A Full Orchestra Plays Danny Elfman While the Film Runs

The print runs with its dialogue and effects intact while the recorded score is stripped out and an orchestra plays it in real time. A conductor works to a click track and a visual punch system to stay locked to the frame. Elfman wrote a choir into this one, and hearing voices in the room rather than through speakers is the reason to come. Cues you never noticed sitting at home arrive with weight. Applause lands between cues rather than at the credits.

Adler and Sullivan finished the Auditorium in 1889 with gilded arches and exposed bulbs framing the proscenium, and four thousand seats rise steeply from the floor. The hall predates amplification. An unmiked orchestra in this room carries further than a modern hall would allow. The screen hangs above the players rather than behind them. Ida B. Wells Drive runs along the south edge of the Loop outside. The lobby bars sit on each landing, and the staircase mosaics date from the original build.

The screening runs Saturday, October 24 at half past seven at 50 East Ida B. Wells Drive. Red and Blue lines both stop within three blocks at Jackson. Sitting too far forward splits your attention between the pit and the screen. The middle of the main floor holds both in one view. Anyone expecting a quiet cinema should know the orchestra is the loudest thing in the room. Doors open an hour ahead, which the house uses fully on these nights.