In the picture below, take note of the 4 drive-pin holes in the reel. This came from the Technicolor depot on a print made at the Technicolor lab.

Now take a closer look at the core inside the reel. Does anyone see a problem here?

The blue core pictured below to my knowledge has not caused a single person any grief whatsoever, so why change it? This new design is incompatible with all of those fabulous broken reels already in the field.

Genius! Sheer genius!!!

It has been proven to me that TECHNICOLOR ONLY HIRES STUPID PEOPLE! This is 100% fact. If you are reading this and your work for Technicolor, you are a freakin' moron! Yes, you! How else could you explain the decisions they make? Certainly no intelligence is involved. If there is any intelligence in this design, can somebody please point it out to me? I bet no one can. I bet they are also too stupid and too cowardly to even give us a reason behind this and other TES blunders.

You just KNOW that their digital projectors are gonna suck just as much ass as TES themselves do.

Umm, I think you answered your own question!

 

Said cores cause one massive problem compared to the three-inch diameter cores more commonly used to mount 2,000ft reels over here. This is that the slot for the registration pin is too narrow to accomodate the pins on most split reels and winding plates.

Now this isn't really a problem at all, I hear you all say, because you can just file down the pin on your spool and slot the core on. WRONG! Whilst this will let you get the core on the spool or plate, the registration pin on the base of the spindle (as distinct from the one on the side of the shaft) will foul one of the spokes on the core when you attempt to put the mounted plate on a rewind bench or the spool on the projector's feed spindle.

Comparing the two cores in Brad's picture, it looks like the slot sizes are the same and the spokes are definitely in the same place relative to the slot, so it appears that neither of these design flaws has been corrected.

Like my Dad says:
"If I owned a company, the CEO would have started out scrubbing toilets for me."
 

Hey Rachel, did you ever get anything going legal-wise with your TES-reel related injury?
 

Sure, they get smashed, but they usually can be un-smashed long enough to extract the product.

I would rather see a mashed reel of film than to here about someone who was hurt by a plastic reel that flew apart, as it did in Rachel's face.

Sleasy corporations, as well as private businesses, deserve going to hell if they produce a product that is knowingly unsafe to use.

Now you know why people call me "Grumpy".

So, "Pbpthbpthbthp!" if you don't agree with me.

Actually, Goldberg's plastic shipping reel is fine too, if you have to have plastic. It is these snap together reels that all suck and should be abandoned...or at least sued into oblivion!

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

Airplanes will fly apart when they are landed without wheels, or 6 feet under the runway surface.
 

I also like the steel Goldberg shippers but they tend to get way too mangled and sometimes get sharp edges

Aaron

 

It is "normally better" in the case of archival prints which are only occasionally projected to store them on cores in those same metal cans in which which raw stock comes originally. For shipment these do need to be properly packed carefully in 15x15" boxes, which I hope was the case with the films you rec'd for your festival.

Bill, I saw you are in Richmond VA. Was this festival at the Byrd theatre by any chance?

Handling film on cores is no problem at all IF you have some good "split reels" [Hollywood Film Co. makes excellent ones, or did] and a proper conventional 2-projector setup where you do changeovers. You just wind the reels off the cores onto house reels during your inspection and then take up back onto the cores during projection of the last showing of the feature. Or it is also possible to work 100% just with cores and split reels but YOU MUST HAVE good split reels.

Being "wetired," I personally would refuse, and in fact in the past have refused, to become involved with anything where it is not done properly with the right equipment in the booth. Under these conditions it would, indeed, be a "nightmare."

J.

 

It seems Technicolor needs some convincing....lets start glueing/fusing the reels so that the flanges don't come off....after build up "fix" the reels (permanently) and I mean all of them, good or bad. By the time you need to break down on them....they will be ready for the industry.

Technicolor will enjoy not being able to reclaim the cores or flanges again!

Steve

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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

But today, I was training a prospective projectionist on how to build his show. (In this case, it was Pearl Harbor).

I have read countless negative comments by Film-Tech members about TES. Some of those comments, I thought, were stretching the point. How wrong I was in this thinking.

I am now convinced that TES is in its finest hour.

1. Reels do fly apart even at slow speeds.
2. Reels fall apart when removed from the shipping cans.
3. The shipping cans are so badly mangled, I would hesitate to ship a junk print in them.
4. There must have been one of each kind of defective pile of that was made.
5. All reels looked like they were an accident looking for a place to happen.
6. In the process of teaching the new prospective operator, it was more like teaching a safety course on the lurking dangers of TES reels.

I had a difficult time accepting how the quality control has dropped to rock bottom with respect to the TES reels, and all I have read about them on these forums was true to the maximum degree.

I have also noted poor quality control in the print itself. While splicing the reels together, I noticed on one reel where the cut was made on the frame line, the frame line remained on one frame. It looked like a .002 displacement. The splicer was ok. The newbie asked me why that was, and the only answer I could give was quality control.

Seems to me that if the "Big Boys" really cared about projection quality of their prints, they would certainly have a higher quality standard in making them.

Technicolor, on your POS dangerous reels. Have a nice day..... :mad
 

TES has, on every occasion, decided not to get involved with us, the ones who have these complaints. We don't matter. Just as long as they are getting the $$$ from the studios then they are happy.

Surely if they ignore us we'll just go away.

You would be expecting anything different?

But at least one good thing has happened. The accursed bushchild won't be getting away appointing ultra-right-wing judges to the SupCt with the defection of the Senator to go independent.

I had been getting quite worried about the future with a dissolution of our Constituitional right and freedoms being probable.

 

This is FILM-TECH. Not a political forum.

If you wish to discuss politics NOT DIRECTLY RELATED to film handling, there are many many places to go besides here.

Rant Off.

Aaron