Rapallo – Customer magic at The Odeon

Welcome to 2018! Another year another chance for much excitement on the AV front. And if paying more attention to do what makes your heart sing is one of the New Years resolutions, we have just the thing to start off the year. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. For many of us, the reality will be a litlle more modest, but the enjoyment need not be any less. It’s an oldie, but a goodie: the Odeon Home Theatre on our blog.

The visit was long anticipated. While Mr Rapallo had been doing the installations with Brad-the-builder, I had only heard the stories and seen the pictures. But I was not prepared for ‘the real deal’ when we arrived at the house Mr. H and his partner have recently built.

The view is to die for, with only a couple of other houses within sight. The house itself is inspired by Group Architects. Cedar on the outside, macrocarpa on the inside. But the real gem is hidden in the dungeons off the living area: ‘The Odeon’. A private dedicated home theatre straight out of a movie.

‘It’s funny how we have come full circle in a lot of ways,’ he laughs. ‘I grew up being able to sneak up to the projection room of one of the old movie theatres in my home town. I was completely fascinated by the cinema experience and a few years down the line I ended up employed by the ‘Kerridge Odeon movie theatre group. At the time Kerridge Odeon was the largest theatre group in New Zealand, built and owned by Sir Robert James Kerridge.

Mr. H recalls: ‘I managed various of his cinemas – did everything from mopping the floor and cleaning the toilets – to looking after various artists like Sir Cliff Richard, Dave Brubeck et al who at the time Bob Kerridge was touring through New Zealand.’

‘But I got itchy feet, left for The UK and got distracted with other business adventures.

Twenty years later I received a lucky phone call that brought me back home to New Zealand but also back to the movie theatre world.

Movie theatres everywhere were going through a rough patch at the time, many of them closing down.

I had watched the ‘multiplex’ phenomenon with interest in the UK and I figured New Zealand was ripe for it. We purchased an existing but very tired Art Deco movie theatre that had all the permits we needed. We completely stripped it bare, revamped it and brought it back to it’s old glory, only better.

The building oozed the golden age of cinema but it had both its feet in the ‘now’: one box office, one projector room and 4 screens. Anybody could walk in at any time. There would always be a movie about to start.

My partner had a background in hospitality and we decided we could improve a lot about the movie experience from that point of view as well. We introduced a cafe and one of the earliest liquor-licensed cinemas, as well as the extremely popular Nibble Nook.’

Success followed quickly, exceeding the owners’ wildest expectations during the nineties. But as with anything, the cinema industry is cyclical. Mr. H knew what was coming and once again decided to move on. This time to realize the dream of his own private cinema.

’Just as we did with the old Art Deco movie theatre, I feel it is really important to take from the past and transport it into this day and age. I love the experience of luxury and tradition. But I also want to make it better than it was, add to it.

That is exactly what we have done with The Odeon’

This entire conversation happened wandering the expansive grounds and over a delicious lunch. But time had finally arrived to lay eyes on the piece of art that has been in the making for so long. Down the stairs we went, past the server room and into The Odeon.

‘Everything about The Odeon has been the product of the ideal storm, but in a good way’, says Mr. H. ‘We were very much focusing on finishing the house. The idea was to start building The Odeon once we were well and truly settled in. But the right people with the right skills just presented a little earlier than anticipated. All the people involved in building the Odeon were prepared to be creative and think outside the box in order to achieve what we had in mind on a budget that will probably surprise a lot of people.

Brad built all the fabric frame sound proof paneling from scratch in a way that allows for ventilation and also makes it easy to convert the room into a self-contained flat if we would ever choose to. Sound proofing is so important and we paid a lot of attention to acoustic treatment to tame the audio in the room.’

‘I researched a lot of home cinema designs and found a few that really appealed on AVS forum. I definitely didn’t want the whole curtain on the walls thing that you often see in home cinemas; it’s so wrong. I also didn’t want Hollywood light bulbs along the stage frame work. As I mentioned before, the design had to be taken into this century so it had to be LEDs. We also used LEDs for the ambient light star ceiling.’

‘For the home cinema set-up, I contacted Rapallo because I really wanted an SVS PB-13 subwoofer. Bart invited us to the Rapallo demo room and although I knew of SVS’s subwoofers reputation, I wasn’t aware they make some awesome speakers too. We started talking and ended up listening to the SVS Ultra speakers. I was blown away by them, so it was kind of a no-brainer really if you realize how good they are.

We opted for the SVS Ultra floor standers, SVS Ultra Center speaker and SVS PB-13 subwoofer to go in a cavity behind the transparent projection screen with a masking system. The SVS Ultra surround speakers were cleverly built-in specifically designed acoustic columns towards the back of the room in strategically determined places for optimal sound. Bart and Brad worked very closely together in achieving a superior sound while ensuring it also looks million dollars.’

‘I read somewhere that all Hollywood’s major preview cinemas use Panasonic cinema projectors so I felt strongly for the Panasonic PT-AE8000. It may be an older projector, but it’s a really good one; if it’s good enough for Hollywood it’s good enough for me. We allowed for a special (but multi-function) built-in projection room behind the back of The Odeon.’

‘In the server room we installed two Oppo BDP-103D blu-ray players and a Yamaha RX-V2079 9.2 channel audiophile network receiver, which Bart recommended.’

‘At the moment we are still dotting i’s and crossing t’s. We are working on a home automation system that will allow us to control the waterfall curtain, the masking system, the anamorphic lens, blu-ray players, AVR, projector and the LED lights with a single app on our android tablet. We’re very much pioneers in this respect as Bart (aka Mr. Rapallo) is still developing the Karson home automation system as we speak. I honestly can’t wait for that. We’re very, very close though.’

And so it was that we sat down and were treated to some Dolby Atmos trailers to start with. Shall we just say we enjoyed it so much that we ended up watching ‘The Martian’ as well; complete with popcorn & home-made ice cream. I know… Mr. H and his partner said they were aiming for the ‘complete experience’.