossed my mind that the word "sky" is used a lot in DI names - you have 2 Big Sky's in this group. I went your website and started looking at names only, and no, "sky" isn't used alot, but the a good number of the names are interesting: the spud, the ozoner, cherry bowl, the tibs, ....

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

This one's easy to spot on Google Maps. I just typed in "Big Sky Drive In Wisconsin Dells WI" and there it was. Can't miss it on the three finest resolutions. But the car arcs seem to focus on just a single screen. I can't see how the second screen which is more prominent in your scouting picture works out.

Are you meeting the owners and staying for a film or two as you travel around?

To my mind the most wonderful DI picture ever is O W Link's epic Norfolk and Western steamer passing the drive-in at Iaeger WV, as a full crowd watches a newsreel and a couple is snuggling in Link's Buick convertible in the foreground of the audience. Google's WV coverage is not as good as in WI, but you can follow the tracks through Iaeger and the DI is definitely no longer there. Lots of coal cars still are, though.

scott

scott

Carl Weese said...

Lyle, it's, for once, mainly technical stuff: will the backlight overpower the G-Claron, even shading the direct sun with the darkslide; is there too much atmospheric haze to get adequate definition of the jumble of structures looking back into the light, etc, etc. If it works, it could be quite wonderful. But there are a lot of ifs.

Carl Weese said...

The names repeat a lot. Sunset, Moonlight (various spellings), StarLite (ditto) various Sky variations. I think it's one reason the online DI reference sites list their researched theaters alpha-on-town-name...