Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Slate Magazine predicts the end of projectionists

This is topic Slate Magazine predicts the end of projectionists in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=010737

Posted by Cassandra Palko (Member # 5362) on 12-07-2010, 12:56 PM:

I read Slate for many articles - this is the only one I've ever seen about movie projection. It reminds me of the article recently posted from the New York Times:

Why projectionists soon will be no more

The End
Why projectionists will soon be no more.
By Grady HendrixPosted Monday, Dec. 6, 2010, at 7:12 AM ET

More people die in a movie theater than you would think. "I was at a theater and the manager came up to the booth and said there'd been four shows that day and this guy had sat through three of them. I went downstairs, sat down next to him, and sure enough, he was dead," says Joe Rivierzo, a projectionist. "I called the paramedics and told them that the man is dead, there's no question about that, and I'm going to bring the house lights up just a little and please just carry him out of the theater. So they did. No one really noticed; they just thought he was having a bad day. The show kept playing."

Rivierzo has been a projectionist for 30 years. His father was a projectionist. His grandfather was a projectionist. Between them, they've seen it all. "In the '60s there was a screening of Frankenstein. Projectionist dies right in the middle of the movie. They call one projectionist after another, saying, 'This guy's died. Can you finish the show?' and none of them want to do it. Finally they reach my father, and they don't tell him anything; they just say the guy can't finish his shift, can you fill in? My father goes up, and the guy is lying there on the floor of the booth. He knows this guy, and he has to keep stepping over his body to do the changes while they wait for the coroner to arrive. He's up there, alone in the booth, playing a horror movie and stepping over his good friend's body."

And where there's death, there's sex. Jose Ramos has been the projectionist at the Anthology Film Archives since the '90s, but his career started back in the '80s in New York City's porno houses. "I remember one time I had a break in the film," he says. "I forgot where I was and turned on the lights like I was in a normal theater. You could hear everyone screaming, because the porno houses were just about backdoor sex. At the Roxy, I used to have to do the music and the lights for the strip show and the live sex acts. It was wild times. The strippers would change clothes in my booth to get away from the tricks, and you'd get to know each other. We're all just people, regardless of our chosen profession."

But these days, stripping is thriving while projectionists have fallen on hard times. In an age when studios claim that box-office salvation will be found in new projection technology like Imax and 3-D, projectionists themselves are facing complete and total annihilation.

Rivierzo is an executive board member of Local 306 in New York City, the last uncombined projectionists union in the country. At the height of its power in the '40s and '50s, it had 3,000 members. These days, it's down to 400, and that number's dropping fast, which makes no sense because currently there are more theater screens in the United States than at any other point in history.

But nowhere is technology eliminating the need for human labor faster than in motion-picture projection. From the birth of cinema until the 1960s, the system was the same: Every projection booth had two reel-to-reel projectors with carbon arc light sources. The movie would start playing on one machine, and the projectionist's job was to watch for the changeover cues: usually a small circle or an X in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

"You see those cues all your life," Ramos says. "Some people know what they are, and some people don't. There's two of them: There's the machine cue, and you already have your reel threaded up to seven or eight on the countdown reel, and when you see the first one, you hit the switch and the second machine starts to run, and when you see the second cue, you step on the pedal or flip a switch, and this projector shuts down and that one starts up. If you do it smooth, it's seamless; if you do it wrong, it f---s up."

Getting a lamp that was bright enough to throw a projected image onto a screen hundreds of feet away was a huge problem, and the first solution was the carbon arc. Two carbon electrodes are brought together, they touch and are then pulled apart, creating a brightly burning arc. The strong, steady light would bounce off a reflector and toward the lens.

"You had to keep them a certain distance from each other," Ramos says. "There were mechanisms in there that moved the rods, but they weren't always reliable because a lot of these machines were really old. The bigger theaters had thicker arcs, and the smaller ones had smaller arcs, and we would monitor it. All the theaters had two lines drawn on the ceiling because the reflection would hit the ceiling, too, and when you saw that the light was going off the ceiling lines, you would have to adjust it."

Then, in the late '60s, projectors started switching to xenon bulbs. These were expensive, sometimes running up to $1,000 each, but they provided a strong, steady light source that didn't need to be monitored. And for Rivierzo, this was the beginning of the end.

"Most guys will say the problems started with platters, but I would argue it was xenon bulbs. Before that, it was a reel-to-reel system, and it was labor intensive because you had to change the film every 20 minutes, and you had to change the carbon. Once they were able to get over that hurdle and get a dependable, inexpensive bright white light, they could come up with a system to feed the film forever."

And they did. Platters appeared in the mid-'70s and, suddenly, instead of two projectors showing individual 20-minute reels of film, projectionists were taking all the individual reels and building them into one monster reel that lay on its side on a spinning platter, and the entire film would feed through a single projector. Films would still have to be built—assembled from individual reels into platters—but with no need for reel changes and a consistent light source, projectionists were no longer needed to run the movies. The unions tried to hold back the inevitable, but chain theaters wanted to get away from expensive union contracts, and the first thing to go were licensing standards.

"Giuliani came in and started to change things to be more favorable to management, and we sensed it was going to be a problem," Rivierzo says. "They wanted to get rid of the projectionist license completely. We fought it at city council, and eventually what they did was water down the test so anyone could pass it."

"Before, you used to have to take a 100-question exam to become a licensed projectionist," Ramos says. "And you had to know electricity, you had to know your currents and your storage and so forth, and you also took a practical exam. But they dumbed it down to a 40-question exam, and the department of consumer affairs took over testing rather than the bureau of gas and electricity. So managers were able to get their license and run the theater, run the box office, run everything, for ten bucks an hour."

As multiplexes put mom-and-pop theaters out of business, the number of movie screens increased while the number of individual theaters decreased. For the companies running chains, movie theaters were machines designed to make money, and the biggest concession they received from the union was the ability to hire fewer projectionists.

"For a 12-screen multiplex, one projectionist will work," Ramos says. "He might get help on 'make and break day,' usually Thursday, when another projectionist comes in for about six hours and helps him build the new films and break down the old ones. But otherwise, it's just one guy. You set the timer to start the show, you set the type of sound system you have for the soundtrack, and you leave it. You walk around to make sure it's running, but with 14 screens, it's impossible to be in all of them at the same time."

To get more out of each projectionist, the chain multiplexes are standardized. Says Rivierzo, "There's automation. There's status boards that'll tell you what's running, what's down, and what has to be threaded. Most multiplexes put all their screens on one floor to make it easier for one projectionist to check them. And some theaters are laid out exactly the same, AMC theaters in particular, you can close your eyes in Chicago or New York and know exactly where you are in the house. Even the way the panels are put in; they use the same equipment."

Ironically, as movie theaters tout their state-of-the-art projection facilities, like Imax and 3-D, they no longer have the staff to ensure that the equipment is maintained. Imax and 3-D require extremely bright light sources, and when the projector bulbs start to fade, the image on the screen dims. Avatar may have cost millions to make, and it may require state-of-the-art equipment to project, but if the $1,000 bulb is old, all those expensive images will look like mud. And with fewer projectionists, there's less quality control.

"Some theaters used to change the bulb with every new show that came in," Ramos says. "But now, you have 14 bulbs, and every bulb is $700 or $800, so you're talking a good chunk. With a bulb, you get 1,500-2,000 hours of life, and there's supposed to be a procedure where you rotate them every 500 hours and make sure they don't burn up. But if I've got to work 14 theaters in a night, and I'm scheduled to come in one hour before opening, how much time do I have to do that s---? And at the end of a 12-hour day, I'm not going to walk through and rotate every bulb."

Besides union labor, the physicality of films has always been expensive. If a movie like Hot Tub Time Machine is going to open on 1,500 screens, that means that 1,500 35mm prints need to be struck, each one weighing approximately 50 pounds. They'll have to be shipped via air and ground to 1,500 different screens across the country, where 1,500 projectionists will have to unpack the five to six reels and build them onto platters. The platters will run for a week or two, then the prints will be broken down and shipped back to the studio. It's an expensive, labor-intensive system. Digital projection, on the other hand, will see films downloaded remotely to hard drives in theaters and then beamed onto screens via projectors. And that will be the end of union projectionists.

"Digital will eliminate us completely," Rivierzo says. "All you have to do is load it and play it, and a lot of this stuff can be done off-site. We have theaters now running with 35 percent of the house digital. Once they go over 51 percent running digital, and they run it that way for 90 consecutive days, they can eliminate the presence of a projectionist. Our only saving grace is they can't manufacture these digital machines fast enough."

The image of technology replacing humans used to be that of a robot arm replacing union guys on automobile production lines, but the auto unions have largely survived intact. It's projectionist unions that have been hit hardest, and these days technology and a concerted effort on the part of theater chains to eliminate union labor have resulted in the death of projection as a career.

"We had a guy call the other day looking for extra work because his daughter was diagnosed with M.S.," Rivierzo says. "He had left and opened a plumbing business and he just wanted to pick up a couple of shifts somewhere. And I said, 'Joe, there are no shifts somewhere,' and he couldn't believe it. Years ago, you could do that. A guy could come in the office and say, 'I just bought a house, and I need to get the down payment together, so can you give me a couple of days in some porno house?' And there were porno houses everywhere. We don't do that anymore."

"You're probably going to have isolated pockets—Imax, screening rooms in private homes—stuff like that. But how many guys can you have? Fifty? Twenty? We used to have over a thousand members, and there were third-generation projectionists in the union. There won't be a fourth generation or a fifth. We have a membership that's getting older, and they've been well-paid for many years, but limited in their abilities to what they've done in the projection booth. Now that guy has to go out and find a new job. It's sad. It really is."

With projectionists gone, another part of our lives will lose the human touch. During the Solidarity strikes in Poland in the early '80s, Rivierzo was working at a mom-and-pop theater and received a print for the night's show that smelled like vinegar. He began searching the reels of the innocuous Hollywood feature and found that a chunk of nitrate film stock had been spliced into middle of the film. Nitrate is an incredibly dangerous early film stock that is so flammable it will burn underwater. It is so volatile that playing it requires not only fireproof projection booths but special projectors equipped with multiple, built-in fire extinguishers. Projectionists are trained to treat it like the deadly explosive that it is, and Rivierzo, knowing it could catch the theater on fire, refused to play it.

First the manager begged and then he threatened, but Rivierzo wouldn't budge. Finally, the theater's owner showed up and promised Rivierzo that he would assume all responsibility if anything happened, but he insisted that the film be screened. Reluctantly, Rivierzo agreed, and he carefully threaded up the flammable stock. That night, the cinema hosted a private show for the owner and a crowd of Polish community leaders. The nitrate footage Rivierzo screened was some of the first film smuggled out of Poland, shot by film students on antiquated equipment, that showed police breaking up the Solidarity strikes with bullets. It was the first proof that the crackdown on the Solidarity movement was worse than anyone was being told, and that night's screening was designed to raise money from Polish expats for the cause.

The Starus NC2500S DLP is the world's brightest digital movie projector. One day it will be standard issue in many movie theaters and it can do a lot of things very well. But one thing it won't do is what Rivierzo did that night. It will be a very good projector, but it will never be a projectionist.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-07-2010, 01:15 PM:

Kinda wonder where the writer claimed that the NEC Starus 2500 is the brightest projector, which is no longer made?

Oh, the projectionists are still around, but now having to wear suits or uniforms if they want to stay in the business.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-07-2010, 01:42 PM:

Not in NYC Monte. Most of the theaters that replaced us here are using managers that have never even been in a booth before. Everything is okay as long as nothing goes wrong. When it does, they have no clue what to do. Also, who is going to maintain all this new equipment. Them?

Posted by Ian Parfrey (Member # 5122) on 12-07-2010, 02:38 PM:

Then that wont be our problem. It will be the suits problem as fewer patrons visit the cinema.

You can only dish up shit to the patrons for so long before they say 'enough'.

All hail the bottom line.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 12-07-2010, 03:38 PM:

Just a minor point, but where did they get nitrate prints of 1980's Solidarity rallies, or wasn't nitrate banned in Poland back in the '50's?

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-07-2010, 10:40 PM:

Jeff, it was a segment of nitrate, and could have been older footage of any number of protests/rallies that took place in Poland.

Not trying to be mean or discriminatory here, but just because something is banned in any "third-world" country doesn't mean the ban is enforced. I have encountered nitrate from "other" countries that was date-coded in the late 70's.

Posted by Cameron Glendinning (Member # 3516) on 12-07-2010, 10:55 PM:

I've smelled Vinegar with safty film.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-08-2010, 03:17 AM:

quote: Richard May
Also, who is going to maintain all this new equipment. Them?

Why they hire $100/hr technicians to do the servicing. May be expensive to have them there for the one day or two to do a quarterly service call, but in the long run, it's tonnage cheaper on the payroll.

..and safety was cellulose acetate based stock .. and that's where the vinegar odor comes from when the acetate content in the cellulose begins to break down and creates acetic acid.

Called "Vinegar Syndrome" and a dreaded condition with 16mm collectors..why they keep their stock in breathable containers in a temp and humidity controlled atmosphere to prevent the breakdown of the acetate content in the base.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-08-2010, 07:49 AM:

I agree Monte, but they just don't have enough technicians to cover all the screens.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-08-2010, 09:06 AM:

It's gone from being a projectionist's world to being a technician's world. Some projectionists have been able to cross the line(pun definately intended there!)and learn the technical side of DLP... but alas many of them are on exactly the same level as the theater manager and don't have a clue about computers.

Mark

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-08-2010, 09:20 AM:

Where will the next generation of technicians come from, if not projectionists? Pretty much everyone in the current generation worked as an operator at one time, and the skills required (mechanical, electrical, electronic, optical) are rather diverse for any other field.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 12-08-2010, 09:42 AM:

I'll bet you anything the projectionist was reading the print-thru from some original neg (ie. white letters) and thought that the stock was nitrate. Nitrate stock was discontinued internationally in the early '60s (as I recall, China was the last to produce it.)

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-08-2010, 01:26 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
Where will the next generation of technicians come from

Prob be the mouse clickers and computer jockeys that are interested in the digital realm.

And they'll have to attend the manufacturer's training schools to be certified to work on their units.

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 12-08-2010, 04:23 PM:

Pay no attention to another Jonathan Smith commenting on that article. No relation. . .

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 12-08-2010, 05:39 PM:

The service of digital equipment is greatly simplified although very expensive. Almost no problems are serviceable at the component level in the field.

One service method would have the technician carry all of the circuit boards for a system on the service call. Simply determine the defective board by substitution, leave the working board in the system and return all of the customers other working boards to the equipment. Send the defective board back for factory repair. The system is up and running in a minimum of time.

The technical service company has to initially buy all of the boards for replacement and the repaired boards would be returned from the factory to the service agency. Ultimately the service company buys all new boards to start with ($$$$) and then ends up with all factory repaired boards ($).

This is a very effective service technique for the customer especially when being off line is costly and there is not time to wait for the factory repair/exchange of a defective board.

This method, the "black box", is expensive for the customer as it involves the customer owning an additional "spare" unit. The "black box" technique simply has the technician swap the entire unit or module and return the defective one for repair. A second similar failure while the first unit is out for repair would make that system inoperative. Theater digital projectors are not "plug and play" so a technician is required for the swap.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-09-2010, 08:11 AM:

I have a feeling that it's not going to be as simple as that. You have certain AMC theaters that have left the lamps on all night. The manager operators I have spoke to do not do ANY kind of maintenance on the equipment now. They don't even clean the port glass. The problem right now, in NYC anyway, is there are not enough technicians to handle everything.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-09-2010, 09:30 AM:

quote: Kenneth Wuepper
One service method would have the technician carry all of the circuit boards for a system on the service call.

Thats something along the lines of whats being done today except that a "Crash Kit" is located very near to a large number of projectors... usually with in 30 minutes drive time.

Mark

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-09-2010, 12:25 PM:

Richard--it sounds as if some projectionists need to get into the service business. They would probably get a nice pay raise, as well.

This might make a nice business for someone with more skills than the average button-pusher, but without the knowledge or inclination to be a full projection and sound technician. Frequent (weekly? bi-weekly?) service calls to all-digital or mostly-digital multiplexes to serve the quality-control function that a full-time projectionist would have provided. It could involve checking light and sound on every screen, general cleaning, bulb changes, and anything else that would need to be done by on-site staff. Obviously, there would be fewer jobs for this sort of work than for full-time operators, but these jobs would probably also pay a bit better and would be more sustainable over the long term (at least as long as the theatres themselves last).

Somehow, I don't think that the usual two or three contract service calls per year will be enough for a theatre that has no one with technical knowledge on staff to serve that quality-control function. It wouldn't help to save a show in the event of equipment failure (since the technican would need to be called in), but it would help to reduce the chances of such failures.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 12-09-2010, 12:36 PM:

Scott, it is not a simple thing to become a technician. In addition to the required training on the specific hardware to be serviced, there are very few people who have the troubleshooting savvy to be a good technician.

With the rates that D-Cinema technicians will be commanding, the owners (and companies employing said tech) will have ZERO tolerance for a tech that is not quick and efficient at doing the repairs.

There are so few people who can adequately OPERATE 35mm projectors, much less repair them, so good techs are few and far between. Sadly, so are good projectionists who could make that leap.

You are quite correct that the standard two-three contract service calls a year is not enough.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-09-2010, 01:42 PM:

Uh-oh .. kinda reminds me of when a person had his CNA/CNE licence that he can go anywhere with it.

Now, wonder if every film projectionist heads off to BARCO/NEC/CHRISTIE/SONY school to be educated on these respective equipment, could we have a palor of DCI technicians?

Can you see a DCI tech carry with him a spare BARCO lamp module in his travel kit?

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-09-2010, 04:00 PM:

It's already possible for an all digital multiplex to have its shows remotely scheduled and run. I think most movie theaters will have their shows handled that way within a few years. The technical service provider will take over as the "projectionist" and manage hundreds of screens instead of the dozen or so run in the current manager/projectionist model.

In the new system the manager's only job regarding projection will be to phone the service company if something goes wrong. That may be all he can do since I can visualize the guy being locked out of the booth! With such a heavy reliance on remote operation the situation will be loads of fun when something breaks.

Naturally more staff cuts are going to occur. Remote operation of projection guarantees that. Unfortunately, the folks working the projection gear (manager, assistant manager, etc.) are often helping the limited number of floor people. More staff cuts equals fewer people to help customers. That translates to longer lines at the ticket booth and snack counter and fewer staffers to monitor what's happening in the auditoriums. And that means the situation with bad customer behavior is just going to get worse and convince more people to stay at home.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-09-2010, 04:28 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
In the new system the manager's only job regarding projection will be to phone the service company if something goes wrong

Can I add to this comment with a possible step further?:

Also, with digital, there is the factor in of networking with the addition of network switches in the console of these units. Thus, the assigned area technician can log in to each unit and bring up the operations/error log within the server and the projector to see how they are running in real time and while during off-hours operation.

Thus, that area tech can plan out his routes on a much more routine basis as a precautionary prevent mainentance practice schedule.

Granted, the manager still needs to call-in if there is an sudden problem like: start failures, display and macro failures, and the like...in which the individual location can momentarily remedy some of this issues if trained correctly, but still all of these crucial areas needs to be reported and documented.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-09-2010, 10:00 PM:

Remote monitoring is great, but it won't help track down a blown horn diaphragm, fingerprints on the lens, or a broken masking motor....

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-09-2010, 10:07 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Naturally more staff cuts are going to occur. Remote operation of projection guarantees that. Unfortunately, the folks working the projection gear (manager, assistant manager, etc.) are often helping the limited number of floor people. More staff cuts equals fewer people to help customers. That translates to longer lines at the ticket booth and snack counter and fewer staffers to monitor what's happening in the auditoriums. And that means the situation with bad customer behavior is just going to get worse and convince more people to stay at home.

If that's true, I'm surprised some company doesn't recognize that and take steps to emphasize it. "100% guaranteed GREAT presentations!" could be a marketing ploy.

The more likely thing is, though, that all this doom and gloom is misplaced. In other words it's NOT AS BAD as the negative people say it is. Sure there is the occasional botched show -- it's been that way since the beginning of time. But there are probably about 150,000 or more other presentations a day in this country alone that go off without a hitch.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-09-2010, 10:28 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
The technical service provider will take over as the "projectionist" and manage hundreds of screens instead of the dozen or so run in the current manager/projectionist model.

The possibility of a "hostage" situation is stunning.

"Nice little chain you've got there, pity if anything should happen to it>

Kinda makes the old Chicago IA look like pikers [Wink]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-09-2010, 11:03 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
Remote monitoring is great, but it won't help track down a blown horn diaphragm, fingerprints on the lens, or a broken masking motor....

I'm not convinced the folks running major movie theater chains really care about sound quality anymore. It was a bigger deal 15-20 years ago. Now it's more of an afterthought. If extra attention is paid to the sound system as a company policy matter it's now being bundled in with some over-priced "premium" auditorium showing the same 2K rendered movie, but only doing so on a bigger screen.

quote: Mike Blakesley
The more likely thing is, though, that all this doom and gloom is misplaced. In other words it's NOT AS BAD as the negative people say it is.

I'm talking about what may be possible in the future once the whole transition to digital is complete.

Audience behavior is already a really serious problem for theaters; it's by far the primary reason why I don't make as much of an effort to get to the theater as I did years ago. If theater chain executives fully remote automate the projection booths and use that to further reduce staff it will allow unruly audience members to disrupt the shows in bigger ways and do so more often.

The current situation may not be all that bad, but it's not all that great either. Presentation quality varies wildly from one theater location to the next. If it's good it's usually only because that particular site has at least a few people on the staff that give a damn about what they're doing and probably fight hard to keep the equipment maintained. If their morale is run into the ground by the higher ups they'll either stop caring or quit.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-12-2010, 07:42 AM:

Projectionists Predict The End Of Slate Magazine

The printed periodical, magazine, newspaper -- print in general -- are all quickly being replaced by digital delivery systems. People get their information digitally on the iPads and Kindles and the web, and actually prefer them to the environmentally unfriendly physical print medium. Trees are happy about this as well.

(Two can play this game). [Razz]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 12-12-2010, 10:09 AM:

Those who have bad 35mm will learn how to have bad digital. . . . .I believe this is what I said years ago when Cinemark announced its digital program.

Sadly this is now industry-wide withg only a few exceptions. Louis

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-12-2010, 10:35 AM:

How right you are, Louis. Only thing is, they won't have to do much learning in how to do digital badly....they already have a few legs up on that, given the years of practice in their 35mm-done-badly booths.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-12-2010, 12:56 PM:

Of course none of this film to digital transition has really done anything for sound issues. Theaters with crappy sound in their film setups will continue to have crappy sound with digital.

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-12-2010, 03:02 PM:

My heart bleeds!

Cineplex Odeon media guy Howard Lichtman once said during the 1996 projectionist strike that "the show will go on" in a newspaper ad in response to projectionist picketing...he was right.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-12-2010, 06:15 PM:

Funny that was a lock out not a strike

Posted by Jake Spell (Member # 5294) on 12-12-2010, 10:22 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Theaters with crappy sound in their film setups will continue to have crappy sound with digital.

I know of several Carmike locations that are all digital, with one or more houses that have mono sound and some pretty bad stories about how the Christie techs combated that problem.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-12-2010, 11:24 PM:

I wonder if those locations were loaded with SMART processors...

Posted by Jake Spell (Member # 5294) on 12-12-2010, 11:47 PM:

The theater I used to work at had block amps in the mono house which got replaced with a SMART processor once the upgraded the slit light readers to red led.

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-12-2010, 11:56 PM:

quote: Gordon McLeod
Funny that was a lock out not a strike

Yes it was a lock out indeed, my error. I still remember Angelo Marino walking around with his pager telling us that the projections are leaving the building