The NewActon South building in Canberra has a comfortable little 35 seat theatre in the ground floor that is used by residents and can be booked for events and screenings. They have a reasonable rate for local filmmakers, and I have been to a screening of a local short I worked on there in the past.
Last night we gave it a run for a screening for a feature film job, and it worked out pretty well in the end, although we had to mess around a bit to get it playing what we wanted, as we wanted to play a 5.1 surround mix out of Pro Tools. To do this, we used a mac mini that we took in with Pro Tools HD installed, and ran vision out over a HDMI port which ran directly into the venue’s Crestron control unit, but we ran a separate HDMI out from the Mac mini (via Thunderbolt/DisplayPort) which bypassed the Crestron unit and went straight to the amp, as the Crestron unit’s HDMI input didn’t appear to be 5.1 surround capable from what we could tell.
Some other notes:
- Turn the Denon amp’s Night mode off. The venue’s default seems to be for it to be on.
- Turn the powered sub on, and crank the output level to maximum.
- Take an extra HDMI cable, and a Mac mini with 2 x HDMI ports out (even if via an adaptor).
- Take a 10m extension power lead, as well as USB keyboard and mouse too.
If you want to find out more about the Kendall Lane Theatre or book it for a screening, check out:
http://www.hotel-hotel.com.au/venues/venue-1/