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Topic: List some dumb things you have seen projectionists do

Jon Miller
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 973
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Registered: Sep 1999

posted 03-26-2006 06:37 PM

quote: Scott Norwood
Jon -- was that the print of "Additions and Subtractions" that came from "Cinerama Latino" in Providence?

Scott, yes, it was "+ & -"! Considering the condition you received the print, you get a [thumbsup]

for sending the print out in better condition than it left, including the note regarding the substitute head on the tape securing R-6.

The more I think about it, I wonder if our guy saw the short reel and thought it was some reject footage? You know what happens when you assume... [Smile]

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Jason Winn
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Mesquite, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 03-26-2006 07:16 PM

This girl I used to work with would always put a flashlight in her mouth every time she did trailer work. She'd be removing a trailer or something and she would lean over the platter with the flashlight in her mouth. She would slobber all over it! Everytime me or one of the other projectionists would grab a flashlight, it would always be covered in drool. That's just gross. I mean, come on, if you're gonna stick a flashlight in your mouth, at least have the common decency to clean it afterwards!

Come to think of it, a girl that likes sticking objects in her mouth is okay with me! [thumbsup]

LOL!

I don't know if that tops the story about the bag of [bs]

, but I hope it came close.

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George Roher
Master Film Handler

Posts: 266
From: Washington DC
Registered: Jul 99

posted 03-27-2006 03:37 PM

quote: Bernie Anderson Jr
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.

That's exactly what the managers did at the last Loews theatre I worked in. I stopped by once on one of the manager days in the booth and saw the man/op on duty doing this. A couple of them had years of "experience" running a booth but they had never learned to set the intermittent when threading.

Management was also completely brain dead about proper cooling of lamps at the end of the night. They had to kill the power (and the fan) the second the shows were over (and as payroll hours were cut back, management was powering down almost every night as well as running the booth a couple days a week). I'd arrive in the morning and sometimes find the tail of a print still in the projector. Several screens had timers for the cooling fans which are helpful, except management would sometimes kill the circuit breakers for the timers when shutting down so the fans still went off too soon.

We had lots of emergency lamp changes. By the time I quit we had an emergency lamp change at least once a week.

Some more stupid things...One of the aforementioned managers sprayed an enormous amount of WD40 into the gear side of a Century projector for the purpose of fixing a travel ghost.

A manager threaded a show on one of my shifts but couldn't figure out why the show wouldn't start. He had not powered up the booth. He threaded with the power off and wrapped the payout platter a bit. Actually, that exact situation happened twice with two different people.

The same management team canceled DLP shows because they forgot how to power it up.

I had a service tech brainwrap a print running a couple trailers with the payout deck off.

And there's lots more...

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Jason Winn
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Mesquite, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 03-27-2006 03:55 PM

Hey George, don't you just love theatre management? [Wink]

The word "projectionist" is basically just a fancy word for "janitor." The managers screw everything up, and we come in and clean up after them. I know how you feel. Been there, done that.

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Thomas King
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 119
From: Sheffield, Yorkshire, England
Registered: Oct 2004

posted 03-28-2006 03:20 AM

Apropos of nothing, the Dolby 'City' tag looks (and sounds) smashing when it goes through backwards [Big Grin]

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Jason Winn
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Mesquite, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 03-28-2006 12:25 PM

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up! I'm gonna list something that I did in booth that was pretty stupid.

One night, I was waiting for a movie to drop so I could start threading it for the next show. The movie was in the credits and I was standing next to the projector waiting for it to drop. I like pre-threading as early as possible. Well, the tail just went through the projector. I wanted to go ahead and open all the gates and start cleaning the projector. But, the motor was still running, even though it was slowing down. I got impatient. I didn't wanna wait a few seconds before the motor stopped completely, so I went ahead and opened all the gates while the motor was still running. BAD IDEA! I caught my right middle finger on one of the sprockets and it ripped the skin right off my finger. I started bleeding pretty bad. It hurt like hell! [Mad]

I screamed a bunch of very loud expletives! I'm sure the people down in the theatre probably heard me.

Later that night, I was talking to an usher. He was talking about how easy my job is because I work in booth. And I said, "You thank my job is so easy, take a look at this!" I took off my band-aid and showed him my "battle scar." I said, "I got in a fight with a projector and I lost." He was definitely grossed out. LOL!

Fortunately, that was the only dumb thing I've ever done in booth. I don't know what happened that night. I guess I wasn't thinking.

But, I learned a valuable lesson from all of this: NEXT TIME I THREAD A MOVIE, MAKE SURE THE MOTOR HAS STOPPED RUNNING FIRST!

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Chris Hipp
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1462
From: Mesquite, Tx (east of Dallas)
Registered: Jul 2003

posted 03-28-2006 12:32 PM

quote: Jason Winn
The word "projectionist" is basically just a fancy word for "janitor." The managers screw everything up, and we come in and clean up after them. I know how you feel. Been there, done that.

Ya know, FD says that all the time. You must have got it from him.

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Jason Winn
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Mesquite, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 03-28-2006 01:39 PM

quote: Chris Hipp
Ya know, FD says that all the time. You must have got it from him.

Ya know, I knew I heard that from someone, but I couldn't remember who. So, I guess that's one thing I got from FD. I hope that's the only thing I got from him. [uhoh]

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Ted Vetzal
Film Handler

Posts: 4
From: Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Mar 2006

posted 03-31-2006 11:53 AM

Here are two of my favorites that I have come across.

Did you know that you can put the "gate plate" can be installed and run upside down in a Strong Millenium? Luckly this happened while we were opening a theatre and we were using scrap film to train and burn in projectors. They didn't seem to think that the loud noise and the pile of polyester that was building up in the projector indicated that something was wrong!

Did you know that an Osram 3k lamp will operate at 160 amps for three days before it explodes? We had a manager who took the 1-3k switcher that failed, out of a Strong HLII and when they put the replacement one in, didn't check to see if it matched or bothered to check the current. [uhoh]

(Aren't they "plug and play" was their responce. [Confused]

) The switcher that they put in was a 6-7k. They did say that they had good light on screen.

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Eric Robinson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 538
From: Santa Rosa, CA
Registered: Jan 2005

posted 04-03-2006 12:42 AM

I was once managing in a theatre and woke up early one morning to host a kidee matinee (kids matinee) for a a nice G rated film. I think it may have been Sesame Street Follow That Bird. Anway...the kid show films didn't get pre-screened all the time, I think there was a lack of interest. Somehow, one of the projectionists had spliced a "Jason Goes to Hell" preview right on the front of this film. Needless to say I had a lot of mad people in my face after the kids sat through that preview.

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John T. Hendrickson, Jr
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 889
From: Freehold, NJ, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 04-03-2006 05:08 PM

Many years ago, I was asked to break in a new kid. We were showing "Patton". For you oldtimers, you will remember that there was an intermission at the end of reel 6, then reel 7 began with four minutes of call-back music.

After the intermission one afternoon, I left the kid on his own and went down to the balcony. At the end of reel 8, he made a changeover, and bingo- black screen. I jumped up and headed straight for the booth. Even before I got to the ladder I knew what he had done. Yep. Call-back music.

As I entered the booth, he was standing at projector #1 with a dumbfounded look on his face, asking why there was no picture on the screen. I grabbed reel number 9, threw it on projector #2, lit the arc and made the changeover before the callback music ended. Fortunately, we had enough carbon to get through reel #9, or I may not have had enough time to pull it off before the image on reel #6 hit the screen.

He had rewound reel #7 and then threaded it up instead of reel #9. To this day, I wonder what the audience thought- another intermission? [Wink]

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 04-05-2006 12:24 AM

..it's amazing on what 'hidden' tricks we old-timers can come up with and completely fool the public where they just don't know what is going on...

Yeppers, I do remember that intermission in "Patton" when I ran that the summer of 1970 at the drive-in: Hit the Intermission, did the changeover, BUT without striking up the carbons since..why run the lamp with no picture..and I can use cartoon length carbons for the rest of that reel. Plus, I had a tape mark on the edge of the film to where the call back music was getting ready to end and picture begins so I can strike up that lamphouse. This system worked like a charm .... BUT ....

...dummy me on one night:call back music ended and feature started..not paying attention and wonder why all of a sudden all of the cars in the yard are blaring their horns..DUH!! need to strike up the lamp..and I forgot to change out the positive rod since it was down all the way..

Hurridly slipped in a cartoon rod on the Philips Carbon saver, spread the jaws open (ASHCRAFT) shoved that through the silver contacts and locked that carbon saver down, slammed the switch as I was closing the door and with a good strikeup..movie was back on the screen.

Owner came in on wonder what happened..told him, I had a braincramp and wasn't paying attention...for it was a HOT night.

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Chad M Calpito
Master Film Handler

Posts: 435
From: San Diego, CA
Registered: Apr 2006

posted 04-12-2006 10:36 PM

I remember one time working at a former movie theater circuit before I got a projectionist job at Pacific Theatres in which a projectionist threaded a movie and ran it, but, the movie wound up with the soundtracks upside down on the take up platter. He called me down from P2 to P1 and I looked at it and I was like, WOW, how the heck did you manage to do that? Anyway, I told him to re-thread the movie, but, to make sure that the Soundtracks go through the projector like usual and wind-up on the take-up platter with the soundtracks on top. I know that this is not as bad as some others posted here, but, I thought it was pretty dumb.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 04-13-2006 12:00 AM

quote: Chad M Calpito
the movie wound up with the soundtracks upside down on the take up platter

....and some theatres wind soundtrack down on the platters as a standard procedure.. - as long as the soundtrack is right in the projector it doesn't matter on the platter.

Probably what happened is that operator was in a hurry and didn't do the right turn on the film going to the takeup platter, thus soundtrack down...it's one of those things that happen...

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Chad M Calpito
Master Film Handler

Posts: 435
From: San Diego, CA
Registered: Apr 2006

posted 04-13-2006 12:09 AM

True, the operater might have been in a rush. Of course, that was the first time I saw a situation like that. [Smile]

But, at least there weren't any film problems, which was good. [Smile]

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