Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Roach damages print

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 12-31-2008, 09:00 PM:

A suicide cockroach flew on to the platter and was crushed between folm layers. I broke the print down to that point to discover that roach juice eats folm emulsion, at least 2 frames in this case. No idea how a roach would bother getting up to the projection box in the first place.
The last time an insect upset a print it was a moth that flew into the gate and stuck there for all the audience to see. Had to stop, unlace and clean the film path before continuing.
We get different kinds of bugs with digital.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-01-2009, 09:52 AM:

Moths in the gate were a common problem when I worked a summer at a drive-in theater many years ago. There were blowers to keep them from landing on the port windows, but nothing to keep them from flying into booth and the projector mechanism.
The booth was un-air conditioned so for most of the summer I had to run shows with the booth door open.

It was real fun to occasionally swing open the lamphouse cover. Dozens of moths would, fly right into the carbon arc lamphouse & get instantly incinerated.

Ok, so maybe 'fun' isn't the right way to describe it, but it was interesting to see how they'd all make a bee-line for that bright light. I used to joke that we could probably clear the entire lot of moths for the evening if we just left the lamphouse doors open for 5 or 10 min before each show.

But if we did that, I'd also have to spend another 10 min or more cleaning fried moth-guts off the reflectors.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 01-01-2009, 09:46 PM:

There's nothin worse than layer after layer of moths and baked oil or a shutter housing corner full of oil saturated moths! Clearly... I've rebuilt way too many D.I. machines [puke]

.

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-01-2009, 10:53 PM:

Or the prerequiste bee in the exciter lamp compartment and in the lamphouse!

Posted by Jeremiah Teague (Member # 5052) on 01-02-2009, 04:34 AM:

Several years ago we were trying to start a movie that would play for about 2-3 seconds and then the would stop. We checked the rollers, the platters, the take-up arms and couldn't figure it out... until we saw the wing of a moth in the fail safe between the film and a roller... I hate moths

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 01-02-2009, 02:28 PM:

A suicide cricket (Los Banos has a plague-like cricket conditions in mid-to-late summer) brain wrapped Terminator 3 I believe it was.

Found more than one in the centerfeeds, dont' know why they get up there.

Used to have to spray once a week or so to keep them from getting into the auditoriums and on the screens/customers...not a good time!

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 01-02-2009, 03:14 PM:

I lived in Madera and yeah, the crickets and bugs were thick.. [Smile]

Dominic, I used to work at the MX races at the faairgrounds there.. [Smile]

Posted by Robert LaValley (Member # 4319) on 01-04-2009, 04:07 AM:

found a mouse inside a cinemecanica head once. Wasn't pretty after the motor was turned on. [puke]

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 01-04-2009, 11:59 AM:

Acccch! Wimps!

Looks like it takes a real He-Man to run a drive-in booth! Moths are nothing. One year, I found that a family of chipmunks had built a nest behind the reflector of one of my old X-60s. They'd spent the week, pulling insulation out of the exhaust ducting. I have no idea how they managed not to get burned up in the lamphouse, or chewed up by the fan, but somehow they did.

Eviction day was pretty interesting. I had them running everywhere when I opened the box up!

Note so self... screens on the exhaust fans!

Posted by Richard B. Perrine (Member # 409) on 01-04-2009, 01:15 PM:

I'll throw out 2 stories here from Ohio.

I had a junebug fry into the booth at the drive-in. running E-7's with a Kelmar arm on the top and no fire-valve assembly. The junebug flew around landed on the top of the head and fell into the film gate....one layer of estar and junebug will not go threw the gate.

The other....we had a theater that ran parttime from Sept to May. A locally owned Department store owned the theater...and ran it for the Kid's in town when the weather got bad in the fall and winter months.

I went in to power it up and check the machines....and kept hearing the pigeons...which i figured were just outside the booth window...I cleaned the 2nd machine....checking the oil levels and cleaning the carbon soot out of a Ashcraft Superex lamp.....When I opened the the other lamphouse....staring at me was a nesting pigeon.
So I went downstairs and call our BA, expaining to him that I couldn't run the machines as long as the pigeon continued to nest in the lamphouse. He screammed at me and sent me home, later calling me back after the pigeon was removed.

Also at this theater I learned that when the screw on the front set of elements of a Super Panatar is loose....it is possible that when doing the change-over to R-2 of a Scope film.....the picture can actually go out the port and be completely projected on the right side wall of the theater.

Rich Perrine
Akron, Ohio

Posted by Allison Parsons (Member # 2728) on 01-04-2009, 02:24 PM:

A question to the drive-in workers:

When running the films at night, do you have bugs drawn to the light coming from the window in the booth? If so, how do you combat their shadows fluttering on the screen if they get to close?

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 01-04-2009, 03:43 PM:

Some had fans on the port glass to keep 'em off...others didn't and just had huge shadows of moths on the screen. [Eek!]

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 01-05-2009, 11:27 AM:

Alison, John has it right. Fans. At my theatre, I have NO glass at all in my projection port windows. The picture image shoots thru a fan-forced curtain of air. The CFM's of the fan are strong enough to keep the critters out, and it does a pretty good job of keeping rain out too.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 01-05-2009, 03:13 PM:

Hey Barry,

Is that your invention or something common over there for DI's? It's a great idea. [thumbsup]

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-06-2009, 07:19 AM:

At our park "Walk-In," we have standard Hurley 60ft screen that rolls up into a truss in our Band Shell fly system. How the critters got up there is the mystery, but squirrels seem to like the taste of Hurley gain screen material and they ate about a 10 inch by 6 inch hole in the top corner of the screen. After we had to patch it, we had to attach rat glue traps along the truss to prevent them from walking along it and also on the aircraft cable supports so they can't climb down the cables. A real pain.

They had also gotten into the projection tower and eaten thru one of the gallon jugs of film cleaner -- what they wanted that for is beyond me, but I discovered it when I went to pour some into a smaller container and a gush of liquid cleaner poured out from a sizable chewed hole near the handle.

On another day I was in the booth preparing for the evening show and found that the rewind table was not powered, so the first thing I did was to check if somehow the plug had gotten pulled out of the AC power strip. The strip was mounted behind one of the table legs so I had to reach blindly around and just feel for the cable, running my hand down its length to the plug....until my fingers came upon bare copper where a squirrel had chewed away the insulation and left both hot and neutral wires exposed. The power was one at the time. My scream could be heard across the lake.

We've since gotten a few of those pest control devices that you plug in and they emit high frequency noise which supposedly drives away rats and mice (and we are assuming, squirrels which are just rats with bushy tails). No idea if these do anything as I heard once that they are a total scam in the first place and don't really do anything to keep away mice. I think it was Consumer Reports that did the test and turned one of them on in a box of nesting mice. The mice were inches away from a unit and when they turned on the power to it, the mice didn't even move. Finally one got up and actually wet over to the unit, sniffing it seemingly to satisfy it's curiosity.

"The trouble with trouble shooting is, sometimes the trouble shoots back."

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 01-06-2009, 09:19 AM:

John... That one is not one of my inventions. I pulled that off the wall at the old Woodzo Drive-In Theatre up in Newport, Tennessee about 8-9 years ago when we bought all of their booth equipment.

However... I am actually in the midst of making one right now for my other booth. Because the projector in the other booth shoots out of the window at a 23 degree angle, I couldn't use the other blower like I have in the picture above. The 23 degree angle puts the projector in a position where I wouldn't be able to remove my scope lens if I had the box shaped funnel mounted on the wall. The one I'm building is actually flat, but still has a forced fan blower. My blower unit from Grainger arrived yesterday, so I probably won't be able to put it all together and test it until the weekend.

I'll take photos and post them.

Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 01-19-2009, 01:11 PM:

Here are the photos of the new projection port blower I built last weekend. I've mounted it, tested it, and it actually works very well.

This is the mounting plate temporarily fixed to the inside wall to check for image clearance.

This is a photo of the mounting plate with the Grainger blower attached. The blower is rated at 148CFM

This is a photo of the back side that will face the outside. I made a hood out of sheet metal to direct the airflow directly in front of the hole where the projection beam comes out. You probably can't see it in the picture, but there is also a bugscreen sandwhiched between the sheet metal and the blower to keep critters out during the day. The exposed plywood shown will be on the inside wall and won't be exposed to the elements.
Only the black sheet metal square will show from the outside.

This is a shot of the finished product mounted in place.

Same shot, just a little further back showing the relation of the projection port to the projectionist view window.

I've probably got less than $100 in it, excluding my time. The most expensive part was of course the blower from grainger - which was about $70 +/-. I got the sheet metal at Loews in the Heating and Air section, and the plywood I already had in the garage.

[ 01-19-2009, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: Barry Floyd ]

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 01-19-2009, 03:36 PM:

Nice job, Barry.

quote: Barry Floyd
but there is also a bugscreen sandwhiched between the sheet metal and the blower to keep critters out during the day

Extend it across the porthole...it'll make folks believe you've gone digital. [thumbsup]