Alameda is itself a very interesting place, you have to get there through a tunnel, called the Webster tube. This tube is actually featured in THX-1138, during the futuristic car chase at the end of the movie.

Most of the island had been used as a Navy base, but it's since been closed down and the real estate is slowly being re-purposed for other uses. This is where much of the Matrix movies were made. ESC entertainment, where I worked for a few months on the third Matrix film, was right up the street from where the theater is. Here's a link to the theater's website:

Auctions By The Bay

A company called "Auctions By The Bay" renovated the theater two years ago, they hold auctions in the theater
during the week and show movies on the weekends. You can't see it in this picture, but there is a jet plane mounted
on a concrete pillar on the picture left end of the lawn, one of two that greet the visitors to the base. Not far away
is the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier that is now open to the public as a museum.

...again from the theater's website, the theater is on the left. I think most of the buildings on the right are empty, except perhaps for some old Navy furniture.

This is the lobby.  For the Dynamation Celebration, a display case was brought in and put in front of the large bas-relief illustration on the wall.

The upstairs is decorated in a beautiful Egyptian motif. This is the entrance to the Women's restroom.

The building is quite tall, and the projection booth is at the very top, the tilt of the projectors is quite extreme but there wasn't any visible "keystoning" of the image. I think the equipment is vintage- probably the same projectors the Navy used- on the left of the projection booth there is a large 16mm machine, not sure what make. The two 35mm Simplex projectors in the middle were still using the Carbon Arc lamp house! You don't find that very often any more, and the quality of light is the best and brightest. The projectionist was excellent, he was a Union projectionist (you don't find them very often either) and in addition to working some shows at Auctions By The Bay he is also the regular projectionist for the Castro theater in San Francisco.

This is where my photos start, the previous photos were from the theater's website. This pic was taken from one of the two private rooms in the balcony. The organizers of the event had done an excellent job of putting the show together, they set up this room as a "green room", complete with refereshments and snacks. Before the show, there were powerpoint slides with various Harryhausen movie facts. By the time the show started, the theater was pretty much full.

Former "Creature Features" (a Bay area late-night tv show from the 70's http://www.netwiz.net/~creature/)host John Stanley kicked off the event by going thru some of the history of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen. Then he introduced the panel.

That's Jim Aupperle on the left, talking about Planet Of The Dinosaurs (which I think should be screened at another Bay Area Film Night) and his first recollection of seeing Harryhausen's work. Moving on to the right is Brian Friesinger, Tom Gibbons, Phil Tippett, me scratching my head, and Justin Kohn.

Here Justin (on the right) talks about the joy and pain (but mostly the joy) of stop-motion animation. After a few audience questions, John Stanley wrapped up the panel and the screening of 7th Voyage Of Sinbad commenced.

Intermission, from left to right: Justin Kohn, Tom Gibbons, Webster Colcord, Jim Aupperle, Anthony Marks(http://pharosproductions.com/aosma/smhome.html), and "Will The Thrill" - he puts on other film events around the Bay Area - http://www.thrillville.net/

That's the side of Brian Freisinger, and the back of Loren Portillo's head in the foreground.

The display case during intermission. The guy in the background was selling Harryhausen figurines.

Mr. Tippett brought this replica of the Mighty Joe Young armature, which was machined by Tom St. Amand.

The case was a little on the short side, but we managed to fit everything in. There's an armature on the left from Justin Kohn, which uses just about every kind of joint imaginable, and a Raptor armature by Justin. In front (sorry for the flash-my bad) is a t-rex that I animated in a station i.d. a long time ago.

A witch from Justin's collection, and an Earthworm from mine.

Underground Robot, The Mad Doctors Of Borneo skeleton, and some artifacts from Wah Chang's estate that were given to me a few months ago. In the background is a large stegosaurus from Loren Portillo's collection.

One of the amazing things that Wah Chang's estate sent me was the wax head of John Henry from the George Pal puppetoon.

Loren told me that this stegosaurus was sculpted by Brett Piper, but Loren did some of the final fabrication work on it.

I'll have to post a better picture of this replacement head.

This foot actually has a ball-and-socket and wire armature in the toes, but I haven't wanted to dig down into the extremely decayed foam latex to see exactly which joints are ball-and-socket. I think that this foot may have been specially built for the two shots of the dragon stomping on Buddy Hackett.

That's it! It was a terrific event, big Thanks to the organizers for putting on a great show. Thanks!

-Webster Colcord