posted 03-26-2004 09:36 PM                 

quote:

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...would spit on the upper loop of 16mm prints as they ran on...

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posted 03-27-2004 02:01 PM                       

• I mislaced the film over a stop roller (or it jumped, but it was probably my fault), resulting in it putting an emulsion tramline down the print. Thank goodness, I caught it after about three adverts. It would have written off the print otherwise.
• I laced a full-gate silent print up the wrong way round and it came on back-to-front after the changeover (once, after which the golden rule was drummed into me: lace up with the top of the frame pointing downwards and mirror-writing facing the lens; intertitles the right way round facing the lamphouse).
• I started a DP-70 in the wrong ratio, and had to stop to change the plate.
• There was once a very tight turnaround from a 70mm show to a 35 show. I therefore converted one projector and started reel 1 of the 35mm feature ASAP. Just as I was about to do the second the duty manager asks me to look at a faulty stopcock on an ice-making machine in the bar which has blown and is flooding the whole place. By the time I'd isolated it and got back to the box, I didn't have enough time to convert the other projector back to 35 and lace up before the first changeover. I should have told the manager that I was tied up, I guess.
• On a 16mm sepmag show, reel 2 of the mag turns out to be completely blank - not a sound on it. We had a six-plate Steenbeck in our workroom, and I would have caught it if I'd have rehearsed the print on it.

• Manager's infant son let himself into projection box and unhooked the film from the Kinoton platter's take-up tensioner. Chief projectionist had disabled stop roller without telling me; I returned from fixing box office PC problem to find a pile of film on the floor.
• Print is delivered 15 minutes after advertised start time. Reel 1 is put straight in a split spool and started (archive print, so I know there won't be a suspect join at the end of a leader). Reel 4 turns out to be from a completely different film. Show stopped, manager explains to audience that we're going straight to reel 5 and that they'll miss 20 minutes or so of the film.
• Exciter bulb blows.
• Show stopped automatically by fire alarm, or manually in response to fire alarm (several false alarms and one actual fire).
• When double-checking a rep print for a Sunday afternoon show which had been made up by an inexperienced colleague, I discovered several of the reels to be nitrate. Show delayed while a VHS was obtained from the local Virgins, which was then projected.
• Fight breaks out among teenagers in auditorium, and manager instructs me to stop the show while they are evicted.
• Customer starts smoking in auditorium; ditto.