Marquee

Overview

Marquee is a single-screen repertory cinema theme built for a restored 1927 Art Deco picture house — a house that runs one film at a time and programmes classic repertory rather than first-run.

Three signature techniques, each real rather than decorative, each implemented independently in PHP and JavaScript so the browser can cross-check the server at /programme-page/?verify=1:

1. Frame-by-frame aspect ratio comparison. Five real theatrical standards — 1.33:1 silent era (pre-1932), 1.37:1 Academy sound (1932-1953), 1.85:1 flat widescreen (from 1953), 2.35:1 CinemaScope anamorphic (from 1953) and 2.20:1 70mm Todd-AO roadshow (from 1955) — drawn to scale inside one fixed stage, so switching format actually shows how much less of the same screen a narrower ratio uses.

2. Marquee letterboard generator. Type a title and a genuine greedy word-wrap algorithm lays it out against the house’s real letter-channel constraint: three lines, 22 monospaced characters each. Not a font-size trick — the overflow rules are the physical board’s rules.

3. Film-reel footage and runtime calculator. Enter any runtime, pick 35mm or 70mm, and it returns the actual length of film that print runs to, from each format’s own frame pitch at 24fps (90 ft/min for 35mm, 112.5 ft/min for 70mm), plus the reel count at the trade-standard 2000ft reel.

The demo programme is six real classic films — Caligari, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Once Upon a Time in the West, Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man — spanning all five ratios and both print formats. Their titles, directors, years, runtimes, ratios and formats are historical fact; only the venue’s own screening schedule around them is invented.

Design: a near-black green-tinted base with a single brass accent and Art Deco sunburst geometry, alternating with warm cream “programme insert” panels for the text-heavy sections. Abril Fatface display, Josefin Sans body, Space Mono for every figure — all self-hosted, no external font requests. No Three.js, no GSAP, no build step; every line of JavaScript was written for this theme.