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Author Topic: List some dumb things you have seen projectionists do Allison Parsons Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 630 From: East Peoria, IL Registered: Oct 2004 posted 03-25-2006 12:38 AM                        How (not) to fix a brain wrap: 1) cut out tightly wound film around brain 2) drop on floor 3)take one end and try to run thru the booth with it, hopeing it will quickly end up as one long piece of film (not taking into consideration that it will twist/bunch up/tangle on you, making it even harder to fix) 4)splice back on to exisiting rewound ring and rewind. 5)splice back on to regular movie So I've been told by an ex booth op at an old theater i worked at. Ex being the key word.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 03-25-2006 01:40 AM                     Practically all of us at one time dumped a print due to clamp slippage, or just being 'brave' in not using them. I was brave once when moving a print from an old AW2 unit where the film was wound so tight that you could practially roll the print down the other end of the booth (in which I did and done many times). That was okey, but when I was close to the top platter, the ring popped out and 2hrs of film was suddenly in my lap as I collapsed to the floor with the print so the cleanup task wasn't so bad. Took me 3hrs to clean up my mess.. oh well.. -Monte  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-25-2006 09:07 AM                     Ahhhh The woes of having manager operators...... At the Lake Theatre outside of Chicago there was a manager who was previously a Catholic Priest.... don't kow why he wasn't working as a catholic priest... and I still wonder that to this day. Anyway he made up the print of Cocoon-2 and at one point in the film some of the actors "shove off to neverland" and because he had the reels out of order those deceased actors were back when the next reel hit the screen. Moviegoers came running out into the lobby wondering what the heck was up. The manager I believe was relieved of his Saint Hood the next day . Mark  |  IP: Logged Dominic Espinosa Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1172 From: California, U.S.A. Registered: Jan 2004 posted 03-25-2006 11:40 AM                     stupid things... 1.) I dropped episode 3 moving it less than 100 feet from one house to another. It was loosely wound and the last 3 reels started slipping between the clamps and fell off. 2.) Most recently I did the stupidest thing EVER. Forgot to put the pin in the makeup table spindle and had a 6k reel go sailing off onto the floor. Absolutely beautiful.  |  IP: Logged Jon Miller Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 973 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-25-2006 12:46 PM                     Like Jason Winn suggested earlier...not accounting for every reel of a feature before making it up onto the platter. One of the features shown at this year's San Diego Latino Film Festival abruptly ended without an epilogue or credits. The projectionist who inspected, built up and ran the print had no explanation for it. Missing reel? Artistic intent? Who knows? In the process of helping clear a backlog of prints to be broken down, I took care of the feature in question. While sorting through the heads, tails, cores, cardboard separators and plastic grocery bags (don't ask) in the two plastic ICC shipping cases the print came in, I found a core with about six minutes of film, wrapped in a grocery bag. I inspected the roll to check that it was indeed the missing scenes and credits, which it was. For the record, some of the heads were marked Reel (x) of 6; only five reels were made up and shown. How that hint could have been overlooked is beyond me.  |  IP: Logged Robert Burtcher Expert Film Handler Posts: 194 From: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Registered: Jun 2005 posted 03-25-2006 12:57 PM                     I know of someone who was rushed for time breaking down a Technicolor print. (DHL likes to show up early here) The movie came tails out, and the usual print builder swaps the heads and tails after he's done building up so the print can be broken down heads out. Apparently, he forgot to do so on this print, and this someone wasn't paying attention and attached the head of each reel to the tail and the tail to the head. With masking tape splices. He did realize his error as he finished Reel 1, but the DHL delivery man was waiting on him, so he packed it off with a note explaining the situation.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 03-25-2006 02:14 PM                     At least your guy put a note in the can. I can't say anything nice though about the stupid masking tape practice. quote: Dominic Espinosa 2.) Most recently I did the stupidest thing EVER. Forgot to put the pin in the makeup table spindle and had a 6k reel go sailing off onto the floor. Absolutely beautiful. Super glue a rubber bumper (QSC ships them with each amp) to the operator side of the MUT's front leg. Then adjust the two leveling feet so that the table has an ever-so-slight sideways lean to it so that the reel shaft is slightly tilted upwards, but not enough to affect operation (such as the sitting of a splicer on the top of the MUT). This way if someone forgets in the future, odds are it won't fall off.  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-25-2006 02:55 PM                        I subbed for a projectionist in MD back in the 70's who liked to have his hour reels evenly filled. He would do things like put reels 1,2 and 4 on one reel and 3,5,6 on the other and then just rig the automation to show the reels in the proper order. Seems like a hell of alot of work to avoid having a short reel. And yes, sometimes he would cut reels in the middle.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 03-25-2006 03:27 PM                     What's just as bad is when you forget to tighten down that reversable reel shaft on the pin disk of a CHR MUT during a build...empty reel hits the floor and goes where it wants to go... ..luckilly, it wasn't a 6k reel.... -Monte  |  IP: Logged Bernie Anderson Jr Master Film Handler Posts: 435 From: Woodbridge, New Jersey Registered: Apr 2000 posted 03-25-2006 07:40 PM                        How about threading the film (don't bother framing it), turn the motor on, light the lamp, hit change over to get it on screen, frame it, turn it off and wait to start the show. I could never figure out why bulbs were going bad quickly until I saw them thread. Unfortunately, this is how my particular Loews theatre people trained them and the tradition carried on for years until I got there.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-26-2006 12:10 AM                        Jon -- was that the print of "Additions and Subtractions" that came from "Cinerama Latino" in Providence? If so, then I was responsible for the grocery bags and cardboard. The print was a disaster when I received it (see the "you suck" thread) and that was the best that I could do with the materials at hand when I shipped it out. Hopefully it arrived in good enough condition that it didn't require any further repairs before being shown. (I vaguely remember that it had a short R6.)  |  IP: Logged Will Kutler Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1506 From: Tucson, AZ, USA Registered: Feb 2001 posted 03-26-2006 01:14 AM                     I will refrain from specifics, I did not witness this but have heard about it from first-hand accounts. A 70mm print that was run with 35mm sprockets. Answering a cell phone while moving a print resulting in an entire 3 hr film being dumped on the floor. Not paying attention to intermittent sprocket shoe alignment, resulting in the sprocket becomming all chewed up and then being too lazy to install a new sprocket. Doing THX sound alignments and being too lazy to screw the Goldberg port windows back onto their frames and also being too lazy to notify booth personnel that the windows were not reinstalled. The ULTIMATE fix-all....LUBRIPLATE! Putting crow bars at each projector so that shadows and overshoots could be adjusted by repositioning lamphouse console. These are just a few of the stupid things I have seen.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 03-26-2006 10:39 AM                        Ah, yes...lubriplate. Indiana seems to be full of it especially in Century projectors and in Simplex lateral guide assemblies. Mixed with "something." Louis  |  IP: Logged Benjamin J. Kepner Film Handler Posts: 15 From: Muskegon, MI, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 03-26-2006 03:50 PM                     Greatest dumb moment I remember... One of my operators once put a reel on backwards (reel #5 of Glass House, I will never forget). Caught it during an employee prescreening performance. Told everyone to leave, waited until the reel played through and then I fixed it. Greatest thing about it was that the SDDS unit continued to play sound (in reverse). To this day I still don't understand the ending of the movie.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 03-26-2006 04:56 PM                     I've been waiting for some time to find the place to tell this one. Its absolutely true. It really did happen back in the 1970s! We had an operator go into one of those old time theatres for a 12 hour shift. That theatre had a booth that was hung on the back wall, with access through a trap door and ladder, and no booth toilet. Said operator had a case of the trots that day, and as the booth had no toilet, he decided the best thing to do was deposit his excrement into a plastic bag. At the end of the day he exits the theatre dragging the plastic bag behind him. One small problem, the plastic bag had a hole in it. So, on he goes depositing his doings all over the lobby carpet. Rightly so, the theatre owner raised hell with the union. (I believe the union paid for the clean-up.) The conversation between the Business Agent and the Operator went something like this: BA: What the hell where you doing dragging an old plastic bag full of s**t through the lobby at the *** theatre? OP: They're lying like hell, they're lying like hell, it was a NEW plastic bag. It is absolutely true! Reported at a Union meeting by the BA himself!  |  IP: Logged

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