I have two copies of Paradiso in the library, one in Italian with subtitles and another English dubbed.

I see that Antonio M. from Italy is here and a key element in the earlier scenes in the booth was a Cinemecchanica arc projector of an ancient vintage, or so it seemed and it looked historically accurate to me, unless I have this wrong which is possible.

But there was only ONE projector and we all know you can't run a complete feature on such a system this way unless you stop periodically to rethread. Yet, the old movie house certainly looked very authentic and in some shots where the kid was looking back at the booth from inside the house there was only one porthole done up with an ancient Grecian mask and the light beam shone out through the open mouth.

I'm wondering if due to very limited finances country houses in Italy might have run with just one projector, in which case the audiences would be used to the stoppages for rethreading, which might be similar to commercial breaks in awful American television. Or did they all have two projectors and the movie was filmed with just one as it was easier that way and it would be reasonable to assume the audience wouldn't know the difference anyway.

Other areas of technical confusion in the film were aspect ratios not consistent with the period where everything would have been 1.33:1 ratio.

Antonio, can you enlighten us?

Thanks!

Regards,
Christos.
 

"FOR STRENGTH AND HONOUR"
 

Part 1 -> Proj 1
-Changeover-
Part 2 -> proj 2
[in the meantime the projectionist thread part 3 on proj 1]
-Intermission-
Part 3 -> Proj 1
-Changeover-
Part 4 -> Proj 2
:-)

I'm young (23) and I really don't know old tecnique. But I agree with demetris: to save money you could install only one projector and show the intermission that, for Italian films, was planned by film's director!

With US films I think that intermission is a bad tecnique. But sometimes, if a Bar is present in the theater, managers prefer to have a little stop to let the audience spend some money... :-)

AND, there are a lot of people "asking" for an intermission!!!!
I don't have a need to make any stop (We don't have a bar!!) and often when I inform people that there is no intermission they are not very happy...

Cinemeccanica-Prevost: I didn't know that they have the same "father" and I don't think so. If you put one Prevost's tech and one cinemeccanica''s tech into the same room, they will kill each other within few minutes...
I will investigate AND I will again "Nuovo cinema paradiso"!!

Bye
Antonio

P.S. Am I the only guy writing from Italy???
 

------------------
Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut

The V8 was designed in the middle-to-late 1950's. When does Cinema Paradiso take place?

(quote) " If you put one Prevost's tech and one cinemeccanica''s tech into the same room, they will kill each other within few minutes... "

Ha-ha! That was great!
 

I just got reminded that speeds were more like 16 frames per second on the early films, which would increase the time to 15 minutes or 30 minutes, the standard time for a featured act in vaudville and English music
halls.

By the time sound rolled in, speeds had inched their way up.

The screen in the film certainly seemed to be nearly 1.37:1 and that would make sense on the pre-fire scenes and probably correct for post-fire as well.

As to the subtitles...I generally recommend hearing the dubbed version of subtitled films at least once. They normally do a better translation but the voices don't match. Then I can watch the film with subtitles and put the words right. When I used to run a bunch of french films (with subtitles), I once had a trainee that was fluent in English, French and German (among others)...he started laughing during a scene that I didn't find funny and I asked why...he pointed out that the subtitles were mis-placed so as to even change the meaning of the sentances. On subsequent viewings, I became more aware of such things. Das Boot has this problem on some of the subtitles as well. One of the nice things about the dubbed version of DasBoot is that the bulk of the actors (almost all of the main characters) did their own dubs so the voices matched the actors in timbre.

Back to CP...I believe many scenes with Toto's girlfriend were cut in the domestically released version....I believe that Mirimax is going to be releasing the Director's cut that might have them put back.

I agree that CP should be required viewing by any projectionist or movie theatre lover.

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

Joe, are corect. It is a marvelous film! I have that in my VHS collection. I wish it was on DVD.

Antonio - The Italians know how to make a good movie. Too bad we can't. The past 8 months or so proves that.

"Cinema Paradiso" is on DVD! I have a copy.
 

Therefore it has never been general practise in Germany to make intermissions. I do know some bottom of the barrel "projection rooms", which purposely make an intermission, as they just want to ripp off arthouse film buffs. They fight every possible investment, and use portable Cinemeccanica "Portacine" with 4500 ft reel capacity, halogen lamp projection.
Theese are not situated in the country or poor regions (like Italy), but in major, rich cities. In my eyes poor projection quality is fraud.
 

As for the second projector, the only good closeup I could find quickly was when they were moving it to the Arena for the summer. The upper magazine was removed, so there was no nameplate. Sorry for the blur, the cart was moving across the screen as the camera was zooming. "La Lettera" at 1:29:12.

Here, lifted from IMDB are some of the dvd details:

Aspect Ratio(s): Widescreen anamorphic - 1.66:1

A new one on me. I didn't know there is such a thing as widescreen anamorphic @1.66! Guess I've been a Wetired Lunatic too long. <g>

Discographic Information:
DVD Encoding: Region 1
Layers: Single
Available Audio Tracks:
Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), Italian
(Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dubbed) (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)

Available subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Italian

This has been on my list of dvds to acquire but if a full director's cut reissue is pending I'll hold and wait for the dvd of that. I think dvd's are generally quite overpriced considering the cost of mfg. one is less than a vhs tape; but it might be just a matter of being patient and waiting as I expect the coming imploding collapse of the economy [caused by the doubling/tripling + of winter heating bills wiping out all discretionary spending capabilities of millions of families -- i.e. the utility bills gobble up ALL of the money] will bring most dvd prices down to 1/2 or less of what they are now.

In the early days of pre-recorded VHS tapes the prices were astronomical and the quality abysmal. Collectors like myself building huge libraries quickly learned that pristine tapes could be had by recording direct off-satellite to good blank stock, such as Maxell HGX-Gold; and so I have only a tiny handful of commercial VHS tapes.

As an aside, DVD players are selling like hotcakes in Billings due to the carmike cinemas disaster. Like drugs, the word around is "Just Say NO -- Don't Go!!!" Our local costco outlet which offers highly competitive dvd prices with no "shipping" add-ons, is hard pressed to keep recent titles in stock and video rental stores with growing dvd libraries are quite busy. I can't understand how DirecTV thinks a payperview price of $3.99 can possibly compete with 3-day dvd @$2.97; plus you can run off a tape. People do this all the time and swap tapes around; a VHS blank film is under a dollar. PPV on cable is $5 a pop. [!]

But who are we to fathom the machinations of the all-Omnipotent Corporate-HQ mindset.

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but DVD prices may be going up. Hollywood is real happy with the existing pricing on DVD, but Blockbuster Video is not. BV is putting pressure on Hollywood to raise those prices so that people will first rent before buying. BV has the clout (if you haven't noticed) because they're paying rental fees to the studios in exchange for cheaper DVDs and tapes in the stores. All these little deals are running all the Mom and Pop outfits out of business. It wasn't too long ago you could rent a VHS video for a $1 at the supermarket. The convenience of BV, not necessarily a low price, and these little deals are giving BV a nice little monopoly type situation.
 

Well, they can all do whatever they want on the dvd prices, this consumer won't be buying. Not a necessity of life, you know! As always, Greed has to work its way thru the system.

Besides pay-per-view, a limited-length window, competition for dvd is in the 35 or so movie channels on satellite which more or less are mostly showing reruns of all the same recent features. There's more variety on the old-movie channels.

The studios eventually discovered with vhs tapes that after the quality was improved and prices drastically reduced, sales went up dramatically. The same will happen with dvd. And those with the technical expertise CAN dub them to vhs very successfully right now.

Ignoring yet another problem, do we really want to? The critics are saying the last year has produced the worst crop of movies in decades. Amen!

I was surprised to hear my french teacher tell me recently that all English films are dubbed into French in France. Ditto for Italy where the dubbing is of a very high standard.

Unfortunately I can't say I have ever seen a film where the dubbing into English was very good. In fact the efforts I have seen & heard thus far have put me off dubbing completely. I think the problem is that the outfits that do the dubbing do so on a shoestring budget. (Note however that most foreign films I watch are comedies). To cut costs they have one person do several voices and as you would guess the soundtrack ends of sounding like a whole series of 'funny voices' a la Mel Blanc. If Mel Blanc had been doing the dubbing the soundtrack might have been tolerable however the results are just dreadful. One might almost be tempted to say that Hollywood deliberately destroys the soundtrack to ensure that the film is not commercially successful.

THese days I will not watch a dubbed film or video. I insist on subtitles which is the only way to guarantee that some cut price editing company has not destroyed the film.

Incidentally I would be interested to hear how American audiences view foreign films. Is there much interest these days? I understand that in the 70s interest in foreign films was much higher than at present which is a shame as the French in particular do make many good films. La Cage Aux Folles is still one of my favourite films.

Here's hoping we see a resurgence in interest in good european films but pleeeeeez ... no dubbing ok?

cheers Peter

The "director's cut" has been around on VHS, but is a little hard to find. I recall it being a half-hour or so longer than the US version.
 

The one cinema I know of in the UK which still regularly projects nitrate (the National Film and Television Archive's preview theatre) has a limit of 1,000ft reels and will split 'doubles' if necessary. The National Film Theatre used to, but I was recently told that they had to remove their fire-resistant spoolboxes in order to fit digital sound readers.

I've seen a 100ft roll of nitrate burn, the thought of 6,000ft going up is terrifying.
 

I agree, 6000 feet of nitrate in one roll is asking for disaster.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

------------------

 

Something I used to do occasionally to teach people of the dangers of nitrate was unwind a length from an old junk reel and stretch it out across a parking lot area with a rock on each end, then light one end: whooooooosh!

Very Frightening. John P -- have you ever done a demo like this?

As to nitrate projection, it may be reasonably safe IF in good condition, IF the projector has a water-cooled gate, IF there is a heat shield between the lamphouse & the proj, and IF the light source is somewhat low intensity like under 1KW. A lot of IF's but a little preview screening room would meet them.

I worry about the UCLA archive's print of Phantom/Opera of 1943, it really shouldn't be projected any more but used for a television master / new internegative / and otherwise held in retirement. Irreplaceable.

I say opening the door is what spread the fire. The way I understand thing is that if he left the door shut the fire would burn itself out in a while. Sure the projector would be trashed but the fire wouldn't have spread, or at least it might have been kept down to a "containable" level.

Anyway, if it hadn't been for that there wouldn't be a whole 2nd half of the movie, would there?

PS: I used to keep an 8 X 10 picture of Alfredo on the wall in "my" booth. In Pennsylvania we had to keep a copy of our projectionist license posted in a "conspicuous place". I used to keep the license copy(s) inside the frame with the picture. Nobody ever understood the reference, although I tried to explain it to people several times.
 

Remember what Joe Schmidt said: "...trying to fight the fire -- which should NEVER be attempted. (Let it burn, drop the fire shutters and GET OUT)." Losing a roll of film or damaging the equipment isn't worth risking your life or that of the audience.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
 

That is why all well-designed projector spoolboxes are not airtight, but have an 'lip' directed away from the operating side of the projector so that the flames don't hit the projectionist in the face. As an added precaution, restricting the amount of film per reel to 1,000ft will limit the amount of toxic fumes generated if a reel goes up. With adequate air extraction capacity in the projection box, enough of the fumes will be sucked out to prevent the projectionist from being overcome before he or she can escape. But all this depends on the projectionist not attempting to fight the fire and following the rule that John and Joe have both stated: get out, then let it burn out.

As for the wisdom of attempting to project nitrate at all, I wrote a paper about this when I was a film archiving student. Having spoken to people at all the cinemas in Europe I could find that still do it (a grand total of four, two of which are archive preview theatres), the rules which everyone follows are:

1. Don't do it if the print shows early signs of decomposition (i.e. if it is sticky).

2. Don't do it if the print is significantly shrunk. The NFT used a 'shrinkometer' gauge to measure linear and width shrinkage, and up to 5% on either was considered acceptable.

3. Don't do it if there is any significant perforation damage.

4. Only project 1,000ft reels at a time. If necessary split up 'double' reels and add leaders, tails and cue marks as needed.

5. Never, ever attempt to project a preservation element. The only nitrate prints suitable for projection are 'surplus' nitrate release prints acquired by an archive, i.e. better quality elements and of a closer generation to the camera negative are already preserved.

If all these criteria are satisfied and in a box with the proper safeguards (spoolboxes, adequate air extraction, fire shutters on the ports, at least two separate exits from the projection box leading to different parts of the building and a separate storage area for the nitrate reels with a fire resistant door seperating it from the main projection box), then you can do it.

And it's well worth the effort - nitrate prints have a sharpness and density which I've never seen in any acetate or poly print. I don't care about the fact that, theoretically, there's no technical reason why they should look any better - they just do! And my generation is almost certainly the last that will ever see a nitrate print projected - sad in a way.
 

There was a part in the film when he was teaching Toto and he said that if the film caught fire you could take a pair of scissors and cut the film. (Ostensibly to keep the fire from going up into the magazine.) Although that makes sense, logically speaking, it just seems pretty darned unrealistic to me.

If it were me in a situation like that, you could bet dollars to donuts that I'd be out the door in a heartbeat!
 

If the nitrate film caught fire in the projector and sound head, the rollers would quench it before it spread to the magazines.

Hydrogen Peroxide was used to clean up the mess in the projectors and soundheads. But, if it spread to the magazines, you tripped the porthole shutters on your way out of the booth.

They had a common trip - usually by the exit door. You didn't have too much time to get out. The fumes were very toxic.

I think some booths had heat fuses to drop the steel shutters in the portholes in case the projectionist could not get to the main ripcord.

It could be reasoned that Alfredo was just a small-town projectionist, but without the benefit of knowedge that a big-city operator would have. He didn't get to hear or see the things that would happen to big-city operators, who would tell their fellows at the local watering-hole. He didn't have Film-Tech!
 

Aaron

 

The lack of parameter rollers around the pay-out head = a disaster looking for a place to happen! I forgot about those sytle platters. You would think by now a retro-fit kit for those machines would be available.

Personally, I really never really believed in those wrap detectors. Most of the wraps occur because of improper threading, the tail came loose and snagged the pay-out, or a sticky film or a shitty splice doubled up and sucked itself through the payout head as well as a button or switch being in the wrong position. And, true - some designs leave a lot to be desired.

Of course, equipment failures do happen, but I don't think (percentage wise) it is the main cause like everyone says it is. As with any piece of equipment, it will fail if abused, neglected, or operated outside the machine's specifications.

Yes, Gordon - Carbon Tet is some very nasty stuff! Supposedly, it is illegal in the US, but I don't know about other countrys.

The exhaust fans for the carbons were pretty huge, even by "old-time" standards. They were in a seperate room. (Per fire code) One for each projector. They were giant squirrel cage blowers, each about 3 feet in diameter. Once you got them both going they could cause a draft strong enough to almost suck the door shut. There were "bypass" dampers you could use to regulate the flow of air out of the lamphouse. Judging from what you all are saying I bet the overkill was done on purpose as an attempt to suck out any fumes in case of a tragedy.
 

It did as you say...as the tension increases, it would draw a blade across the film (like scissors) to cut the film as it entered the projector.

Better designed "wrap detectors" use a "yo-yo" system like on the take up so the projector can run down without increasing the tension. Neumade, Big-Sky and SPECO have this type of sensor (and probably others). Another big thing to remember is to have the wrap detector shut the automation down...some are designed to merely turn off the take up platter so when the take up roller drops (or runs out) the normal failsafes will take over....the problem is, in a high tension situation, the take up roller won't drop.

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

On the other hand, if you decrease the strength of the magnet you'll get shows stopping unnecessarily.

This is why I feel that a cutter might be a better solution. The kind of thing I have in mind is an assembly which sits on top of the platter tree consisting of a motion detect roller and a spring-loaded cutter blade held back from the film path by an electromagnet. If the motion detect roller says no motion, then power to the magnet is switched off (as well as power to the platter and projector) and the film is cut as near as possible to the feed unit. That way you'd relieve the pressure caused by the projector mechanism pulling at jammed film straight away.

The downside would be a cut in the film, but if it's a choice between that and several mangled feet (which would need two cuts to remove from the print anyway) then I'd suggest that one cut is by far a lesser evil.
 

the older ones where never fitted with these, several years ago we had the same problem with "Wraps" on CNR Platters, but improved greatly with these guards.
 

"CHEMICAL DANGERS: On contact with hot surfaces or flames this substance decomposes
forming toxic and irritating fumes (hydrogen chloride, ICSC # 0163;
chlorine, ICSC # 0126; phosgene, ICSC # 0007). Reacts violently with some
metals such as aluminium, barium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, with
fluorine and other substances, causing fire and explosion hazard. Attacks
copper, lead and zinc."

AFAIC, if used to put out a fire, it was more likely to kill you than the fire.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

In any case, the stuff sounds as dangerous as nitrate fumes, if not more so.
 

I said earler that Alfredo opened the magazine and tried to fight the fire.

Well, on closer examination, it turns out that he literally THREW Toto out of the booth and then went over to the projector (I assume to shut it down or something) At this point he gets his legs tangled up in a pile of burning film. As he's trying to free himself from that mess, the magazine bursts open (from the pressure, I guess) and the flames spew out and hit him in the face.

Next, Toto comes back up the spiral staircase and drags Alfredo to safety by the pantlegs.

Just thought I should clear up that little mistake I made earlier.
 

So if a "dead man's door" was one that closed automatically, then there wouldn't have been any point in having them on doors which lead directly out of the building. If anything you'd want that to stay open in order to let the fumes out. Because burning nitrate produces its own oxygen, there's no point in attempting to control the fire by restricting airflow, so you might as well let the fumes out.

But I can see that a fire-resistant, automatically closing door would have been a good idea for any interior (partition) doors leading out of the projection box, since it would prevent the fumes from affecting other parts of the building. The projectionists(s) would escape through the exterior and down a fire escape staircase.
 

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
 

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