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Topic: Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers) Part 2
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 02-24-2007 06:36 PM
Thank you to the idiot who lost us our Saturday morning children's show this morning. The film was 'Over the Hedge', only released quite recently. Print arrived yesterday, the projectionist who should have been on duty was ill, a young fellow, who works mainly in the box office and has only recently been trained to project did the first show, and I was called in to cover from 17:00. I had two shows to run, one each of 'Bobby' and 'Venus', and 'Over the Hedge to make up for today; should have been an easy evening. Looked at the first reel, it was tail out, so I started at the end, Leaders were loose, and the ends not taped down, but the wind was good, and the print seemed to be clean. Put parts 4 and 5 on one spool, then started with part 3 on another, when I opened the can for part two it looked very odd. The start and end of the reel were evenly wound, and with reasonable tension, but in the middle was 500 to 600 feet wound very badly. This section was so loose that I had a job to get it out of the can without it falling off the core. The wind was all over the place, up to about 5mm out of line with the rest of the roll. The edge of the film was clearly damaged; at first I thought this was just through being squashed by the lid of the can, but on closer inspection there was very bad perforation damage on the track edge. Some of the perforations were actually torn, not easy with polyester, others were stretched out in odd shapes, or punched larger. There were also teeth marks between the perforations. On the other edge, the perforations were 'pulled', but that was all. In one part of the damaged section every fifth perforation was damaged worse than the others; it was almost as if it had been run on a sprocket with four teeth per frame on one side, and five on the other. There were no teeth marks in the picture area, nor on the edges of the film, so it seemed to have stayed in line with the sprocket teeth, even though it must have come off one sprocket to cause the teeth marks between the perfs. The damage was so bad that I was doubtful if it would even run through a projector. I called the Duty Manager, she spoke to one of the technicians, but they were'nt able to get a replacement, and so they had to cancel, and we lost the show.
There wasn't time to screen any of it between shows, as the audience was coming in for the last show as soon as the previous one finished, but I did run a bit of it with the lamp off. It ran, very noisily, for a few seconds before jumping on the sprocket and losing a loop. During those few seconds I could see from looking at the perforations in the gate that it would have been so unsteady that there was no way we could have run it anyway. There was a wide base-side scratch for good measure.
Damaging the print that badly was bad enough, but not reporting it was even worse. I hope you get the large bill for print damage which you were obviously trying to avoid (the bill, not the damage).
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Mark Strube
Master Film Handler
Posts: 322
From: Milwaukee, WI, United States
Registered: Feb 2007
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posted 02-27-2007 03:37 PM
I'm currently a projectionist "wannabe," applying at a few theaters, so I'm not totally sure about the cause of the issues I saw at this particular showing of Bridge To Terabithia.
A friend and I made the trip to the Johnson Creek, WI Star Cinema to see this (about 40 min away). I called ahead of time and found out it's on screen 8, which is their large THX certified Dolby Digital EX auditorium. 52 ft wide screen, but slightly smaller for Terabithia since it's in the 1.85 ratio.
I went to this theater because of the great experience I had seeing Miami Vice there last summer. I would probably say that was the clearest picture I had ever seen at a theater (I've never seen digital projection, and most of the local theatres leave a lot to be desired), and the sound was quite nice, too. Very good dynamic range on that movie, and this screen has the subs to really give that extra kick. (On their 2 other smaller THX certified screens I know they have 4 18" JBL subwoofers each, so I'm sure this one has at least that.)
Now, Bridge To Terabithia. I saw this on a Thursday, so the movie had been playing for only a week. The first thing that struck me as soon as the trailers started, is that the picture looked extremely soft. Once the movie started, we noticed the projector was a bit off-aim too, cutting off the bottoms of the letters in the Disney logo. It was also slightly jumpy. Tolerable, I've seen much much worse, but I don't remember that problem with Miami Vice. Once the opening titles started, the soft focus of the image really came across, and my friend went out to tell someone about it. After he did, the guy who was cleaning the popcorn machine (I don't know if that's also their projectionist) stood in the theater for a few minutes, and then left, with no changes made to the picture quality.
Another glaring issue was the brightness of the picture. At first it appeared there was something wrong with the lamp, since the brightness level was constantly changing, but then I noticed it was different areas of the picture that had the brightness constantly changing, it was extremely obvious in brighter shots of the movie, and rather distracting. Dirt on the film or in the projector perhaps?
Put simply, this kind of picture quality would not get certified by THX.
Oh, and one last tidbit. I had been emailing with Star's director of operations about a seperate issue I had with Casino Royale (in a different, smaller THX certified auditorium) where the sound level was quite low, while the subs were just taking over. He informed me that their 3 THX screens are calibrated and certified every spring/early summer, so perhaps that's the "sweet spot" of time to see movies there.
So, I'm wondering what you guys think the reasons for these issues are? Both because I'm curious, and if I do become a projectionist, it can only add to my experience.
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