This is topic Friday Night Stories in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Erick Ojeda (Member # 216) on 11-12-1999, 08:54 PM:
Hi Everyone, How did everyone's Friday night go? I miss working on Friday nights. I always enjoyed them the most. Since the theater I am at is getting renovated, I can't experience them again until December. We open up again December 1st. So, let me here your stories. How was everyone's night? I bet there were some good ones out there, and some really horrible ones.
Erick Ojeda
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 11-12-1999, 11:45 PM:
Let's see... Came in at 6:30pm tonight; had to fix 2 out of frame splices in the trailers and replace 1 "EXIT" snipe because it had been whittled down to about 1/2 of it's original length. The manager pleaded with me to come in tomorrow to thread the interlock we have to do for "Pokeman." Bunch of 'friady cats.
Are you sure you want to go back to this job?
Posted by Erick Ojeda (Member # 216) on 11-13-1999, 12:29 AM:
John: I love this job. There is nothing in the world like it. We're all showman. Without us, the presentation would not go on. Seems like your night was kind of rough. Some Friday nights tend to be that way. You should track down the projectionist who made those bad splices. Those splices should have been fixed way before when you got in. Hopefully, the rest of your weekend will go a lot smoother.
Erick
Posted by Masao Garcia (Member # 184) on 11-13-1999, 04:02 AM:
My night was okay, but leaned toward the bad. Thursday night, I had stupidly put the same trailer on twice (on Messenger). To make things worse, I had the worst static problem when I played the screening (I didn't watch it; I watched my future wife's movie, Anywhere But Here...and I'm talkin' 'bout Natalie Portman, ya sickos...). Anyway, my movie got done way before Messenger, and I saw how bad the static was and the suction cups were barely holding on. Just before the credits, I heard the suction cups snap off and got to the projector in time to stop the film from melting. There was the hugest lump in the remaining part of the film that I had ever seen. I cleared the brain wrap in about 5 minutes (this was at almost 4 in the morning, BTW) and I had to babysit the POS for the remainder of the show. Anyway, the static problem was still there today and my usher-B didn't take off the duplicate trailer, so I had to end up doing it, and babysitting the static prone film for two shows. Crap.--MG
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-13-1999, 10:18 AM:
I don't have too many Friday night stories...Thursdays were always my favorite night to work in a theatre--I enjoyed making sure that the out-going films were in top condition and that the in-coming films were inspected properly. As it happened, in the place where I worked, Thursdays were one of the busiest nights of the week.
Mondays and Tuesdays were usually pretty boring nights--not many customers, no film inspection to be done, everything on 6000' reels. Usually I avoided working on these nights, but always brought a couple of newspapers or a thick book when I had to.
Posted by Christopher A Kerr (Member # 151) on 11-13-1999, 01:35 PM:
I hate fridays. It seems that every friday something goes wrong. About a month ago it was the brainwrap from hell(canceled show); A few weeks ago it was a blown intermittent on a projector just returned from having the intermitent fixed...learned how to change an intermittent in a hurry(cancelled one show, second one ran). Last night, my only usher scheduled called in sick and no one else was available. I had to borrow the brother of one of our chain's other managers from the next town over to fill in. Then the box office computer crapped out on me and I had to hand issue tickets for a while. And to top it all off, I didn't get my print (allready made up from the theatre next door) until late in the afternoon so I didn't have time to give it a good inspection, just grabbed what I thought was all the trailers and ripped 'em out, attached a leader and started the show. Luckily, I got all the other theatres policy trailers off. I hate fridays.
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-13-1999, 03:55 PM:
I had severe static problems with Messenger as well. But with my Christie platters calibrated the right way, it ran through that first showing just fine. Of course after that, the static went away, since it had a nice coating of shiny FilmGuard on it.
Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 11-13-1999, 06:05 PM:
I didn't have to work last night, but I went to my theater to see a couple of movies (the Hawaii Int'l Film Festival is going on right now). I was amazed to find that TWO of our 18 screens were apparently not in use. The story is apparently that one print ("Omega Code") never arrived because we somehow weren't scheduled by someone to receive it, and Reel 1 of another print ("Princess Mononoke") apparently was botched during the printing process with perhaps 3/4 of it being unexposed (this being secondhand info, I never actually saw the reel)-- has anyone ever heard of such a thing? So I guess it wasn't quite a perfect night.
Posted by Scott Ribbens (Member # 180) on 11-13-1999, 08:05 PM:
Yes that can happen. If the aperture on the contact printer was closed by accident, or the bulb went out, or was accidentaly turn off and someone at the lab was not paying attention, that could happen, though it is a very rare occurance!
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Scott
Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 11-14-1999, 05:07 AM:
Friday night was ok for me.. Saturday night was hell.. At 6:15 some kid pulled the fire alarm... At 8:30 some kid had a siezure in front of the box office... At 11:30 some other kid pulled the fire alarm...Damn kids...
Posted by Scott Ribbens (Member # 180) on 11-14-1999, 02:21 PM:
I don't know what kind of pull stations you have for the fire alarm system, but if they are anything like the ones that I had at the Theatres that I have worked in, they make a clear plexi cover for the pull stations that has to be removed before you can pull the alarm handle. When the cover is removed, a buzzer in the cover sounds. We did not originally have the covers, and had a few false alarms (mostly from young children who could just reach the alarm pull handles), then we got the covers, installed them, and did not have another false alarm for the rest of the time that I worked at that Theatre. You might want to look into getting some.
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Scott
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 11-14-1999, 03:09 PM:
"Friday night was ok for me...." "At 11:30 some other kid pulled the fire alarm..."I always wonder why parents would bring their little kid to a 10:00PM show of a film like "Pokemon?" It looks like anyone under the age of seven would be bored with it, and anyone that age should be home in bed.
Or, am I just getting too old!?
It was also a little sad to look out the port window and see most of the kids with a single parent. I'm sure not all of them were divorced/seperated, but still, in my family, we did everything together (movies, argue, whatever.)
Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 11-15-1999, 04:03 AM:
Actually, we have those plastic covers.. The kids pulling them are 13-16 years old...I saw the kids who pulled it the second time.. I was kinda torn though... Catch (and hurt) the kids, or shut down the alarm...
Today was fun too... IN the middle of our buisest round today our box office computers crashed... They were down almost an hour and in order to get them up, we had to reroute the network and take down our satellite concession stands.. I really hope they are back this weekend...
Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 11-15-1999, 09:29 AM:
It took us about 4 1/2 hours to screen Messenger. One reel was installed backwards. (I really hate it when the guys during the day think they have time to build a print but yet can't find the time of day to break down trailers from the last week.) Anyway, the static was bad too, but also disappeared with FilmGuard. (Wink) (I haven't figured out how to put the cute faces in yet)Our computers crashed both Saturday and Sunday mornings just before we were going to open the doors. Had to work with emergency tickets (manual) until it was fixed. What a pain.
Posted by Christopher A Kerr (Member # 151) on 11-17-1999, 05:41 PM:
Paul :Read the FAQ page to learn how to add smilies. 