At the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Saugerties, the weekend of March 15 to 17 was a celebration of a major milestone in the cinema’s history: The Mark, a state-of-the-art screening room with a Dolby Atmos sound system, opened to the public following a gut renovation of the former Theatre 3, upstairs. The screening and performance space is dedicated to the memory of Markertek founder and local philanthropist Mark Braunstein, who died in 2021 – the same year that Upstate Films purchased the Orpheum.
The Mark was officially launched on Friday evening with a ribbon-cutting event featuring a host of local luminaries and emceed by Upstate Films co-director Jason Silverman. On hand were New York State Assemblywoman Sarahana Shrestha, Town of Saugerties deputy supervisor Leanne Thornton, Saugerties Village Board member Terry Parisian, a member of State Senator Michelle Hinchey’s staff and three Saugerties Chamber of Commerce board members: Peggy Schwartz, Mark Smith and Bob Siracusano. The giant golden scissors were wielded by Braunstein’s widow, artist Katharine L. McKenna, whom Silverman called “the heart and soul of this project.”
Said McKenna of her late husband’s interest in the project during the planning stages, “Mark always liked to renovate old buildings and turn them into something special.” Braunstein had long been an active supporter of Upstate Films and the region’s indie film and video community and was a founding sponsor of both the Woodstock Film Festival and the Hudson Valley Film Commission. The Daily Bread Food Kitchen, the Woodstock Day School, the Boys and Girls Club, People’s Place and the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley were other major beneficiaries of his philanthropy, as an individual and through the Markertek Fund.
Following the ribbon-cutting, attendees were treated to a series of film clips demonstrating the capacities and versatility of the immersive 33-speaker Dolby Atmos sound system. Atmos technology allows up to 128 audio tracks plus spatial audio description metadata (location, movement, type, intensity, speed and volume of sounds) to be distributed among carefully spaced loudspeakers, adding height channels to the usual horizontal and vertical. This allows sounds to be perceived by audiences as three-dimensional and even apparently in motion.
The program began with a short demo film from Dolby that sent sound patterns spiraling around the room, from front to back, ceiling to floor and side to side. It was followed by the 1986 music video of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” with animation by Aardman’s Nick Park; the spectacular sequence from Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 science fiction film Gravity in which the Space Shuttle is wrecked by a storm of space debris; the scene in Dune: Part Two in which Paul Atreides first learns to mount a giant sandworm; and the pool party scene in Damien Chazelle’s 2016 film La La Land that features the song “I Ran.”
The new room’s redesign was masterminded by local resident John Storyk of the Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG). Storyk’s career in architectural acoustic design got off to a brilliant start in 1968, when he created the legendary Electric Lady Studios for Jimi Hendrix. The multi-award-winning firm touts itself as delivering “cutting-edge technology, ergonomic and stylish interiors and environmentally conscious solutions.” WSDG’s audio/video projects around the globe include venues and studios for Bruce Springsteen, UCLA, Lincoln Center, Spotify, Jay-Z, MTV, Alicia Keys and NYU. Blaze Audio did the installation of the new sound system. “We were vibrating with how beautiful it sounded,” Silverman said of the successful launch.
The Mark was put to a variety of uses over the course of its opening weekend. Buster Keaton’s The General (1926) was screened in the new theater on Friday evening. There was a two-hour Open House window on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with repeats of the demo program, followed by screenings of Dune: Part Two. On Saturday night, The Mark hosted a live show from the Upstate Comedy Club, and Sunday evening featured a screening of S. S. Rajamouli’s 2022 Bollywood musical blockbuster RRR.
Built in 1908 by the Davis family, the Orpheum started its life as a vaudeville theater, with a flat floor that could be cleared of seats for dances or roller-skating. The Thornton family acquired the 6,480-square-foot building in 1918 and installed a sloping floor to adapt it to cinema. A major renovation in 1993 split the single-screen movie palace into three smaller theaters, creating Theatre 3 out of what used to be the balcony. The not-for-profit Upstate Films, whose home base is in Rhinebeck, purchased the Orpheum in 2021 and completed the building’s first phase of renovations, including technical, safety and environmental updates, a new lobby and a new audio system in its large theater, in 2022.
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