Copious Notes

William Watts, director of the Library Foundation, stands on the stage of the 144-seat library theater. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Doug Tattershall walks to the back of the control booth in the theater at the ­Lexington Public Library downtown, opens the door on a cabinet and rolls out an extra-special item: a record player.

And not just a turntable, but a changer ready for stacks of wax.

It sits right below an analog radio tuner.

Yes, this theater could use some updating.

“Everything is over 20 years old,” Tattershall says.

The antiquated equipment in the control room of the library theater includes a vinyl record player and analog radio tuner.

Lexington Public Library Foundation director William Watts says, “We were told that we couldn’t even get parts anymore for a lot of this ­equipment.”

Thanks to a $268,644 ­challenge grant from the W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Foundation, help could be on the way. If the challenge is met by July, $100,000 of the more than $537,000 will go into an endowment to ­maintain the five-story Foucault ­pendulum clock that Lucille Little ­donated to the library in 2001, and the remainder will be used for theater renovations.

“This is a very worthwhile program,” Watts says. “The Little Foundation is very ­interested in arts and the ­theater. They had funded the clock and wanted to protect that investment. We talked to them about how they could also help the theater.”

The library theater is not a major area venue, but it has hosted numerous groups and events, ­including productions by the Jazz Arts Foundation, ­the Apprentice ­Players, ActOut, the now-defunct Phoenix Group ­Theatre, the One World Film Festival and countless political debates.

It can be a boon for some groups; not-for-profit entities may use the theater for free.

Paying for space can be a huge issue for small artists and groups.

Renovations will go well beyond the outdated ­control room.

Backstage, the dressing rooms are being used for storage. The movie screen sits far back on the stage, away from the audience, and the lighting is far from state-of-the-art.

The renovation plan calls for staggering the seating, which now is in ­regimented rows that would make a military officer proud but isn’t great if you are trying to see around the person in front of you on the fairly flat theater floor.

“Sight lines are ­certainly a problem because this ­theater does not have ­staggered seating,” Janet Scott, a Lexington actor who has produced plays in the theater, says in a fund-raising video.

Annette Mayer, ­chairwoman of the One World Film Festival, says, “We would love to have a ­situation where everybody could see the screen.”

David McWhorter, ­president of the Jazz Arts Foundation, says the ­theater’s harsh lighting makes it difficult to produce video of the group’s monthly concerts.

And everyone in the fund-raising video ­emphasize the library’s central ­location: So many people are library ­patrons and know where it is.

Now, they just need to get the theater out of the vinyl era.

"Autism: the Musical" is one of 11 films showing in this year's One World Film Festival.

The One World Film ­Festival has unveiled its lineup for this year.

The free series, designed to encourage cross-cultural understanding through film, will feature 11 movies at The Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street, or the Lexington Public Library, 140 East Main Street, from Feb. 15 to March 22. Here’s the lineup:

Autism: The Musical (2007): The story of children with autism writing and performing a musical. 2 p.m. Feb. 15, library.
Pete Seeger: Power of Song (2007): Documentary about the legendary folk singer. 7 p.m. Feb. 19, Kentucky.
Moving Midway (2007): This film documents the physical relocation of an Antebellum plantation when development begins to encroach on its land. 2 p.m. Feb. 22, library.
A Walk to Beautiful (2007): Three ostracized Ethiopian women take an arduous journey to get medical treatment for a severe childbirth complication. 5 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26, Kentucky.
War Dance (2006): This 2008 Oscar nominee for best documentary shows Ugandan schoolchildren who use music and dance to forget their troubles. 2 and 4:30 p.m. March 1, library.
Up the Yangtze (2007): Documentary about a cruise up the river before a gigantic dam changes the landscape. 5 and 7:30 p.m. March 5, Kentucky.
Outsourced (2007): A romantic comedy about the outsourcing of a Seattle company to India. 2 and 4:30 p.m. March 8, library.
Arranged (2007): Two women, a Muslim and an Orthodox Jew, develop a friendship through shared experiences, including that they are both preparing for arranged marriages. 5 and 7:30 p.m. March 12, Kentucky.
Under the Same Moon (2007): A Mexican boy travels to the United States to find his mother, who is working in the country illegally. 2 p.m. March 15, library.
Amal (2007): A fable set in India that asks what really constitutes success. 5 and 7:30 p.m., Kentucky.
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007): The story of a boy sent to live with his grandfather while his parents try to escape political unrest in 1970s Brazil. 2 p.m. March 22, library.

All films are free. Go to the festival website or call (859) 266.6073 for more information.

Floyd Watkins (front) and Billy Boyd (back) worked on projects in the Digital Studio of the Lexington Public Library's Northside Branch on Monday. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

So, you want to be a filmmaker?

Digital technology seems to have put this in your reach. You just need to invest a few thousand dollars in a professional high-definition video camera and then another … few … K in the top video-editing software and the … gulp … Apple computer to run it.

Or you could just take your filmmaking project to the library.

That’s what Lexington filmmaker Floyd Watkins has been doing since the new Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library opened last fall with its Digital Studio.

“This is phenomenal,” Watkins said as he was settling in Monday afternoon to work on a project. “It’s a big step up.”

Watkins had been editing films, which range from promotional videos to a documentary piece he’s working on about the economic crisis in the Bluegrass, on Windows Movie Maker, a Microsoft program that comes bundled with Windows XP and Vista. It’s fine for assembling family videos and things of that sort, but hardly a platform for building a professional-looking film.

Charles Watson.

Charles Watson sits at one of the eight Mac Pro computers in the Digital Studio, giving a quick tour through software such as Final Cut Pro, Garage Band and iDVD, which can let you build, say, your church event DVD into a presentation that looks like the home version of a Hollywood movie.

All of these programs available at the library are also used by the big boys.

Watson, coordinator for the Digital Studio, and his associate, Lamar Wilson, point out that movies such as last year’s Academy Award winner for best picture, No Country for Old Men, have been edited with Final Cut Pro and hit albums have been recorded with Garage Band.

“I couldn’t believe what they wanted to do here,” Watson says, recalling when he applied for the Digital Studio job. He left his post as chief photographer for WTVQ (Channel 36) to take the gig, which has him helping people who come in to use the programs and teaching classes.

“You don’t need to know anything when you come in,” Watson says of the classes. “We teach you from the beginning. This stuff is pretty easy to learn.”

Classes started in October, and Watson says he’s seen everyone from middle school students to an 82-year-old working on projects from fluffing up home videos to some ambitious filmmaking.

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