The print in question print was probably thirty years old or more, and its usual resting place is the fridge at the Swedish Film Institute. I have no idea when it was screened last, either, because only very rarely do we get inspection protocols with the prints. The last time was probably years before I got it, because the way we operate is that we get the prints directly from the Film Institute, and send them back to them right after the show. See, none of the prints is in distribution anymore. They can't be ordered by the local theatre chain.

Most of the prints I get have never been near a platter; they are too old for that. Platters weren't common in Sweden until well into the eighties, and the vast majority of the films we play are much older than that.

And yes; I did inspect the print, and felt all those awful dry cement splices. I replaced a few of the most dangerous ones - the ones that were so dry that you only had to bend the film base slightly for the splice to break - but to replace all would simply not be practical. Besides, the Swedish Film Institute always assures me that the prints are throughly inspected before they're sent to us.

Yeah. Right.

I got a 70mm print of "Little Big Man" from them once where 10 minutes of one of the reels was spliced with the wrong side up, that is, half of the reel had the sound strips facing the wrong direction. Had I trusted them to actually have inspected the print, I would have ended up with a hugely embarrassing show...

And no, we don't have a failsafe. We don't have any kind of automation because the theatre where I work was built and closed down by the local theatre chain before anyone thought of installing a platter there. When we reopened as a revival house, the idea of automation was somewhat less than practical.

Our projectionist put it on the platter on Thursday night. On the first film Friday there was a report that the film was out of frame. I ran up and reframed.

Before the next show I checked the splice and dicovered that it was a masking tape splice. WTF! I was in a hurry and fixed the splice. I couldnt figure out why it was there?

The next show it was out of frame again! When I checked it this morning, I dicovered that our stupid projectionist had spliced the tail into the picture without checking or looking. What is all the more amazing is that the masking tape splice went through the projector just fine. Go figure.

Before I got to post this; I heard a strange noise from the projector behind me. It sounded like metal on metal. Not the best sound.

We were running some lame movie, I think it was "Down To You". During its last show run, it suffered our first brain wrap in six months. We got that fixed in 5 minutes and cranked it back up. Five minutes later it did it again. Another five minutes and we are back in business. And yes again it did it again. Seven times it brain wrapped, and each time there was NOTHING wrong with anything at all. When we looked at it, perfect, until we walked away. Then brain wrap.

And this is what really gets me, after we fixed the seventh wrap, three FULL boxes jumped from a top shelf across the floor, EIGHT FEET across the floor. I think I have a little devlish spirit walking my booth.

We had one of those too, in an old 1921-vintage theatre I used to work. It's true! I know that not everyone believes in this type of thing, but strange, inexplicable things used to happen to our equipment on a routine basis. If someone had told me about any of this stuff, I wouldn't have believed them, but I was the relief man at the time and I saw it with my own eyes!

Odd things would happen to the prints, too; reels would mysteriously become out of order, and splices would change their framing orientation.

It all stopped, though, when they fired the chief projectionist.

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Sounds like the print jumped off the intermittent sprocket and re-engaged a perf later. Check the tension of the shoe that holds the film against the intermittent sprocket. Also be sure that the gate tension isn't excessive.

The splice between reels 5 and 6 may be a bit stiff or out of line, causing the film to jump off the sprocket. Try remaking the splice.

Prints don't normally do that, but a stiff or out-of-line splice might be just enough to occasionally "pop" the shoe and let the film slip over the intermittent sprocket by a perf or two. So the image would go out of frame.

When you check the splice, check the film around it for damage like nicked perfs or "roping" marks from the sprocket teeth.

Obviously, in a "worst case" situation, by jumping the sprocket, you'd lose the bottom loop and tear/stretch the film.

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