This is topic Breakdown Etiquette in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000276
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-01-1999, 07:38 PM:
Here is a paste of Erika's recommendations from another thread:
- It's been said before, but masking tape should not be used at all with film.
- I don't really find it necessary to use tape (any kind) to attach the reel band to the head or tail, you can just tuck it under the film a few inches then wrap it around and it should stay snug as long as the string is holding it tight. (I hope that made sense)
- This is in response to the two used prints of American Beauty I built up today: please, please, please do not mark frame lines with magic marker!!! Especially when the frame lines are so easy to see If you have trouble finding them (which we all do occasionally), you can use a film counter, or hold your place with your fingernail on the edge of the film until you can cut it. Marking them with a pen can cover up the digital and sometimes bleed into the
picture. Not to mention the fact that it's just plain tacky! - I know I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I really find that more than one reference frame is unnecessary. (Hopefully, at least one person will back me up on that).
I'm backing you up on those, Erika! Here's some additional thoughts...
- Do not use shoe polish. EVER! Really, how blind must someone be to not be able to break a print down without that shoe polish bleeding all over the digital tracks and frequently the analog tracks and picture area of the film? Also, it flakes off after a few runs and causes an incredible amount of dirt buildup around the reel changes!
- Wrap your reels in 24"x24" plastic trash liners upon packing them back into the shipping cans. This keeps all the nasty dirt inside those pre-WW2 film cans from getting the print dirty. Think of it this way, you put all that care into handling your films, then you just drop them back into a dirty shipping case??? A box of a thousand is cheap and can be ordered with the regular trash liners at each theater.
- Wind the prints emulsion out onto the reels. Assuming the reel of film is head out and the soundtrack is facing you, the lead edge of the film should come off of the reel to the left side to accomplish this. Next print everyone breaks down, check for it. It causes many projectors undue headaches and many changeover houses cannot feed the film wound emulsion in either.
- Enough with using an old piece of splicing tape from the trash to reattach the leaders!!! Need I say more?
- Please put the leaders back on the proper reels. Also, when I take a reel band off of a reel, I shouldn't be greeted with the identification frame...but the beginning of the countdown! How about matching up soundtracks too?
- Please don't try to save money by not splicing the tail leader back on. When the next theater is building in a frenzy because Technicolor delivered the print 10 minutes before showtime, not having it spliced back on will result in an incredible amount of slapping and destruction of the last few feet of the reel. For people loading the film directly onto a platter, reel by reel (a practice I frown upon heavily) the end of each reel will be scratched if not spliced back on. Really, are these theaters hurting THAT MUCH that they can't afford to single sided splice the tail leader back on?
- While we're on that subject, I highly recommend a single sided splice for all reattachments. I think we've pretty much all come to that agreement in another thread.
- If your theater does not have dousers, please save that tail leader! Many theaters like this cut it off intentionally so the end won't run through. Also, please add a stretch of black leader or something. I hate getting a print where the tail end of the credits and the blue rating band are torn up. Simply adding 25-50 feet to the end of each print will keep the end of the movie in pristine condition as well as providing you with some extra "junk" leader should the tail end pull together and wrap.
- If there is no paper reel band (or if one of them was missing a string, which necessitates tossing the entire set away), please use at least a 2 inch strip of tape. This can be masking tape, but please make sure it is something "unused" and with "good adhesive qualities" and there is enough of it to securely hold the film together. How many of you have received a used print that was taped down with that Post-It type tape? Or with a 1/4" x 1/4" piece of masking tape? Such nonsense always arrives at my door step completely mangled up with substantial film damage.
I'm sure there's more, but that's a good start. Anyone else?
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-01-1999, 08:22 PM:
This is a good list already. Two more points: if you or the theatre's manager is too cheap or lazy to go out and buy special "artists' tape" and you absolutely _must_ use masking tape to keep the reel ends from unwinding in shipment (if no bands came with the reels or if the string is gone), at the very least use "painters' masking tape" or something else that won't leave a residue on the film. This is also useful for attaching a few inches to the head of each reel to identify the title, reel number, picture and sound formats, and other information when running reel-to-reel.
Also, when rewinding prints onto the shipping reels--don't tape the leader to the reel itself. There's really no need to ever do this, and it usually does nothing but get sticky gunk on the reel hub and will cause no end of problems if someone tries to run the film "as is" in a reel-to-reel setup without bothering to inspect it and remove the tape first.
Oh, one last thing--don't use "zebra" tape or some other type of non-clear splicing tape to attach head and tail leaders to each reel...it's kind of pointless, it gets difficult-to-remove yellow gunk on the film, and the tape is more expensive than clear tape anyway.
One more last thing--if you know that there's something seriously defective about a particular reel or entire print, but you didn't have time to order a replacement reel/print because you were only showing the film for a day or two, PLEASE put a little note in the shipping case containing the first reel with a statement to the effect of "this print has a huge green scratch down the middle of the picture in all reels--you probably will want to order a replacement print" or "reel 5 is very splicy and should be replaced" or even "there's an out-of-frame splice in reel 2 that we didn't notice when inspecting the print and didn't have time to fix after our once-only show of this film". Include your name, phone number, and theatre name. The next guy (or girl!) will be _very_ appreciative.
Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 10-01-1999, 09:29 PM:
Virtually all of of you list regulars, as well as many infrequent contributors and lurkers, have more than enough common sense to know this, but it was an incident I had about five years ago involving a print from an AMC house (surprise! 
) that prompted this contribution...->If, after a special screening, you are breaking down a print to be used for another screening elsewhere with the understanding the print will be returned to your theatre for its regular run...
++please break the print down properly, in its entirety, as if it was the end of the run!++
The incident involved a sneak preview I ran at a local university, in a changeover-equipped facility (Century "H"s with 1 kw ORC integrated lamphouses) capable of handling twenty-minute reels only. A student government representative had picked up the film from an AMC crapoplex an hour's round-trip drive away from the university. When she arrived with the film, I was astonished at what I found in the trunk: the print, sent on two 6000-foot reels, plus one full shipping reel. I immediately called that AMC house and managed to contact a booth usher and--while struggling to hold back the epithets--told him what they provided was unacceptable and that I was sending the rep back with the film to have it *properly* broken down, with leaders and tails and on shipping reels (I had to make it plain as day!). Almost an hour after the scheduled start I received the print in the correct configuration, inspected the first reel, got it on screen, and inspected the rest of the film on the fly. Urgh! 
Thank goodness for changeover equipment!
The recommendations in this list are wonderful, especially for those visiting this list just to gather ideas for improving their craft. The thing I worry about, though, is the impossibility of getting this kind of word out to the vast majority of platter jockeys out there. Sigh.
--Jon
(no relation to Brad)
Posted by Martin Murray (Member # 162) on 10-02-1999, 02:40 AM:
REMEMBER, PULL YOUR CUE TAPE OFF!!!!
Posted by Erika Hellgren (Member # 22) on 10-02-1999, 06:19 PM:
Oh, this is awesome. This is exactly what I had hoped for. I already have read about five things that I'm going to change in my breakdown/buildup routine. And lots of things that I couldn't think of in my post, have been mentioned. Thanks, guys, you rule.
Posted by Stephen Jones (Member # 16) on 10-02-1999, 11:09 PM:
One thing I hate is when you open a trunk and a heap of film spews out and is tangled under the other spools all because staff at the previous location is too damed lazy to secure the leaders down, and one other thing is the people who dont wrap up flats when they are despatched in cartons and the print is covered in dust and heaven Knows what else.------------------
Posted by Art Averett (Member # 367) on 10-03-1999, 12:02 AM:
I received two prints of "American Beauty" from Technicolor Thursday. Incredible that the prints came the day before. However, one print was brand new, the other print, what can I say. Reel four had the head and tail leaders reversed, reel 6 had the "THX" reporting info at the end all twisted and scratched. I cut out a foot and a half. The digital dolby sound track was nearly polished off, someones film gate/or intermittant sprocket shoes tension was too tight. Thank goodness the right DTS disks were in the film can and I put it in the house that has DTS sound. The other good print I put in the SR-D house. It's Dobly Digital soundtrack was very low. Also, I would like to thank the person who put on masking tape to attach the leaders and tails. Where are the rest of the reel bands????? In reference to finding the beginning and end of reels, (I'll probably get alot of flak for this) I have used a marker made by Testors. It is a gloss paint marker that comes in a pen like tube. It DOES NOT flake at all and goes thru the film gate with out a trace of residue. I have used it on prints that go thru Cinemechanica V5's, V8's and Simplex 35's with straight gates. The marker has a wide tip and does not go into the digital sound tracks. I only mark six inches on the tail and head of a print. You can find the marker at any hobby shop, artist supply store, K-Mart and Target. Apply a light coating and allow to dry.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-04-1999, 06:59 PM:
If you're marking the edge of the film, you're covering the Sony digital soundtrack.Oh well, another reason not to buy Sony.
Posted by Art Averett (Member # 367) on 10-05-1999, 11:37 AM:
The Testors marking pen that I use has a wide blade. The way that I apply the marking is to use the flat part on the edge of the film and not into the Sony digital sound track. May take a little bit of time, and it does work ok. The only color that I use is gloss white. Easier to find reel beginning & end.
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-05-1999, 06:54 PM:
At our recent convention, I saw a new product (well it was new to me anyway) called edge-mark tape. Just like foil cue tape, but it's yellow like opaque splice tape. You could put a 1/2" piece on one edge of the film and find splices easily.I still think however, that if a print has no other splices besides the reel-change ones, there's no need to use anything but clear tape.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-1999, 06:58 PM:
Be careful when using any kind of "paint pen" to mark film! They used to use a silver paint pen to mark changes at UA Greenwood Plaza (at least they did before I got there) but they stopped that practice really quick, because other theatres' automations would mistake the silver paint pen marks as foil cues and do all sorts of crazy stuff!
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-10-1999, 03:14 PM:
One of my pet peeves from when I was a projectionist! Reel bands, and their proper use.Way back when, reel bands were pretty heavy-duty, not paper-thin. And the strings on them were just that--STRINGS, not thread! Forget it today, the bands are too cheap and flimsy to do the job.
You can't put a reel band on properly today because the thread (I won't dignify it by calling it string) comes unwound anyway, and if you wrap it around the catch as tight as it needs to be, it breaks (either the thread or the catch)!
What happened to the good ol' reel bands, that used to be supplied by that bank? (their name was stamped on all of them) Or the MPE bands?
What was the purpose of the reel band to begin with? Two things, both of which have become lost today: Identification, and, to HOLD THE FILM END DOWN... there was no place for masking tape of any kind on a film print or reel band.
And the band's are not necessarily id'ing the reels or picture anymore; I've seen several prints with blank bands! (And what about the ones that are taped on upside down? HA!)
Today, I don't think you have any choice; the stinkin' reel bands are just strips of paper with a thread stapled to them!
(coming down off the soap box) Next...
Posted by Rick Long (Member # 213) on 10-10-1999, 09:51 PM:
In Ontario, they served one other purpose. Nick-named "censor bands", they were legal documents that proclaimed that that particular reel had been approved by the Ontario Board of Censors for public performance.They were pretty serious about it too! If a theatre inspector found that you were running film without these bands, he had the power to lift your license on the spot. It actually happened a few times (not to me though).
Sadly, they too have been abondoned for the cheap paper and stapled string.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-12-1999, 05:16 PM:
The last couple of films that I got at M.H. College reminded me of something that I wanted to ask for a while, now.I hate it when I have to build/break a print that has 9,000,000 spliced frames at the heads/tails. The film we got last week only had 8 frames between the second (change) cue and the end of the reel AND six of them were spliced and taped!
I have been trying to peel off my splices and splice the reel back together one-sided, lately. But when I get one of those spliced up tails, I often wonder what to do.
Should I take out those 9,000,000 splices and throw them out, or just attach the tail back on to the end of the row? Usually, if it's only one or two frames, I'll chuck 'em but if there are a lot, I worry about tossing out too much of the end of the reels. In the course of a 6-reel print, it can easily add up to more than 24 frames of wastage.
If the next guy is a changeover house, I can't imagine the ends of the reels actually playing. If the next guy is a platter house, the frames won't get built into the print, so theoretically, they are 'gone' no matter what you do.
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-12-1999, 05:23 PM:
Toss 'em! They won't run through a projector worth a flip anyway and as you already pointed out, they won't be suitable for platter mounting either. I have no idea as to why people actually try and preserve all 18 of these frames! It would look horrible if they were projected and I think of it as a service to the next theater should they be a changeover house to have one nice single sided splice that will actually run through the machine, should they not have the time to add that second side to the splices.
Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-16-1999, 08:53 PM:
My personal feeling (and one that I have always practiced in my 20 years of showing films) is on breakdown, the film should be restored to its original condition...no lost frames and the heads/tails fully reattached so the print is runnable...and just like those bygone paper bands used to say "Do not rewind. Standard Print Makeup" so I ship tails out (emulsion-in) and if in a changeover booth, I take-up right on the shipping reel so it gets a nice smooth wind. The next projectionist gets a print ready to inspect and load onto whatever apparatice they have.I stand by splicing the heads/tails back on with tape on both sides...it leaves the film in a runable state.
Steve
Posted by Chris Erwin (Member # 176) on 10-17-1999, 10:13 AM:
Worst case here. Some one tried to make a reel band out of masking tape. I mean they started at the film end and went around the entire reel. I only encountered once. Someone probably got a print from this person and hunted them down!-Chris