Thanks to the magic of the Internet, we stumbled across this vintage trailer for the Walter Reade Theater, made in 1993, just two years after it was built. We got in touch with the trailer’s creator, Robert Lyons, who shared some memories about the project.

Lyons, who currently teaches animation at Pratt, was working freelance for Tony Lover of Liberty Studios at the time. Lover created video tributes for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Award Gala for many years, and when the Film Society’s Wendy Keys approached him about making a trailer to promote the recently completed Walter Reade, he offered the job to Lyons. Lover granted him full use of the studio, including their 10-foot-tall, half-ton Oxberry Master Series Animation Stand, which now lives as part of the permanent collection at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.

The animation for the trailer was shot on 35mm from start to finish with no cuts and used almost 100 separate exposures. It took a focused 20 hours of nearly non-stop shooting and between 90 and 100 passes to get it right. This was before the days of digital post-production, so everything was animated directly under the camera.

“When I’m given control of a project, I try to make it a challenge,” joked Lyons, who called the project one of the most complicated in his career. “Film is unforgiving. If you make a mistake you have to start over from the beginning.”

After completing the trailer, Lyons was invited to opening night of the 31st New York Film Festival in 1993. It debuted in Avery Fisher Hall before the premiere of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts.

Read more about the process on Robert Lyons’s Vimeo page and donate to our Kickstarter campaign to give the Walter Reade Theater a new screen for its 25th birthday!