Sun-Ray Cinema and their Screen Quality Guarantee

In recent survey answers about the importance of certain film viewing aspects, I’ve foundan interesting spike in audiences that are most concerned with screen quality. This week, I hadthe chance to sit down with Huntington Heberlee, a team member at Sun-Ray Cinema and anexpert in keeping viewing standards at their prime. Heberlee’s main focus at Sun-Ray is scheduling the films and the trailers that play before them, and ensuring everything runs smoothly and free of any issues.

Sun-Ray Cinema is committed to quality, especially when it comes to every film shown on their screens. On this topic, Heberlee said, “I was at a screening of Alien a couple years back - a film shot in scope, playing on a scope screen - yet it was windowboxed, so there were big black bars on all sides of the screen, while the film itself was real small in the middle. I went out and told somebody and was told something like ‘it’s an old movie and it’s probably just like that’. That sort of issue is never disregarded here - and more importantly - it’s made sure that it won’t happen in the first place.” He goes on to discuss the oftentimes desaturated look or other poor screen qualities you can encounter at other theaters. He says, “Usually when I go and see a standard screening of something at another theater, odds are the projector bulb needs to be replaced which results in the film having somewhat of a blue and faded look. It really baffles me how hard it is to get a good experience, the absolute bare minimum, especially with the rise in ticket prices at bigger chains.”

In addition to Sun-Ray’s current releases, many of the films they screen are past releases,or independent releases, many of which they show on physical film. In regards to theater chains,there is a large discrepancy of various showtimes, as well as the windows of independentreleases, making many of the screenings inaccessible. “Sometimes a new indie film will come out and it’s exclusively playing at one theater an hour away, once a day, either at like 10:30 in the morning or 10:30 at night, and it’s basically impossible to get to. It’s really discouraging, since a lot of the time it’s something I’ve been looking forward to, and then I just have to shelve it into the back of my mind and pretend I’ll get around to it when it goes on streaming or disc. While we do some one off showings here and there, they’re always at accessible showtimes, and pretty much everything - budget and popularity aside - will typically play multiple times a day and for a week or more depending on how it’s doing.”

When discussing physical film prints, Heberlee said, “Before we opened, there were only a couple places in the entirety of Florida showing stuff on 35mm film, and I believe only one place doing 70mm over in Miami. It’s a real treat, especially being a complete nerd about presentation and that sort of thing, to see an older film how it was originally intended. It’s always funny telling people online about all the special stuff I'm seeing, and they’ll usually assume I’m in Los Angeles or New York or some other film hub.” Hearing of all the ways in which Sun-Ray Cinema takes special care of their film screenings from the projection to the comfort of the viewers made it certain this theater is a great choice for audiences concerned with screen quality.

Towards the end of our chat, I asked Heberlee what his favorite parts of Sun-Ray are, as an employee but also as a film fan himself.“There were a lot of folks that saw Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie and just kept coming back to rewatch it, myself included - I’m up to maybe 4 times now and due for a fifth - and after constant emails, we were able to bring that back for another week. I think it’s great that this theater is so receptive to suggestions like that. You could easily email us and be like, ‘I want to see THIS movie’ and we’ll always look into it and try to make it happen.”