weel, it was a thurs. changeover night, and I was training someone on how to buildup a print. I was building the 6k reel onto a speco platter, when all of the sudden, I ws not paying attention and OOOUUUUCCCHHHH!!!! MY finger got caught in the holes that you stick the reel on to he mut. it was going full speed. spun me around so i could go with the flow. !$#@% that hurt. as i am bleeding all over the booth. It was not really hard to find me. Just follow the trail of blood on the floor. Had to be rushed to the hospital. where i got, x-rays, tetanus booster, didgi-block(really hurt), and some stitches. Keep in my mind that this was my right hand. I could not write for a while. anything i had to sign turned out to be a huge scribble.

has anyone everhad film-cuts? those suck too.

also once i picked up a splicer the wrong wat and somehow my finger managed to get the teeth blades? and ooohhh@!!! tha one hurt too.

dont worrry folks i am fine now
no more problems

that sminar tape sounds funny how can i get my hands on one? anyone know?

ethanharper@hotmail.com

Upside-Down & Backwards: This has only happened to me once, and it was a *very* difficult scene to judge ( this print had no heads or tails, and im pretty sure I had the reels in the correct order- the film was 'My Cheauffeur, so no biggie anyways ( discount house), but the reels changed to a scene of a car which was right side up... untill they panned out to find the whole world upside-down (it was the REFLECTION of the car in a water puddle!:O ) AGGH! it was large reels, so I had it back correctly in about 10 minutes anyways no biggie there either.

Payouts onto the floor: Had this happen twice ever too, once at the Phoenix, we had 'Dune' playing to a sold-out crowd, and the print filled the 14000' tower reel to maximum... well the boss had me working balcony security keeping the noisy teenagers out of the balcony, and i told him that i need to check the print to see if there are any problems with anything, and he threatened to fire me if i left my post ( the balcony entrance, downstairs from the booth)... Well about 3/4 the way thru the film someone complained that the sound had faded away.... I was relieved, I went up to the booth and AGGGGHHH about the first 2 reels of the film had taken up to the reel, the rest ( we were almost done with the show at this time i think a reel or so to go) was knee-deep on the floor! took me about 45 minutes to carefully wind this mess up. ( no failsafe, this house is manually operated) or when i came to work my 6-close shift at the Cinema II, and the credits of 'Witches Of Eastwick' were rolling on the screen, I asked the offgoing asst mgr/projectionist if everything was ok he said yes, and so i went upstairs... I screamed,,, then grabbed hios sorry ass and dragged him up to show him that the first hundred feet or so had taken uop before the disc stopped (again no automation this time on an AW2 platter house) and the entire film was all over the place on the floor... Knee deep in finl again this time it took a couple hours to fix the mess, and was able to wade thru the mess to start the second feature on time.... ack!

Injuries: Once i was changing carbons on a Strong Futura II and my right hand was handling the positive feed jaws and the rest of the arm was resting against the bottom of the lamphouse door and i went to reach for a pair of pliers, bumped the rectifier remote switch, and turned the rectifier on!!! Felt like someone had hit my right hand with a sledge hammer and knocked me across the room! Lucky it just was thru my arm i could have been killed!

Or a couple summers ago, I was replacing a fried dowser coil in Clearlake, I was in the area so I made the repair, was wearing shorts (over 100 degrees that day) and was placing the dowser unit atop the projector when it dropped, and a razor-sharp clip on the dowser caught my leg just above the knee slashing a 2" gash all the way to the muscle!! and to boot there was nothing clean to stick on the wound, so i come downstairs into the now-packed snack bar, blood running profusely down my leg and all over my hands... the manager got me a paper towel and then took me to the hospital, had a few stitches there

Unintentional Flying Objects: I was breaking a print of 'Long Kiss Goodbye' from platter to 6000' reels, and was going at a pretty good clip when it happened.... the (polyestar) film snapped, the recoil caused the ring with about 1200' of film on it to fly across the booth, ripping the brain from its fasteners and narrowly missing my girlfriend's head as she was sitting nearby, as it slammed against the wall...

I'd better stop before i get the award for the longest non HPS-4000 flame war post ever here hehe

Once I was building up a movie, forget which. Was going at a pretty good speed though. Well when the tail ran out it didn't, it just stuck inside the Fox reel. Yanked the whole damn makeup table into platter. Luckily a bent roller or two on the MUT were the only things damaged. I always slow down at the end now.

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I had just started a projector and it began making one of those noises that they always reserve for Saturday night.

I open the Ballantyne Pro-35 up and start to investigate when the projector's drive belt grabbed my tie with sufficient force to bounce my head off the side of the projector. Lucky for me, the tie forced the belt off of the fly wheel.

Needless to say, with no drive belt, the audience was treated to one of those really cool "film melting on the screen" moments!

That was my favorite tie too! It was shredded.

Imagine this... sold out opening night crowd for "Life Is Beautiful". Now, we all know what kind of a crowd this is, right? Okay, well a newbie had built the movie and reel #1 was the only one heads out. This was at a crappy theatre that I'm sure this particular crowd usually tried to avoid, so you can imagine the demeanor of the departing throng. Many a nose scraped the ceiling on the way out. I'm just glad it wasn't me who built it.

True Crime played for about 3 weeks at a cross-town theatre before coming to mine. They just clamped it and brought it over to us instead of breaking it down. During the second day of showings at our theatre, a customer made me aware of the fact that it had been built out of order. He said something like, "Well they make this big deal about Clint eating this candy bar, and then about 40 minutes later, he opens it." You know it's a crappy movie when it plays for 3 weeks without anyone noticing it's built out of order!

As for flying booth supplies during break-down, I accidentally kicked the platter-plug or the make-up table plug (I can't remember). I didn't even know that I had done anything... everything just all of a sudden EXPLODED! Some stuff seized up, while other stuff kept spinning uncontrollably... film was spooling out everywhere and getting wrapped around everything... and there I was crouched in the middle of it all with my hands over my head and my head buried between my knees.

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Scott A. Magie

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John- The guy who got his finger caught in the projector on my "Projection Seminar" tape was a friend of mine named Tom. The dumbass who cut his finger on the splicer and got blown up by a xenon bulb twice (once just holding a bare bulb with no protection and another squirting oil on the bulb inside the lamphouse to get it to strike easier) was me. I want to make more things like that, it was fun. I got my inspiration for that by attending Kodak's projection seminar. The only thing that could have made that version you saw better would have been by adding sound effects. I can do that now.

One of my embarassing moments was when I built up the movie "Ready to Wear". I think it was reel #'s 4 and 5 that I put on in the reverse order. Another projectionist screened the print and did not catch it. Then an assistant manager screened the print the next day and did not catch anything odd. Then a week passed by before an audience member finally noticed something weird. And we were doing decent business for it as well! A whole week! Talk about embarassing!

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