They have no problem reminiscing back to their days working in their family’s theaters when they were hardly out of elementary school. It doesn’t seem to bother either of them. It’s a change that might spell out a different commute for Joe and Luigi DeMarsh, who drive two hours from Deland every day. “We saw this nice Town Center and with the community and all the housing we thought that this was an area that really needed a theater and some form of nighttime entertainment.”Įpic Theater opens up for its full hours of operation on Friday. “We saw this area, and saw how long it took to drive from Oakleaf to Orange Park and we kind of heard from people that said ‘oh, we have to drive all the way to Orange Park all the time,” Joe DeMarsh said. Joe DeMarsh considered that when he reviewed locations for his eighth theater. They’re mixed back down towards a prism and forced out towards the lens which goes onto the screen.”Īfter many years in the business and 100s of rolls of 35mm film, that basic principle of projection remains the same, according to Luigi DeMarsh.įor Oakleaf residents, the theater means a shorter drive time to watch the mainstream films that, previously, they would have to travel all the way to the Orange Park Mall to view. “Electricity goes through them and makes an arc, makes a little fire there, lights up inside of a big reflector, that light goes into a big mirror which points it back into a DLP chip that separates the light into three colors, red, green and blue. “Compressed neon gas inside of a glass tube links to two pieces of carbon on either end,” Luigi DeMarsh said. Even though Epic Theater’s projection system is under the guiding hand of digital files coming encrypted from corporate servers in Deland, Florida, the basic projection system remains the same. In the days of 35 millimeter film, none of that was possible. It’s the next level of sound.”ĭevices in the theater can describe what is happening on screen to the visually-impaired and provide closed captioning for the hearing impaired. “What that does is it doesn’t just pan in a circle, it can actually move in space, so if you had a helicopter flying overhead, it can fly to the left, it can actually fly over your head, and if you close your eyes you can actually kind of hear this go over your head, then around you. “Some people call it 3D sound, others call it object-based sound,” said Luigi DeMarsh, 35. Two registers have two different employees who sell tickets in the event that a card isn’t available to purchase a ticket through the five digital kiosks in the front or online.Ĭontained within the two stories of Epic Theater’s compound is 12 screens, eight of which have upstairs access and seat anywhere from 50 to 250 movie watchers in reclining leather seats.Īccording to Luigi DeMarsh, the information technology director for the theater, while a movie is playing the 14 channel DTS:X sound system will encase a viewer while the digital projectors overhead spit out a motion picture at 4K picture quality. The theater also offers conventional and digital ticket purchasing. It allows us to have more content and different content.” Our auditorium signage is digital, so a lot of that stuff that used to be paper is now digital. “We don’t use paper poster cases anymore, they’re all digital. “We’ve done a lot of things digitally with our menu boards,” said Joe DeMarsh, 33. The event offered moviegoers a sneak peek into EPIC Theater’s 42,000 square foot contemporary layout, a marriage of technology and convenience from the moment the door is opened, until the moment it’s closed. By the end of the day, Joe and Luigi DeMarsh had raised $2,000 with proceeds from $2 popcorn, drinks and ticket sales. On May 25, EPIC Theaters held its grand opening on location in the strip mall at 8380 Merchant’s Way with a charity event for Variety Children’s Charity of Florida. Nearly seven decades later, Joe and Luigi DeMarsh have opened seven EPIC Theater locations across Florida and North Carolina – and last week they opened their eighth location in Clay County’s growing Oakleaf community. Ask Joe and Luigi DeMarsh and they’ll say their family has always been on the cutting edge. That was in 1947, come the 1950s drive-in theatres started to pop up all over Pennsylvania. The first family theatre opened on its lawn in Pennsylvania. OAKLEAF – Undoubtedly, movie theatres are part of the DeMarsh family’s DNA.
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