This is topic Lab Mistake? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Mathew Molloy (Member # 666) on 09-21-2001, 06:36 PM:
Here's a new one...
We received a print (#3) of Better Than Sex just 5 hours before the invitational screening. To make a long story short, apparently reels 3 and 4 were labeled wrong by the lab. I double checked the reels before it shipped out and found that there were reference frames and they did match the heads/tails and there were no other splices apart from a lab splice mid-reel 3 in the middle of a scene.
Apparently whoever had run this film before us knew of the problem but the only tell-tale sign was some old scotch tape with the reel numbers barely holding the leaders down. Reel 4 with the piece of tape that read "3" and vice-versa.
Have any of you heard of such a thing happening before? My only other thought was that possibly the lab may have reversed the A/B rolls of Reel 4 (because that's when, I'm told, a mistake became most apparent).
Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 09-22-2001, 12:16 AM:
When received our print of "O", the attached trailer was spliced incorrectly by the lab. Apparently, the print had been shipped out a year before, but was recalled because of school violence, so the attached trailer had to be changed by the lab.It didn't help that two reels were mislabeled & many reel breaks are in total darkness. On top of that, for a flat print, you could almost show another framed feature from the picture above & below the correct framing. It was really annoying to have to change the framing every twenty minutes & recheck it every five because you don't know whether the framing was totally centered.
That's why it pays to watch the film before the opening date. You can get your ass up early & fix all of the problems.
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http://www.mullerfamilytheatres.com
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-22-2001, 01:03 AM:
Matt, please make a posting in the Feature Info forum for the specifics of this print and especially the possibility of reels 3 and 4 being mixed up. If you can, make a note of which reel is the shorter one (reel 3 or 4) to help others determine the correct way it should be.Darn those ID frames!!! 
Posted by Mathew Molloy (Member # 666) on 09-22-2001, 01:41 PM:
Steve, we always build and run the films before they open. In this case the print arrived after the theatre opened the day it played...cest la vie.
Brad, I'll do a print report from memory as, unfortunately, I only examined the print closely after-the-fact. I was not the projectionist that day, but I was in the booth quite a bit.