By Carl Hoover

Tribune-Herald entertainment editor

Movies, once the entertainment mainstay of the Waco Hippodrome Theatre, will join the theater’s 2009 programming mix thanks to a newly installed digital projector.

The projector will allow the theater to show digital movies and opens the door to lower-cost entertainment that may help the theater weather the current economic downturn, noted Waco Performing Arts Company executive director Scott Baker. The Waco Performing Arts Company manages the Hippodrome.

“Films may add low-cost events to create a steady cash flow and advertising for the theater season,” he said. Movie programming for the theater hasn’t been set, but Baker and WPAC board members hope to announce a schedule toward the end of January.

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Scott Baker, executive director of the Waco Performing Arts Company, checks a test screening of The Polar Express using the Hippodrome's new digital projector. (Rod Aydelotte photo)

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The projector itself is mounted among a bank of lights. (Rod Aydelotte photo)

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Scott Baker, executive director of the Waco Performing Arts Company, checks out video players connected to the Hippodrome Theatre's new digital projector. (Rod Aydelotte photo)

In the works is a weekly movie screening, most likely on Friday nights, plus the possibility of film series, festivals or movie-related events such as an Oscars-watching party, he said. The WPAC also wants to show popular independent films and art movies that miss Waco and is exploring the rights and licensing requirements needed to do so. The theater — brace yourselves, Waco film buffs — even might secure first-run films for screenings on a single night, Baker added.

Baylor University film and digital media assistant professor Jim Kendrick, an active member of the Online Film Critics Society with hundreds of film reviews to his credit, was recently added to the WPAC board. He’ll lead the development of its video programming and said in a recent e-mail that he was excited about the chance to expand Waco’s film culture.

The return of film to the Hippodrome’s regular entertainment offerings brings the theater back to the medium that had been its bread and butter for much of its lifetime. Built in 1913 as a vaudeville house, the Hippodrome had evolved into a full-blown movie theater by the 1920s. It operated as the Waco Theatre after 1929 and showed first-run feature films until it closed in the 1970s.

The theater still has an operating 40-year-old 35mm projector in a projection room above the second balcony, but lacked equipment to show movies in other formats.

Movies are projected on the theater’s movable 15-foot by 20-foot screen housed above the stage.

Baker said the theater has pursued digital films for almost two years, but found most systems on the market too expensive.

The recent convergence of a new, inexpensive Sony projector and an affordable lens to enable theatrical projection allowed the Hippodrome to buy its system for less than $9,000, said the WPAC director.

The Hippodrome now can screen movies available on DVDs and Blu-ray discs, although the theater’s sound system only handles stereo rather than the five-, six- or even seven-channel sound encoded on some film discs.

The projector’s mounting in the center of the lights bank below the balcony’s edge permits an angle high enough that people onstage won’t interfere with the image onscreen, a problem experienced with a temporary floor-positioned projector during October’s Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Baker said the Hippodrome board is considering lowering its theater rental rates for those groups or individuals who simply want a space with video capabilities for lectures, business meetings, film screenings, parties or video-game tournaments.

Waco movie fans may find some concession constraints. A lack of cupholders at Hippodrome seats — and the need to minimize messy drink spills in a historic theater — means only bottled sodas and waters would be sold, Baker said.

However, there will be popcorn, he added.

choover@wacotrib.com

757-5749