John Walsh...I think has come up with a nice little extra Christie should make. A clamp on light!

John Pytlak...what's it going to take to get the fine folks at Neumade to modify their fabulous 35SS splicer to handle frameline tape? Any ideas??? I agree wholeheartedly that 8 perf clear tape should be the standard in the industry!

Also, on breakdown, if the tape will not peel off, instead of losing the frame, PLEASE simply "tear" the splice and tape over the frame with the "unpeelable" tape. That way the next guy who gets that print can build it up with a modified splicer or perhaps even an ultrasonic. There's nothing more annoying than to me than to get a print that has been used only one time and there is an id frame, with a missing frame (where the last guy cut that frame out), spliced to a poorly cut third frame...meaning I must lose 4 FRAMES on EACH side of the splice. At least with taping "over" the original splice, there will be no residue and a new cut can be made. Heck, that next operator might even go to work on that frame and get that old tape off!

Joe...a Christie projector won't jump with an ultrasonic, but it is a physical certainty that any tape splice will. That's why I just go ahead and leave the pre-cue on the trailer's leaders, as I feel it's less annoying than a jump at the start of the green band. (No I'm not crazy enough to sonic splice trailers. Egad on changeouts!)

Gordon...after doing many rep shows, I wish the depots would let me voluntarily go down once a month and tell them which prints to save. I'd do it for free if they would just let me! There's nothing worse than getting a beat up repertory print.

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1) Our tape won't peel, period. The few times I did try it just left residue. I am not in charge of purchasing. I'll send a memo to our district, or rather get my manager too since I can't. I'll get back to you with the response when I get it next year.

2) At our theater the jobs of usher and projectionist are combined. Sunday nights through Friday afternoon's there is one usher/projectionist to run 12 screens. Friday nights through Sunday Afternoons there are 2. Oh, and since we're always shortstaffed in concessions, we've got to help out there too.

3) I am unofficialy in charge of our both. I have as my job responsibilities taking care of all the slide projectors. Their maintenance adn slide change outs. Projector maintenance. Tearing down/building 90% of the movies that come here. Adding/removing screenvisions ads, etc. Keeping trailer programs up to date with our current bookings (which is a hard job here, I'll go into more detail on this if you wish). Winding up trailers. Oh, and loading/starting movies, cleaning theaters, acting as doorman, helping in concession, helping in box, etc.

So you can just take your elitist attitude and shove it. I would love to be up in the booth all day and only have to worry about film. I would then have time to make sure every splice was perfect-clear and pealable. But with all of the above going on I can't justify worrying about clear or white tape when the latter causes a barely noticable flash and ABSOLUTELY no sound problems at our theater.

And on top of all that, there are the things that are much bigger than splicing tape that are wrong here and haven't been fixed yet. Here is a short list for ya, I probably forgot some stuff:

-Broken apature gate on one of our old Centuries. Make loading a royal pain in the arse.
-Broken framing knob on another Century. MTS has told us the only thing to do is get a new projector head-which will never be approved in my lifetime. The movie is noticably out of frame on that screen, but there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
-Wrong apature plates with wrong screens. Some f*cking genius didn't realize each plate was cute for a specific theater. So now they're all mixed up.
-Broken dousers on two of our Christies. They're being held up with masking tape.
-Malfunctioning stereo sound head on a Christie. We gotta load it loose and put a rubber band on it, and it still doesn't sound good.
-Dots appearing on film in one of our THX screens. See my other thread.

So you can see why splicing tape would be low on my list of priorities.

Oh, and what I menat by incineration is that at the end of a films run, after its been to the second, third, fourth, billionith run theaters, the film companies incenerate most of the prints.

In the end this is a stupid argument. I've had audiences sit 30 minutes through a movie that was out of frame (mis-frame, not out of frame from the start, not my doing either) without a complaint. It is highly doubtfull that they're going to notice 1/24 of a second of film missing.

It is funny but experience has taught me that operators that don't care about the quality of there splices and how that effects their presentation

You made some rather unfair judgments here. I do care about the quality of my splices. Our splicer gets cleaned regularily. I also follow brads guidelines for splicing, smoothing over the tape so that there are no air bubbles. As to how that effects our presentation, I seriously doubt anyone notices one frame of white splicing tape on a 20 minuter reel. That is 28,800 frames. One flash on a scene change is going to ruin your whole show? The point is mute anyhow, I'm using clear tape for reel splices now.

are probably to busy to ever clean a projector

Our projectors are thouroghly cleaned every day and wiped down between shows.

let alone the lens

Lenses/portholes get cleaned once a week. I would like to do them twice a week, but my eyesight is not perfect, or even close, and cannot be corrected. Hence it is difficult for me to focus. Taking out lenses everyday to clean them would be counterproductive, since the small amount of dirt on the lens would be less of a detraction from the show than the movie being out of focus.

to busy to ever check the a chain levels

I don't know what you mean by chain levels. Please explain, perhpas its something I was never shown before.

and in many cases to busy to check if they have even threaded correctly and scratched a print.

I always check to see if I threaded correctly and have never scratched a print to to misloading, never.

They also are probably boasting about haveing threading contests as to who can laceup the fastest.

I can thread quickly, yes, but I do not boast about it. I did take part in a threading contest once, but went back and carefully checked the work afterwords.

Also since you seem to feel that films are incinerated at the end of the run well that is only partially true. Usually one or two prints are kept for revival and rep houses and they don't have time to check them so it may just be the one you didn't think was worth looking after and some one else will get stuck with your mess.

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The main problem with this industry is that costs and the candy stand dictate everything. It's no wonder that no one, especially younger people, leave this job. Endless work, cheaply run theaters, low pay for high annoyance are killing the job.

Since this forum is for people who like to get down to the nitty-gritty of projection, eventually there will be a big discusion of a minor point like splices. But no one is saying that "one way is the only way", or that if someone doesn't do it THIS way, they are wrong. You take whatever advice you can use and leave the rest.

When I was first learning projection (25 years ago) the guy who taught me made a big deal out of how you should do _everything_ you can to keep the print in good shape. This was a point from which everything else in projection "hinged" around. It was almost as if your job was to protect film first, project it second. So if people say things like that, it usually just shows the way they taught, and maybe even the era they were taught. This is the way the industry was years ago; you did everything you could so that the next guy didn't have any surprises. Of course, some people still try to do that today, but there are far fewer because the old timers have died, and the younger guys have been forced to other jobs to earn a living.

Now, it's totally different. It's a lousy job, with no pride (most "owners" are corprations, who's president never visits, so how can there be any?)

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I had no idea a print could be circulated 12 times. I suppose if I was dealing with used prints that I knew would be going on to several over people after me I would make a very strng effort to peel the tape. But there would be some important differences here that would allow me to do this:

1) I'd probably be running only one screen, allowing me to focus my attention on one film/projector.
2) I'd be determining my own purchases, lettng me buy the peelable tape.

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To make my posistion clear:

1) I use clear, not whit, tape now.
2) Even though I do not think it is a big deal, I would peel if I was able. Our splicing tape won't peel, so I can't.

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