Being in a particularly bad mood tonight I've decided to vent my frustrations here rather then take them out on my cat when I get home. My gripe is with everyone's favorite - the stupid projectionist.

After threading the film for the first show tonight, I did all of my pre-show checks and found nothing was wrong. 1/2 an hour later I came back up to booth to start the show. I hit the start button, the projector starts, the lights come down, the sound comes on, but the lamp stays dark.

I quickly stopped the projector and checked all of the breakers, fuses, indicator lights and could find nothing wrong. I tried to manually start the lamp, no luck. Being completely stumped I called the projectionist who worked earlier in the day so see if he had any problems.

Upon asking him that question I receive the reply, "Oh yeah, I was showing someone the inside of the lamp house and I stripped out the screw for the safety switch. I fixed it with some duct tape." I immediately hung up on him, opened the lamp house and found that the duct tape had peeled off, releasing the switch. I quickly replaced the stripped srew, closed up the lamp house, and started the show.

I can't believe that someone would be so lazy as to not spend the time to fix the screw and instead would decide to use duct tape. It took me 20 minutes to diagnose and fix something that only should have taken 2-3 minutes to fix initially.

That kind of thing just pis-es me off. Thank for letting me get this off my shoulders, I feel much better now.
 

I trained a projectionist that used to project here at the theatre. I am trying to take my first day off in a month. I was in the lobby talking to a customer when they said the film was melting. I ran upstairs to find a huge tail wrap in #2 and the projectionist nowhere to be found. I lost half the credits for Angela’s Ashes. I guess we will be buying a new reel of film.

We are now adopting Joe's Film-Wrap system so this never happens again. We will be using an old piece of trailer to make a loop around the film so that the tail never falls off the platter.

I can't work 24/7, damn it!
 

I used to do that when working with the "upside down dished" Stupid platters, because gravity was stronger than any tuck. I used it for awhile at Galaxy because there are 2 giant auditoriums way up and out of the way that don't get checked on too much. Then I realized, wait...what am I doing? These AW3s are all properly timed! I'll just go back to tucking again...and everything's been just fine.

Ian, since you've got SPECOs you really should use the business card magnet trick I told you about. I'll try and get a picture and post it here.

 

One of my FORMER projectionist did the following stupid things.

We have SPECO platters. She did not push the GREEN button to make it GO (I tried this training technique since she could not figure out what payout meant, other than credit card bills).

Of course there was the brain wrap. Instead of calling me to let me know what happened, and then subsequently my coming in to fix it, she decided to invent a new way to fix it.

She began to unwrap a two inch brain wrap. Now first let me tell you that although we do not have the film cleaners yet, we do use Film-Guard (best stuff on earth) on the sides of our prints to eliminate static. And those of us who use it know just how slick the print can get.

Well she got this print turning pretty fast when the whole thing did a backslide right off the platter and right over the center. INSPECTOR GADGET WAS EVERYWHERE.

Once again instead of calling me she tried to reel it up to the takeup platter. HELLO, we all know what happens next. The film is twisting all to hell. SO she decides to start cutting and splicing the film back together. So there was a splice every 20 feet or so.

She actually got it put back together, and thanks to my modifying the splicer (thanks to this forum), the splices never showed up on screen or interupted the sound. However listening to it in the booth was a pain in the ass.

Little did she know how easy it is to fix a brain wrap. Problem is I have had only one in my lifetime as I keep my platters in tip top condition and I NEVER MISS A BEAT. So it is a little hard to train how to fix one (you think it should be easy to figure out).

I let technicolor know about the problem but they haven't billed us for it yet. Don't know if they will, I sure hope not, that film just sucked.

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"If it's not worth doing, I have allready been there and done it"
 

I didn't steal that idea from you! I've been doing that for longer than I've known who you are.

Sorry to hear about your problems, Ian, but yes that method should help.
 

I recently was involved in opening a 16 screen theatre. We closed down a 9 screen one night and opened a 16 the next day. (I live in a town where this is the only theatre for 300 miles.) The projectionists were used to FM-35 failsafe at the 9 and we switched to Strong failsafes at the 16. This was the only MAJOR difference. The projector heads were basically the same thing, just a newer model. Well to make a long story short I went home about 7 pm after being up for like 48 hours. I came in the next day and EVERY film was scratched and they were GREEN scratches. They threaded up the failsafe wrong. And yes it does have a diagram on correct threading procedure.

What I don't understand is why they didn't see something wrong when it wasn't rolling on a roller, but scraping on metal. UUHHHHHHH this is so frustrating. I never thought that saying "it's hard to find good help," was so true.

I don't think I have ever been that angry in my entire life.
 

I never asked when you were down here, was this just one person who did this, or the entire bunch? True, good help is hard to find, but sometimes you can beat what you're given into shape. How many salvageable operators would you estimate you've got and is there any new word on when we'll be trying to do this?

-Mike
 

I have 3 operators besides myself, 2 of which are responsible for the scratches. I am currently training 2 new people, and bringing back 1 person that worked at the other theatre.

 

1) Even though we enacted a "uniformity in threading" policy he threaded his own way. I could tell when he worked because there was this strange twist in the film. Many times he was spoken to about this. One time I had to fix one of his brainwraps and it took me an extra 10 minutes to fix it because of that stupid twist.

2) He insisted on threading up movies two minutes before they started. He had this habit of doing "fly-starts". (Thread up, motor the leader through the projector them press the start button when the black mylar came through. Well, that's not SO bad... He always left the motor switch on! When the film tailed out, the motor would still be running. One time he even lit the lamp manually and left the lamp switch on too! Luckily somebody smelled something and we found it just in timeto prevent the shutter from frying. I bet about half of our proj. have blisters in the shutters becasue of him!

You know, it's hard to differentiate between liking a person and liking the way a person does his job sometimes. People like him push me to the limit. All I can say is that there are a lot less problems since he quit!
 

Either the show should be run 100% manually or 100% automatically. This 50/50% practice is just nonsense.
 

I used to just come totally unglued when things like that happened. Now I just say, "Aw S***! -- Where's my tool case?"

I just figured that there's no sense in making myself look like the bad guy. I'll still have to fix it whether or not I go postal about it. It's for times like this that God invented BEER!
 

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin was heard to say during one of the constitional sessions "Gentlemen, I for one know there is a god, because we have beer."

But off the beer subject, we have ZERO automation. The equipment is what was installed 19 years ago and I have no intention of changing that. I come from a background in live theater and I personally feel that the more we automate things the more opportunity we give owners to start ELIMINATING technical staff. Oh what a loss it would be to NOT have a breathing person with a heart behind that projector.

If everything goes as planned we will begin live comedy shows in one of my auditoriums and will begin to teach both movie and live theater technical aspects, mainly to high school and college interns. Someone has to take this kids under thier wings and show them that the art of movie and theater just should not be compressed into the cheapest easiest way possible. In fact the show is always better with as many hearts behind it as thier are in front of it.

Yes I know that many love their automation, but how much will you love it when everyone goes DLP and no one needs us anymore?

Fight the future and please oh please someone blow up the DLP factory.

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"If it's not worth doing, I have allready been there and done it"
 

I was always taught to take care of the film (i.e. it aint yours) and the equipment (also i.e. it aint yours either-it's the company's)
and all I'm to do is correctly utilize it to put on a good show. I work at a small town theater and booth access is a right that is earned,screw up and it's popcorn duty for the rest of your career there.
 

At the Nugget and Opera House we have a projectionist named Buff (I call him Biff, a la Back to the Future).

I am convinced that Biff has what I call "Mechanical Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy." This is where he finds ways for things to go very rong in the booth so he can fix them and save the day.

He "got a cleaning rag caught in the shutter" that broke the intermittent shear pin; breakers pop on him and stop shows; there's "no sound, no matter what I do;" etc.

I know, I know, but I'm not his boss, my partner is. I have warned her tho, it will continue 'cause Biff just needs the attention, and to be able to save the day.
 

Chris, that's the best idea I've heard in a loooong time!

That's the problem all too much today, there are no consequences.