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Author Topic: Assistant Projectionist Problem Dominic Espinosa Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1172 From: California, U.S.A. Registered: Jan 2004 posted 06-20-2004 12:13 PM                     quote: Alan Plester Hold back until something goes wrong and then watch him squirm. I tried that once...He just left the mess for me to fix the next day. When I worked at the 2 house there was the most insanely lame assistant projectionist they stuck me with. He would brainwrap something by not setting the platter to payout or he'd fuck up threading and they'd cancel the show because he would refuse to walk through fixing it with me over the phone if I couldn't come down.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 06-20-2004 06:13 PM                     Leo, I've just made a big mistake; Whether I get another chance, or they never let me near the projection room again I should find out tomorrow. I've just e-maiiled the chief to explain what happened, and apologise. I've made minor mistakes in the past of course, especially when running an unfamilar place, where I'm not used to the controls being where they are. Maybe I've been a bit late down with the house lights, or brought the sound up a bit too early, and caught a click. A couple of weeks ago I was a bit late with a changeover, and unfortunately, it happened to be one of these prints with 'LFOA' in large white letters, rather than just whowiing a couple of frames of black. A couple of times I've had a troublesome acop trip as I was starting the show, had to reset, show started about fifteen seconds late. These are the sort of mistakes I make from time to time; I'd rather not do it, but it's not a disaster. However, my big disaster was at a place where I've run lots of shows recently. Yesterday, I asked about the troublesome Japaneese print which I'd made up last Saturday, much to my relief it had run without breaking; in places there was more splicing tape than film, and all the parts were in the right order, there were no readable, i.e. non-Japaneese, markings printed on any of the leaders, and I didn't know the film. Just two reels had numbers wriitten on in ink, and both said Reel 7. I had to trust the labels on the cans, and hope for the best. When I got up to the box there was just one print to make up, for a first show on Sunday. I left it until the afternoon, and when I unpacked it, it was a real mess. All the things that people here complain about, leaders masking taped on or loose, leaders on the wrong reels, badly made splices, ends that didn't match up, film roughly cut with scissors, white correction fluid on just one reel end, but completely covering both digital and analogue tracks, and even reaching into the picture area. The whole print was filthy. Some parts were head out, some tail out, some emulsion in some emulsion out. It took much longer to make up onto 6ks than I'd expected, and I'd only just finished it by the end of the day. The second spool was emulsion out, not standard here, but not a problem, the machines will quite happily feed either way. I left a note on it to remind me of this. This morning when I ran it, it didn't look too bad, except for a few feet at the reel ends. comming up to the end of part four I watched the splice go through, and to my horror, I'd spliced part five in upside down. I've never seen this done anywhere; if I had done, I would have said 'How on Earth can they be so stupid'. All I can say now is 'How on Earth can I have been so stupid' It's totally my fault of course, I was in a hurry, and I was careless. I'm normally very careful checking everything, but this time I messed up. I don't live in a world where there's tome to screen prints before the audience sees them. I shut the show down tidily within a few seconds, got the non-sync back up, 'phoned downstairs to explain what had happened, and the manager came up to see me. Her attitude was 'Don't worry, these things happen.' Well they shouldn't happen of course. As the print was made up on 6ks, it wasn't just a question of rewinding a reel, the start of part five, which was what I needed, was somewhere in the middle of the spool. To put it right would mean winding this part through three times, and I would have to put the leaders back on to protect the ends while I did this. It would obviiously be quicker to just extract part five into another spool where it would then be head out, put the leader back on, and then get this running while I put the leader back on part six, and got it laced up. However, by the time I'd fetched the cans, got the leaders out, checked the cues on part five, which wouldn't normally have been a changeover point for us, and so weren't checked when I made up, wound the reel through to the next splice, put the leaders on, got the film set up and the picture back on screen it still took almost fifteen minutes to sort ot. I'm still saying to myself 'How on Earth can I have been so stupid', but of course, it's too late now. The audience, there were only a few of them, were given a free drink in the bar. If I'm ever allowed to project again after this, I swear that I will never make the same mistake again.  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 06-21-2004 01:40 AM                        buck up, stephen. you dealt with the situation. no print damage, and the show went on. i was at a show with a backwards reel once. unfortunately, though they mostly run one-night engagements, they're platter only. show cancelled. a relief projectionist once put on a backwards trailer at my theater. another time, 2' of film i'd attached to a trailer for protection was left on, backwards (and wrong format, iirc). at least it was in frame! i did scratch a print of harry potter 3 last week. well, it happened on my watch anyways. i've been unable to figure out how it happened, or how it got its distinctive feature. it's to the right, emulsion side, and varies in intensity 4 times per frame, the stronger bits lining up with the perforations. it's pretty inconceivable that i misthreaded a sprocket, as i check that religiously. the good news is, 95% of the time, the scratch is all but invisible onscreen. still, i was beating myself up over that one the rest of the day. carl  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-21-2004 02:17 AM                        Worries me too that you fear that you might be replaced, especially since there's a possibility that it may be by someone who doesn't give a damn.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 06-21-2004 08:12 AM                        Don't worry Stephen, we've all done it (and those of us who haven't almost certainly will do, eventually). For a long time I was paranoid that I'd do it to a full-gate silent print to which a sound leader had been attached incorrectly. In the event, I never did. My mistake was actually a lot worse than yours - splicing a reel back-to-front (i.e. tail to tail) on a platter roll. Again, it was a knackered old print with missing and incorrectly joined heads and tails. The film was Blade Runner, most of which is so dark that the film just looks like black spacing. Thank goodness, my boss rehearsed the print the morning before the show and so managed to catch the mistake. If he hadn't we'd have been completely and utterly buggered, because the time taken to unpick the platter roll would have disrupted the timetable and caused at least one cancelled screening, possibly more.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 06-21-2004 09:14 AM                     William, it's not really a question of being replaced, it's not a regular job, I've just got my name on the relief list at various places, and if they need somebody to fill in for some reason, they give me a call. Since April I've been doing several days per month, but before that I didn't do anything for about ten months. They might just decide that next time they need somebody to cover, they'll find somebody more reliable. Carl, it could have been worse, if I'd been a brain surgeon or something and made a mistake; at least nobody got hurt, but I feel pretty bad about it. Also, it was me that was running it, it would have been even worse if I had made it up wrong, and one of the other projectionists had run it. It's got a couple more shows this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I've made very sure that I got it right when I made it up again afterwards. Because I work there mainly at weekends, I've not made up many prints for them. Most of the films are in the middle of their run, one-off shows are either made up on the Friday, or if they're not made up I just run them without making up for a single show. I've probably done about six or seven make-ups there, and one of those was the Lord of the Rings print, where we were sent a wrong part. They'll think I'm jinxed. They didn't blame me for Lord of the Rings, by the time I found the problem there was just now way we could do anything about it.  |  IP: Logged Dominic Espinosa Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1172 From: California, U.S.A. Registered: Jan 2004 posted 06-22-2004 12:42 AM                     Gah, that wasn't too bad at all! I once heard of a projectionist from UA who THOUGHT he was splicing out the attatched trailer to place it before the courtesy trailer when he had actually cut off part of the movie. They ran it like that until someone noticed. Very impressive I'd say My first ever shift building up one of the assistant managers came up to "help" me by rewinding some film. I asked him what he'd rewound and he told me, I built it up without checking the frames cause I was in a hurry of course, we didn't screen, and Drumline started in a packed house with the 3rd reel on backwards...fun! Believe me, I got a ripping for that, but went on to do many flawless shows. It's all good, buddy!  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 06-23-2004 02:29 AM                        ...then there was the infamous trailer cock-up. In that house we had two alternating features on platter rolls (i.e. one film at 2pm and 6pm, the other at 4 and 8), so the ads and trailers were on a 2k spool running on the other projector. The previous evening my colleague had made up another 2k spool containing 'family viewing' ads and trailers for the kids' matinee on Saturday morning. Sadly, he'd labelled them up wrong. So, in I came on Saturday morning, laced up the kiddie ads, started them and made a beeline for the coffee machine. When I came back, the trailer for Crash was in progress (and they'd just seen one for L'Ennui), and that had come after an advert reel that had included a grisly anti-drink drive commercial and one for condoms. The poor manager practically got lynched by a mob of angry parents.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 06-23-2004 04:19 AM                     I was lucky, I've just had a message from the Chief, and he does still want me to work there.  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Fuentes Mmmm, Dr. Pepper! Posts: 1168 From: Corpus Christi, TX United States Registered: Jan 2004 posted 06-23-2004 06:15 AM                     Thats great!!  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-23-2004 07:12 AM                        Congratulations! Have fun! Stop screwing up & you'll enjoy it more!  |  IP: Logged Jim Spohn Film Handler Posts: 95 From: Bakersfield, CA, USA Registered: Jan 2003 posted 06-23-2004 10:26 AM                     Stephen... At my theatre I have a policy, we are all well trained professionals that care about showmanship, if we make a mistake, its just that, a mistake. No one gets an ass chewing, because the person that made the mistake will chew his own ass better than I ever could. Besides I might make the next mistake (we all do)!! It sounds like you have done your chewing now get on with the show. I'm glad to hear that you will still be operating, there are just not that many that care the way you do anymore. ... Jim Spohn  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-24-2004 09:17 AM                     Ever since I started running movies, the policy I worked under was: If you screw up and come clean about it, the worst you'll get is a lecture or maybe a semi-good-natured, "You asshole!" IF you screw up and try to cover your tracks you are in trouble twice... Once for the fuck up and again for lying about it. Obvious exceptions would be a mistake that you should have known better which causes damage OR if you were horsing around. I try to keep the same policy in the booth(s) that I run. It seems to work well for me because the worst mistakes I have seen so far only rise to the level of the occasional misframe or poor focus. In other words, people need to feel confident that they can make the occasional mistake without being in serious trouble. If operators (especially new ones) have to walk around all day fearing for their lives if they make the least little mistake you will (A) have more mistakes and (B) have fewer operators around for the long-term. There is one overriding exception to all of this. That is the person (or persons) who make small mistakes all the time but don't seem to learn from them. Fortunately, most of those people wash out early in the game.  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Fuentes Mmmm, Dr. Pepper! Posts: 1168 From: Corpus Christi, TX United States Registered: Jan 2004 posted 06-24-2004 09:30 AM                     I'm in a different position compared to others here. I am the only one that is hard on myself for mistakes that I make. My manager and the owner do care about the presentation, but they never get mad when I make mistakes. Since I started coming to Film-Tech, I have improved tremendously. I still make minor mistakes from time to time, but my bosses tell me not to beat myself up about it.  |  IP: Logged Matt Hefright Film Handler Posts: 28 From: none Registered: Jun 2004 posted 06-28-2004 11:07 AM                    have you thought about writing a procedure manual that would explain the why of things and the concequences of things not done right? seems to work here. once your employee has a better understanding of the reason of what should be done his "how" should improve. of course if he has no respect at all for the equipment or for you his mentor, this will not change things in the least.  |  IP: Logged

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