The DIY Screen Masking Thread (1 Viewer)

[DFurr]

Although my screen is a constant height version, I used a 12 foot 1 X 3 board, stapled down the fabric after wrapping it over the board. It makes a perfect straight line. If you could figure out a way to use the wrap and staple method your sagging would be gone. Side masking is basically done the same way. Wrap behind a board and staple it down tight.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

For side masking, I used spray adhesive and wrapped the velvet around a piece of metal carpet transition strip. Leaving another 2 feet of the fabric loose, I then put curtain clips at the top and used a standard curtain rod hung from the ceiling. Did it for each side for the side masking. Basically, I made a curtain from a piece of velvet with the strip to make a sharp vertical edge.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think I get what you’re saying though my brain is having a tough time actually visualizing the exact thing - you should see how much fun IKEA instructions are for me

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Picture two regular curtain panels about two-feet wide each made from thin velvet hung around your window. Take each inside vertical edge (left and right panel) and wrap around that strip (same concept as wood, but lighter and not likely to warp) to make a thin sharp edge. Open and close by hand (the curtain is hung from a rod attached to my ceiling).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I wanted to double back with my progress report and what worked and didn’t work for me - hopefully this will be of use to someone else down the line. My thanks to John and Pete for sharing their insights with me over PM.

Having proper masking for my home theater screen is something I’ve wanted since my first digital projector nearly two decades ago but it’s not something I was ever able to accomplish while using pull down screens in rental apartments. I’m now a homeowner and I’ve installed a 135” fixed frame screen in my basement theater space.

I jokingly call it “Josh’s room of compromises” because each solution I come up with in my new space yields another issue to solve. What works for me here might not work in many other circumstances.

There’s a little “nook” area against one of the walls where I decided to place my screen. It’s sort of a false wall made of wood paneling that disguises a secondary entrance to the boiler and hot water heater. Hopefully I won’t regret this in the future but it seemed to me that one entrance to the boiler was sufficient. I also wanted the largest possible screen I could put in the space, even if that would create other compromises (which it did). The 135” screen is about ten feet wide, which pretty much takes up the entire wall. To the left of the screen is an immovable vertical support beam, and to the right of the screen is wood paneling disguising the cement foundation. Behind the screen is the same thin wood paneling that is not lode bearing. There were several studs behind the panel - not as many as you’d get with a full on wall but enough to mount the screen. There’s only about a foot of space from the bottom of the screen to the floor, so it really is as big as you can get in that spot.

The goal was to utilize the full height of the screen only for large format specialty formats like IMAX and Cinerama (in Smilebox format). Otherwise, for all intents and purposes, I’m making off the bottom of the screen and treating it like a CinemaScope screen, so that 2.40:1 is wider than 1.85:1 and 1.37:1.

Initially, for bottom masking, my idea had been to wrap a lightweight fabric around a wooden dowel that could then be held up by hooks on either side of the screen. This wound up being a failure. I could not find a dowel that ran as wide as the screen, and trying to connect multiple dowels led to a lot of instability in the masking and visible sagging. It just didn’t work.

Next idea was to use grommets and hooks to hold the fabric in place (with or without dowels), but that didn’t work either - the visible sag in the center was far too pronounced.

(I feel like both of those approaches could still be successful with a smaller screen but physics caught up with me.)

Last ditch effort was using powerful rare earth magnets to hold up the fabric, with the hope that they could be adjusted to pull on the fabric and give it proper tension. This failed spectacularly - the weight of the fabric combined with distance between sides eventually caused the magnets to drop to the floor, but they were still so powerful that they were drawn to each other - they flew across the screen width until they met each other, collided, and shattered.

I went back to the drawing board and realized that perhaps I was trying to overengineer the problem. I asked myself a basic question: what is masking, really? It’s a curtain. As a lifelong apartment dweller, I’ve had to deal with hanging curtains in places where you can’t mess with the walls, and the solution in that situation is tension rods. Might that work here?

So I found a tension rod that would go the ten foot length across the screen, and secured the fabric to it. Since it’s only a couple feet off the ground, I wasn’t worried about the weight of the fabric causing significant savage. This wound up being the winner. It fit perfectly between the support beam on one side and the cement wall on the other, and holds the masking across the bottom of the screen without issue. It also allows for it to be easily movable, so if I need to mask for 2.55:1 or 2.20:1, it can go up or down with just a few seconds worth of effort.

I had ordered two different tension rods in case one didn’t work properly, but since it did, I decided to use the other one for the side masking. I used another piece of black fabric with curtain clips to create side mattes that can cover the screen completely when off, or be opened up for any other aspect ratio.

I gave the system a test last night with Hitchcock’s Rope (a 1.37:1 title) and to me it was perfect. The projector’s lens shift allows me to easily make the top of the image move to the top of the frame, and then the side and bottom masks covered up all of the unused screen space. It feels theatrical. And without any pillarboxing or letterboxing visible, any size or shape image seems suitably big. In the dark, the masking becomes invisible, and in the light, it looks like a regular movie theater, not a Home Screen.

I’ll refine this over time, get better material, use something to make more fixed edges on the side masks (though gravity makes it pretty straight already) but for right now, this is amazing.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s only been a few days but I am loving the masking. Being able to watch films in aspect ratios other than 16x9 without letterboxing or pillarboxing at home is something I’ve dreamed about for decades. It’s entirely more immersive and the perceived contrast boost makes a huge impact on overall quality of presentation.

I haven’t opened up the bottom masking to do an IMAX disc yet but now that I’m getting used to the screen with scope height as the common height, that’s going to seem huge by comparison.

 

[JohnRice]

It’s only been a few days but I am loving the masking. Being able to watch films in aspect ratios other than 16x9 without letterboxing or pillarboxing at home is something I’ve dreamed about for decades. It’s entirely more immersive and the perceived contrast boost makes a huge impact on overall quality of presentation.

I haven’t opened up the bottom masking to do an IMAX disc yet but now that I’m getting used to the screen with scope height as the common height, that’s going to seem huge by comparison.

But what about Nolan movies? The insanity!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

But what about Nolan movies? The insanity!

We’re built specifically for those. I’ll open the bottom masking to reveal the full 16x9 screen, and then use the lens shift to the re-center the image so Nolan films will display with ratios switching from 2.40 to 1.78. It’s going to be great!

 

[DFurr]

Ah, common height is the way to go if you can do it!!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Ah, common height is the way to go if you can do it!!

That’s essentially it.

Default masking is common height scope 2.40. The ratios 1.85 / 1.66 / 1.37 are shown within that scope height with side masking to hide pillarboxing, so that they are all smaller than scope.

Bottom masking comes down to make the screen larger for 70mm (2.20), and comes down further for IMAX digital ratio (1.90) and down a little bit more for IMAX film ratio on Nolan discs (1.78).

Thus every ratio is not only properly masked but shown in the right proportion to other ratios.

 

[Mark-P]

That’s essentially it.

Default masking is common height scope 2.40. The ratios 1.85 / 1.66 / 1.37 are shown within that scope height with side masking to hide pillarboxing, so that they are all smaller than scope.

Bottom masking comes down to make the screen larger for 70mm (2.20), and comes down further for IMAX digital ratio (1.90) and down a little bit more for IMAX film ratio on Nolan discs (1.78).

Thus every ratio is not only properly masked but shown in the right proportion to other ratios.

But what about IMAX 1.43:1? Just kidding!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

But what about IMAX 1.43:1? Just kidding!

I actually had thought about that and have an answer - I do have a few IMAX docs in that ratio - I made sure the side masking was tall enough to bring the full height 16x9 into 1.43. I guess that makes it the one ratio out of proportion to something but it’ll still seem bigger than everything other than Nolan discs so that’s good enough. Either that or we all lie on our backs and project on the ceiling, cause the room ain’t tall enough for it!

I don’t know what it says about me that I thought about this extensively before setting it all up.

2.55 and 2.76 are gonna look a little shorter than 2.40 instead of wider. Nothing I could do about that. I’m using literally every inch of width on that wall already. At some point you gotta look around and go “ok I’m not gonna compromise 99.9% of what I watch when I have like six discs that are like that”

 

[Mark-P]

I actually had thought about that and have an answer - I do have a few IMAX docs in that ratio - I made sure the side masking was tall enough to bring the full height 16x9 into 1.43. I guess that makes it the one ratio out of proportion to something but it’ll still seem bigger than everything other than Nolan discs so that’s good enough. Either that or we all lie on our backs and project on the ceiling, cause the room ain’t tall enough for it!

I don’t know what it says about me that I thought about this extensively before setting it all up.

2.55 and 2.76 are gonna look a little shorter than 2.40 instead of wider. Nothing I could do about that. I’m using literally every inch of width on that wall already. At some point you gotta look around and go “ok I’m not gonna compromise 99.9% of what I watch when I have like six discs that are like that”

Yeah, the reason I say I was kidding about 1.43 is because I don‘t believe there are any true representations of that on home video. Zack Snyder has the IMAX scenes of Batman v Superman in 1.43 but the non-IMAX scenes are full-width, not within the real estate of the IMAX frame. So watching that movie on your setup will use full height, but will have the IMAX scenes pillarboxed.