Saturday, April 28, 2012

Field of Dreams (Tiffin) Drive-in Theater

Tiffin, Ohio

The main screen at what was formerly "The Tiffin" theater has been there since the heyday of the drive-in. So much so that the original owners retired just a couple years ago, and it was purchased by a family who had entered the drive-in theater world only a couple years before that by building a theater from scratch in the cornfields of Liberty Center, OH. Their son will manage this theater as it opens for the 2012 season. They've added a second screen with the unique, as far as I know, mechanism of supporting a set of plywood panels with a retired semi-trailer. There's one of these at the new-built venue too, along with a much bigger main screen supported by phone poles. Maybe I'll post a picture of that tomorrow.

As a bit of background why these large format scans are showing up here. Two weeks ago a nagging bit of sciatic nerve trouble went ballistic, and was properly diagnosed as Lyme disease (Lyme infection can take a very long time to develop, and may well have been irritating my susceptible sciatic apparatus as it got ready to go for broke and try to incapacitate me). I'm two weeks into a three week course of giant antibiotic capsules, and in the bugs vs drugs war, the drugs seem to be winning. I don't have crippling pseudo-arthritis in both knees anymore, etc. But I haven't been able to do my usual several times a week walkabout shooting. Good in a way, because I'm doing a lot of work on the pictures, both digital capture and large format film, from last September's DI road trip in the Midwest to fine tune both wet and digital darkroom parameters in preparation for The Giant Road Trip. September's expedition was in fact intended partly as a shake-down cruise in anticipation of the planned Kickstarter project to finance the big trip.

As long as we're into behind the scenes stuff, this week I had a high-tech security/alarm system installed in my HHR. In order to do walkabout shooting in the towns I go through between theaters, I'll have to leave the car parked with not only just about all the equipment in it, but also the exposed film and hard drives full of captures. A good security system will make that a lot more comfortable.

2 comments:

DerekL said...

Have you posted this theater before? I seem to recall you posting a "screen on a semi" at least once recently.

Carl Weese said...

Derek, a while back I posted some things from their other "Field of Dreams" DI, the new-build in Liberty Center, OH. The smaller of two screens there is the same design.