Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: booth regionalisms?

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-25-2002, 07:18 AM:

Gordon's mention of the popularity of Strong platters in his area reminded me of something that I've been meaning to ask for a while:

What are some regional trends in booth design, and is there any reason for them?

For example, I've noticed that changeover booths in New England commonly use a single pushbutton to activate picture and sound; footpedals are uncommon. By contrast, separate footpedals (for picture) and pushbuttons (for sound) seemed to be quite common when I was living in Virginia.

As another example, I've been told that rewind benches on the west coast commonly have footpedal speed controls, while I've never seen this anywhere on the east coast.

There's also the equipment factor--Strong platters being common in one area and Christies in others, etc.

Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

Posted by Jon Bartow (Member # 241) on 10-25-2002, 08:38 AM:

It also is dependant on what chains are present in a particular area. For example, one chain in my area uses Century proj, Christie consoles and platters with Dolby processors and Ashly amps with JBL speakers almost without exception. While another has mostly Christie proj, Strong platters, Smart processors and a very interesting array of lamphouses, amps and speakers.
All of the changeover booths that I have seen around here (Michigan) have one button for sound/douser c/o control (that is one button at each proj. Also, no foot pedal control for rewind benches.
One trend that I would guess is universal: Very poorly lit booths from the point of view of anyone who has to do more than thread. Only one theater that I service has enough light available in the booth so that I don't have to use my flashlight to do a PM.
Jonathan

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-25-2002, 09:27 AM:

Well, Scott, we have footpedal speed controls on all of our benches.

I don't see how you could manage otherwise! One hand on the brake for the supply reel, one hand to check the film, how would you be able to
control the speed of the film without a third hand?

As for single-pushbotton versus footpedal+pushbutton for changeover, umm, why would you ever want to design a system that let you changeover sound and picture independantly? That seems like asking for trouble!

--jhawk

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-25-2002, 09:42 AM:

I've always preferred a seperate right-off-left paddle for sound change-over. It comes in handy when you find out that the cue marks on the reel aren't actually projected, for one reason or another. When this happens you can shut the sound off so you don't hear the tail-out or the countdown and you can blacken the screen (while the next reel counts down) by whatever method/combination of changeover shutter and/or hand douser that you want.

Or course if you didn't get prints, sometimes, five minutes after the show was supposed to start, you could check the cue marks and you wouldn't have this problem.

Then again you could do what the owner of the D/I, that I run at one night a summer, does. Thread up on the picture, hit the motor 7 seconds after the motor que and immediately do the changeover. Boy do I hate that. He claims that you see the countdown if you thread up on the numbers.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-25-2002, 11:43 AM:

Daryl, how does that work? Do you have two 3-position switches, one on each projector, or is there a central switch somewhere?

Our custom automation system has a single button that normally changes over sound and picture, but if it is pressed a second time, it closes the Zipper and turns off the sound. So if there's a changeover error (due to incorrect cues or operator error or whatever), pressing the changeover button a second time gets you happy nothingness, and then pressing it a third time changes back over. (Our system has auxilliary controls to override this, but they're rarely used...)

--jhawk

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 10-25-2002, 02:23 PM:

I like changeover booths that have, in addition to normal changeover buttons, an "all close" button for ending the show. Of course having remote faders with a mute button at each projector would be nice too; that would eliminate a need for separate picture and sound changeovers per se.

John,
As for how you manage without a footpedal speed control? Not easily. It certainly sucks but manufacturers don't seem to pay attention to real-world conditions.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-25-2002, 02:51 PM:

Booth layout and equipment choices tend to be uniform among particular chains. Big/loyal customers can sometimes negotiate favorable deals, discounts and terms. Consistency makes training easier, and requires less spare parts inventory. Mergers and acquistions complicate things (e.g., Regal/Edwards/UA and AMC/GCC).

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: here

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-25-2002, 04:06 PM:

quote:
Why would you ever want to design a system that let you changeover sound and picture independantly? That seems like asking for trouble!

With separate controls for picture (foot pedal) and sound (pushbutton) the operator has the option to take advantage of the audio pull-up and switch over to the incoming track a few seconds ahead of engaging picture on the new projector. It's based on an old editing trick: Edits are more noticeable when picture and sound are both cut together.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-25-2002, 04:31 PM:

In reference to the original question, Jon and John have really hit the nail on the head on point #1. Let's say you have a large chain. If you were to change your equipment with every location, your techs would have to be trained in on a lot more equipment and the option of running down the highway to the next theater in the chain to borrow a part would be out of the question. An excellent example of this is Cinemark. For YEARS they bought Simplex projectors, CFS consoles and SPECO platters. It would have been effortless for them to upgrade that CFS decision by purchasing Strong consoles with those Simplex projectors, but they never did (except in the locations nearby the Strong plant). They did have a year or two where they tinkered around with other options like Century projectors and Eprad platters, etc. In the end, they ended up putting in an all-Christie package, which they still use today. Maybe after a few years they will change to Kinoton, or Strong. Who knows, but whatever it is it will certainly be across the board.

Point #2 The other thing I have noticed is that if a given dealer/service company is comfortable with a certain set of equipment, they will put it in every time and for those customers that are not convinced, they will do their damndest to convince them. This makes things easier on their techs because they generally only have to deal with one kind of setup and it gets them better profit margins as they give all of their business to one manufacturer of cinema equipment. Plus, certain brands of equipment (like Strong inparticular) in their pre-wire status makes installation a joke. The installation tech has almost nothing to do, so they can get in and out of there and still collect lots of money. So in this form, if there is a company X that covers most of Maine and they love Strong equipment, you will find Strong equipment all throughout Maine, whether it is the best equipment for the particular job or not.

To the other John, you are still using a rewind with a brake? Get yourself a Kelmar RTV series rewind bench and do it right. Improper braking can damage film.

I think we have more Johns on this forum than Scotts.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-25-2002, 06:10 PM:

John, I've used the three position 'paddle' in about three different ways.

1. Tube amplifier, paddle at each projector is connected by a long steel rod that runs through the amp and through a single three position switch. The switch switches between (a) right proj solar cell, (b) shorted to mute amp, (c) left proj solar cell. This is probably my most favorite changeover setup (can't beat the tube amp).

2. Using a digital processor and the same switch setup as above with rod, etc. removed from old tube amp. This time the switch is wired (changeover latched, not pulsed) (a) right proj circuit closed, (b) mute circuit closed or unused depending on processor, (c) left proj circuit closed.

3. Using a digital processor or tube amp or anything else. Three positon switch (or two pos. with no muteing - either right or left) wired to a bunch of relays or transistors that either pulse or latch the processor or switch the solar cell outputs.

With the third setup the switch is always being thrown in the opposite direction as last time, whereas the first 2 the switch is always up/right, middle/mute, down/left.

If there's an error, you simply don't open the hand douser until you know you're going to have a picture to show. This way you don't have to switch over before you can close the c/o shutter and mute the sound.

Also most c/o shutter buttons I've used around here are mounted in the pedastal, with the sound c/o to your right on the wall or amp. Motor switches seem to vary from pedestal mounted to wall mounted. I've only seen one c/o shutter foot switch at a drive-in (Elmvale, Ont. I think - which has nice comfy chairs to sit in and do the c/o).

As for equipment, from the Cineplex Odeon multiplexes (in Canada) that I've seen, they like (liked) to use Strong A3 platters and Cinemeccanica V5's. For sound they usually have a mix of DTS, SDDS and Dolby.

Having the same equipment throughout a chain might also indicate to head office a theatre that has more problems than they should, possibly due to inexperienced operators, etc., rather than 'I guess they got the bad brand of equipment'.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-25-2002, 07:28 PM:

Personally, I've always preferred separate picture and sound changeovers...that has the most flexibility. However, I find that I install mostly linked picture and sound changeovers. In fact, we have made custom boards to do just that with certain projectors that are not as friendly to the concept.

Around here, footpedals were the preferred method of picture changeover by a long shot. Nowadays, I tend to use toggle switches (on)-off-(on) to allow switching to ether projector from either projector for those systems that use the traditional zipper/kelmar style of changeover.

Steve

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

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-25-2002, 07:53 PM:

In the Zipporama screening room that no longer exists (pics in the warehouse), the installer used "designer" wall switches...the kind that you only push about 1/8 of an inch and the switch itself is about an inch wide by 3 inches tall. At first I didn't like the idea, but after thinking about it, that sort of switch can make things more exacting on the changeover. The time it takes to throw a conventional switch can easily pass another frame in the gate, whereas these switches would be about as instant as possible.

Of course the WEIRD part about that installation was that the "changeovers" were accomplished by turning the xenons on and off simultaneously. Basically the installer took the safety interlock switch and cross wired them across two switches placed side by side. The contactor was latched on both rectifiers and when the switches were thrown, the ignitor zapped the incoming lamphouse and the safety switch killed the exiting lamphouse. There were no dousers.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-25-2002, 09:51 PM:

Brad: how would that even work? What about the time it takes for the lamp to strike? And why would you want to re-strike the lamps every 20 minutes? Seems like a waste....

I much prefer to have separate controls for picture and sound changeover; it's very useful when, for example, a print arrives without original head and tail leaders, where one would want to change the picture just under a second before the sound in order to avoid a drop to silence. It's also useful for films which have walk-in/walk-out music. Unfortunately, pretty much every booth around here uses a single control for both. But this is really a different topic.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-25-2002, 10:43 PM:

Note that I never said I thought it was a good idea to continually strike the lamps like that. Amazingly enough, the changeovers were pretty close to seamless.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-25-2002, 11:58 PM:

Ah, the Kelmar RTV series. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that place the reels and the film over the side of the bench? I suppose that's necessary with larger than 2000' reels, but it sure seems inconvenient.

It looks like you have to drag the film at an odd angle to splice (or holder the splicer over air). And I can't imagine how you'd run the film through a frame counter.

Or does the table extend out in the middle?

--jhawk

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 10-26-2002, 12:28 AM:

The RTV is probably the smoothest and easiest to work on bench out there

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-26-2002, 12:32 AM:

Just use one some day. You will love it. You will never want to work with a table that doesn't have reels hanging over the front again.

The frame counter sits on the edge of the table with a special bracket so you don't have to hold it steady.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-26-2002, 12:48 AM:

A roll of 1/2" tape underneath the counter base will support the counter too. Although a bracket would be nice.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-26-2002, 01:54 AM:

I miss the Kelmar table from my California days. That tension roller was useful for rewinding trailers.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-26-2002, 11:00 AM:

Hmm, I'll certainly give one a try the next time I have the option, though I think that there are plenty of other things to spend money on before a new rewind.

Manny, for putting trailers on 1" cores, we use a vertical tightwind attachment on our HFC PR-1A rewind. It's basically a piece of 1" brass bar-stock bolted to the rewinder (between the reel and the body) that sticks straight up, and then a roller attaches to the top. I think there's a picture in the Christy's Editorial catalog.

Anyhow, even if you have a non-HFC rewind, you could probably add a similar attachment easily.

--jhawk

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 10-26-2002, 12:03 PM:

John, that setup is standard for an editing room or a dailies booth, not very commonly seen in a theatre booth. I have one for my location dailies projection package.

I can't imagine changing over by striking the xenon. Besides the wear there is often some instability at first. I usually leave my lamps on if they will be used again within 45 min to an hour. Often that means they stay on all day.

Posted by Gordon Bachlund (Member # 124) on 10-26-2002, 12:08 PM:

Daryl's description of a "paddle" sound changeover brought back pleasant memories.

In the Los Angeles area, every booth I worked in the 1950s and early 1960s had either some form of "paddle" sound changeover arrangement utilizing a horizontal control rod mechanically linking each projector position to a sound control box on the wall (that functioned as Daryl described except that we used photoelectric tubes back then), or a separate sound control box at each projector position. Most booths had an electrical wireway continuous across the front wall equipped, at each projector station, with three-way motor switches for each projector, a changeover pushbutton station (press the upper white button to open the adjacent projector's electric dowser and close the other projector's electric dowser, or press the bottom black button to do the reverse), along with curtain motor switches and curtain warmer and house light dimmer control switches. Of course, a few older houses had rheostatic dimmers above the booth ceiling, with dimmer operating handles at each projector position lined up above the observation ports.

The biggest challenge in those days was to seamlessly intregrate the non-synch music source.

I never even knew about changeover foot pedal switches until some years back when Frank Angel posted pictures of one of his large outdoor park screening set-ups. Then, when I bought a DVD of "The Projectionist," there was Chuck McCann stomping on a footpedal to effect the changeover!

This is certainly an example of "booth regionalism."

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 10-26-2002, 12:18 PM:

>>>>Then again you could do what the owner of the D/I, that I run at one night a summer, does. Thread up on the picture, hit the motor 7 seconds after the motor que and immediately do the changeover. Boy do I hate that. He claims that you see the countdown if you thread up on the numbers.<<<<<

The simple solution to this is to use the manual dowser on the lamphouse, if it has one that works, to dows the light. Then open it after the numbers go thru for the picture change over.

At one point when Cinemark was changing over to a new booth package. they wanted it to be Christie consoles, simpl;ex projectors and I belive Christie platters. But christie would not cut them any breaks in price unless they bought the full package.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 10-26-2002, 05:11 PM:

Gordon B., there are still two booths that I occassionally run in that use photoelectric tubes. One of the booths even have a rotating exciter lamp holder that holds two lamps so that you can just 'spin' to the spare when the one you're using goes out.

Darryl, that's exactly how I do changeovers. I think he's just imagining seeing the numbers. He claims that customers complain about seeing them at the indoor theatre that his brother owns all the time. Thing is I worked at that theatre at least 6, usually 7 nights a week for a solid 7 years and never had one complaint (or ever saw them myself). I think the real reason he did it was to avoid showing the numbers after missing a changeover while falling asleep during a four feature.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-27-2002, 03:08 PM:

Seems that years ago, separate picture and sound change-overs were most common; when I first started working I never saw a booth that had a single change-over switch. Nowadays it seems that single button change-overs are the norm.

As pointed out, independent pic and sound change-over afford flexibility; for subrun and retrospective operations, this is not a convenience but a real must. I can't count the number of prints that have had the last word or the final chord of music living on the very last few seconds of the outgoing reel. If you make a change-over with picture and sound locked together, you have only two choices, both unacceptable. Either you make the change-over at the last frame of the picture so the image change-over on the screen is seamless and thus miss that last very important second of sound on the outgoing soundtrack, or you allow that sound to play and allow the screen to go black. On the other hand, if you have the ability to make independent change-over for picture and sound, then you can make the picture change-over and wait for the last second of sound to play before you make the sound change-over. This becomes a real presentation issue in retrospective houses that get prints where years of make-up and breakdown have chewed up countless frames and the tails and heads. In the custom change-over switching configuration in our Whitman Theatre, it is selectable -- you can choose to have pix and sound switch 1) simultaniously by the footswitch, 2) independently by footswitch and pushbutton or 3) simultanious and automatically by a timer that times out the 9.5 seconds after the motor switch is activated.

In the one theatre where I work that had a single change-over switch, I broke it apart and added a separate switch for sound. Also added a "kill" switch that will allow both picture and sound on both projectors to shut off in case of a missed cue. The way the original switching originally was set up, all you could do was switch back to the outgoing projector, which of course was playing leader gack. A kill switch allows the projectionist to kill everything until the incoming projector had passed leader and was at picture (also allowing him wipe a bit of that egg off his face).

Frank

Posted by Wes Hughes (Member # 981) on 10-27-2002, 05:11 PM:

Frank: A changeover house that I work in occasionally has something like the "kill switch" you describe. It is definitely rigged and upon inspection one night I can see how they made it work. The original changeover was of the two button type that someone mentioned earlier in this thread (there still is a white and black button and each button would make the changeover in a different direction with a sound control rod although the rod is no longer used). As it is today the top button make a simultaneous picture/sound changeover and the bottom button "kills" both machines. It is somewhat dodgey, but works well. It actually sends a constant close pulse to both zippers and opens an added sound relay as long as you hold the button closed. When you are satisfied with resuming normal projection you open the button and the sound automatically comes back on and you have to re-press the changeover switch. It works very well when you need a couple seconds more than you thought for your changeover.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-28-2002, 02:23 AM:

Hey, Wess, every little bit helps.

I would love a foot pedal for the Kelmar rewind instead of the hand operated speed control. Anyone know if Kelmar makes a conversion kit of some kind so a foot pedal controller can be retrofited on their standard control unit?

Frank

Posted by Wes Hughes (Member # 981) on 10-28-2002, 10:14 PM:

never heard of one ???