Since the reels turn in a CCW direction when you are mounting your print, just flop the reel over and put a half of a twist in the film. That way, the reel will turn in the CW direction. That should work, shouldn't it?

That's why Brenkert put a left-handed thread on the screw that holds the intermittent sprocket on the shaft so the screw doesn't unthread itself. Now this can get confusing, I know. If you hold the screw that secures the intermittent sprocket to the shaft, and when the shaft rotates, it'll tighten the screw.

But if the shaft is not driven, and you are pulling it instead, such as making up a film, it may unscrew itself. For me, it is hard to explain. Just play with it, and you will probably get the drift of what I am trying to say. Maybe some of you folks out there can explain it better than I can.

beware the bean counters......best of luck Rachael..

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"I luv the smell of napalm in tha mornin !"

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"Blood is thicker then blondes" - From the movie, Save the last Dance.

If Rachel's accident had happened in the UK,
it would have needed to be formally reported to the Health and Safety Executive under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurances Regulations (RIDDOR), which is a legal requirement under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. Action against Technicolor would almost certainly have followed.

Secondly, why do release prints need to be shipped on projection spools at all? Lets face it, 90% of cinemas run prints off platters. As for the other 10%, if the spools supplied by distributors are as bad as you guys say, then no self-respecting projectionist would dream of using them to run prints from anyway. In the UK and Europe prints are supplied in plastic containers on 3-inch cores. The projectionist uses a split spool or a plate to wind them onto a platter or a solid spool for projection. This has several advantages:

1. Defective spools would be a thing of the past. Cinemas which did show films reel-to-reel would keep their own set, which the projectionists would take care of and ensure that they didn't get bent or damaged.

2. There would be less risk of edge damage from winding prints on and off bent and sharp-edged spools. Of course, more care is needed to ensure that the film is wound flat on the plate, but that's not much of a problem.

3. There'd be no problem with spools being incompatible with equipment that had a different spindle diameter.

4. The plastic cans are totally airtight and encase the film more tightly than spools in shipping containers, which reduces the possibility for damage in transit.

Usually (again, in the U.S.) theaters have their own "house reels"- good quality reels. When you receive the print, you take the film off of the cheap shipping reels and put them on to the good reels- which you use during the feature's run. (The few that still use reels, that is.)

There will still be a compatibility problem with spindle diameter because some places run larger (1 hour) reels, and use the larger spindle.

It was simply a 2000 foot roll of film mounted on a core. They would place the roll of film in the upper magazine along with a piece of free-wheeling aluminum flat bar retain it.

They rewound them the same way. It looked wierd, but there was never any trouble with the rolls un-spooling themselves.

Of course, being true professionals in their craft, they probably never considered anything other than flat bar to retain the film, as nothing else was really needed.