Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: NPR "The Waning Art of the Projectionist"

This is topic NPR "The Waning Art of the Projectionist" in forum Film-Yak 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=8;t=006767

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-11-2012, 09:23 PM:

Some very cool pictures and a short article

And just the picture gallery

Nice little article and some good pictures. Projection booths with character. There are two pics in the article and you can click thru them without having to go to the second link.

Sure wish we could archive these pictures in the warehouse (well I guess we COULD, but the photog might get mad).

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 11-12-2012, 12:51 PM:

I followed both links and found that the second one contains more photos presented as gallery art. Joseph Holmes displays his artistry in his sense of color, composition, lighting and the posing of his subjects to create a wistful sense of nostalgia,
In the left column of his Gallery site, he lists links to his other portfolios. I'm happy that a sensitive artist finds our craft, ourselves and our humble workplaces the subject of his art, presented in gallery form for for all to enjoy.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 11-12-2012, 02:56 PM:

These photos bring back (bad) memories of the booths I started working in. They were dingy, dirty booths at a multiplex we nicknamed "The Bunker" because it was just so shabby. I could never work as a projectionist in that kind of environment again.

As usual, though, I fully expect that the die-hard film enthusiasts will find themselves in love with the "warmth," "charm," or "personality" of these booths.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-12-2012, 06:43 PM:

Well I'm not a die-hard film enthusiast but I still think those pictures are warm, charming and filled with personality.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-12-2012, 07:09 PM:

Might have to post some picts of booths that I've worked in in my 40 plus years in the industry..

I've worked in booths were the floor was wooden, and had keep an eye on keeping the machines level since they would settle on a continual basis. When I started there, the picture on the screen actually had a list (left and right had their own list), and I leveled both machines where the picture was square on the screen. The owner didn't even notice the listing, but it really bothered me. We didn't even have a rewind machine. Had to rewind the reels on the reelcranks on the bench. those SuperSimplex were in real bad condition with bad hooking INT sprockets. We did get two new sprockets in and I rebuilt both assemblies since the Super INT used taper pins for sprocket replacement.

One was a decent sized house with the most dirtist booth around. Didn't take me long to clean that booth up, painted it and we knocked the one common wall out that went to the ajoining storage room to make a personal viewing room. We repainted and laid down new carpet in that room where it was a nice private screening room. I even added a good speaker above the window for our sound. The owner/manager of that location was pleased with the results that I did in this conversion (had his permission to do this..) and he would invite guests with him to watch movies while I ran the booth containing Strong Moguls, Simplex E-7's and Westrex 206 soundheads.

The most elaborate booth I've ever seen was at the now gone Centre Theatre downtown SLC. A large room with Dolby units and amplifiers on the back wall with two Bauer U2's with STRONG Futura II's 13.6mm carbon arc units behind them. To the left of No.1 Bauer was the film workbench and storage bins for the reels.

To the right of No. 2 Bauer, was an actual sunken living room, fully carpeted with two sofas, pole reading lamps, end tables, coffee table, console TV set and a full kitchen set on the same floor level as the machines in the corner of this living room area. The bathroom, off to the side was a 3/4 bath with full shower.

Obviously, this was an union booth were the operators were definitely assigned to remain upstairs at the entire time for their shift. This booth was immaculately clean and in perfect condition.

My booth where I was Chief Projectionist, was also fully carpeted (I kept this booth clean like my living room in my house), had two overstuffed padded arm chairs and fully contained, but had a hotplate and small fridge for lunch making. But, I also had the comfort of having "room service"-I would get on the 'intercom' to call up the concessions and had food/snacks delivered up to the booth since I wasn't allowed to leave the booth while on shift.

Fun days those were ..... - Monte

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-12-2012, 07:14 PM:

I don't care for the photographer's style. He's obviously a big fan of people being in his images, but each image a person was in was far less interesting than the ones they weren't in. This is probably because most were just sitting there like dumbasses having absolutely nothing to do with anything. Kind of like placing a flower in the middle of the booth, taking a picture and then calling it "art". No artistic skill required.

Posted by Brian Rene Pattison (Member # 3652) on 11-12-2012, 07:24 PM:

I have to admit that I miss the days of working an old single screen. The ones I miss the most are the Mt. Clemens Drive In, and the Capri. The Capri was a horrid old booth, poor exhust (I smelled like I was a pack a day smoker when the shift was over), Motiograph AA's, Brenkert Enarc lamps, and a simplex sound system that only had the bass working. This was fine as it was a triple x in the early 80's. What I miss the most was the actual craft involved, manual change overs and trimming carbons. Later spending 14 years in management at multiplexes with platters I found that I missed performing the craft of being a projectionist. I would still like to do that kind of theater work today as opposed to threading it up, pushing a button, and walking away for two hours.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-12-2012, 09:52 PM:

I'm kind of with Manny as far as not really wanting to work in grungy booths any more, but is there anyone here who hasn't worked in such a place at one point, and is now a better operator as a result of that experience?

Anyway, for me, there is a difference between "dirty" (ugh) and cluttered/disorganized booths. The latter is not really a problem (and can be good if the part that you need is somewhere in the junk pile), but dirty booths are just death to film in most cases.

My current pet peeve is projection booths which lack an adequate stock of spare parts (which, for me, is fairly extensive). I realize that this stuff costs money while sitting on the shelf and not generating revenue, but having the right parts on hand to save a show is extremely critical. No one wants to tell the audience to go home and come back the next day, nor should this ever be necessary due to equipment failures.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-13-2012, 12:30 AM:

quote: Scott Norwood
Anyway, for me, there is a difference between "dirty" (ugh) and cluttered/disorganized booths.

True. Our booth was always grungy, but it's always pretty clean. All the money goes into the stuff people can see, so that's why the booth has the "on sale" paint and the concrete floor! [Big Grin]

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 11-13-2012, 02:06 AM:

I did not see one picture of the guys who pioneered this field: the two projector, change-over operators. My father started with a hand-cranked projector suspended from the ceiling in a 6x8 "sweatbox" in 1916. He moved to the two projector system when they motorized projectors. I followed in his footsteps in 1950 and moved to platters in 2004.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 11-13-2012, 10:06 AM:

Joe, you complain that most of the gallery pictures show the projectionists just sitting. But for my first decade as operator (1970-1980) most of my time in 3-projector, single screen booths was coping with boredom, and even in my latter years (I retired in 1994) when working singles.

Besides reading books, newspapers and magazines, I wove a purse for my daughter, painted the booth, repaired appliances, etc.
Other operators did water color and oil painting, macrame, sewing and hobby crafts.

Now it seems that intervals between changeovers, after tending to focus, carbon arcs, cleaning and lubricating the machines,
makeup and breakdown of shows and eating meals, would leave zero time for sitting, but in fact those intervals seemed leisurely at the time. To keep from climbing walls, I made chains from heavy gauge generator wire with a hack saw and vise,
which still support my bird feeders today. When I "upgraded" to
working a 14-plex alone, (replacement shifts) the relativity of time shifted somewhat, and I donned rollerskates.

So I feel showing projectionists in repose captures one essential aspect of life as it used to be lived
by some projectionists.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 11-13-2012, 02:20 PM:

Boy, you hit it on the head Gerald. My many years in the booth were spent in changeover single screeners and 3 and 4 plexs. Got a great deal done between reel changes, including taking a correspondence course from Cleveland Institute of Electronics, building the occasional HeathKit and catching up on my reading. Went off the screen exactly once in all that time (which was one too many times, but still not bad for 14 years).

I enjoyed these pictures, but they reminded me of an old pet peeve: I always disliked working in booths where the walls were covered in old one-sheets and lobby cards, especially in older theaters. I know that's a big decorating motif with some guys, try to turn the booth into a personal rec room, but it always thought that more than one or two was shoddy looking. This one guy used to shellac them to the rear blow-out wall in his booth, they must have been a half-inch deep at one point. This was long into the safety-film era, but I still thought it was a fire hazard.

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 11-13-2012, 02:38 PM:

I don't mind clutter as long as it's clean, well-organized clutter.

I just feel bad for the projectionists who have to work with such antiquated equipment like that Strong automation box in Picture 16. I still have nightmares about that effing blue piece of shiite.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-13-2012, 03:04 PM:

Umm...you do realize that there are theatres that still do not have any automation at all...right?

I find the suggestion that a fairly modern automation system could be "antiquated" to be rather amusing, actually. The product may indeed suck (I haven't worked with it), but it is not antiquated.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-13-2012, 03:08 PM:

Clutter vs organization is in the eye of the beholder. My office is cluttered; to anyone else it looks like Hurricane Sandy just went through, but I know exactly where everything is in there.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 11-13-2012, 03:48 PM:

Thoroughly enjoyed this thread and those pictures. Would rather be there though!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-13-2012, 05:54 PM:

quote: Gerard
Joe, you complain that most of the gallery pictures show the projectionists just sitting. But for my first decade as operator (1970-1980) most of my time in 3-projector, single screen booths was coping with boredom, and even in my latter years (I retired in 1994) when working singles.

...

So I feel showing projectionists in repose captures one essential aspect of life as it used to be lived
by some projectionists.

The problem is that most of the people in the pictures are just sitting there, staring at nothing. One guy is even sitting in a lounge chair with a TV remote. Another guy is staring at the ceiling. Then there is an assistant manager squatting for whatever reason. And a girl hiding underneath a workbench. Another girl sitting in the middle of the booth for no reason or purpose. Another guy is staring at the floor. None of these pictures I just listed reflects any sane booth employee. The photographer pretty much sucks. But I'm sure he thinks it is "art". The only ones he does somewhat decently on are where the people are actually working with film or equipment. That's far more interesting that seeing someone staring at the ceiling or hiding under a workbench.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-13-2012, 05:59 PM:

You've never met an operator who spends most of his shift watching TV while sitting in a lounge chair? (OK, that's not really "sane" for anyone who wants to keep the job (unless he is screening something on video and watching it on the monitor in the booth), but it happens all the time.)

I'll give you that the girl sitting under the rewind table makes no sense. Although the guy staring at the floor does. Haven't you ever been bored out of your mind at the end of a shift (when all of the reading material that you brought has been exhausted) and eager to go home and go to bed? Although that picture would have made more sense if there had been film running on the projector.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-13-2012, 08:18 PM:

The girl sitting under the bench, I thought maybe her dad was the projectionist and it was "Take Your Daughter to Work Day."

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 5226) on 11-13-2012, 10:34 PM:

Interesting, [Roll Eyes]

although I am totally lost as what the meaning of the photo of the girl sitting under the bench is all about. [Confused]

Quote. "For years Holmes has photographed the places where people are most productive", hu.... they dont look very productive to me.

Its a pity those folk were "posed" like that, it might be alright for their own personel record, but thats about it.

If he "the photographer" wanted to capture an image of a dying art, then he should have shown them threading the projector, inspecting film, projecting film, and so on....basically doing something, that would be a far more interesting record for "others to look at".

As its shown, it might look to an outsider that projectionist do nothing except "dream into space" which is a very misleading statement in my view.

Graham.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 11-14-2012, 01:34 AM:

The problem with the projectionist's job is that it is either feast or famine. Either you are working or you are not. There is little in between.

The projectionist threads the machines, starts the movies and monitors their progress but, once they are running, they need very little attention. Only an occasional check every 20 minutes.

As mentioned above, even a changeover operator isn't hustling all the time.

Most people don't understand the work a projectionist does, even if they understand how projectors work. They don't understand the scope of the job and the level of responsibility involved.

The projectionist's job isn't simply to thread a projector and press a few buttons. His job is to make sure the movie plays correctly at all times. That means he has to be critical of, not only the way his machine(s) operate but the quality of the picture and the sound in the auditorium.

Small adjustments or maladjustments can make a huge difference in the quality of the presentation. There are a thousand tiny details that have to be attended to in order to make things work the way they are supposed to. Any one of these details isn't hard, by themselves. I bet you could take any competent car mechanic and teach him how to be a good projectionist but it is not simply mechanical knowledge that makes a good projectionist. It is the ability to pay attention to many details at once and to know how to keep everything working the way it should.

If the projectionist does his job right, nobody notices but, if something goes wrong, he's the first to get blamed. (Often rightfully so.) A projectionist who does his job well, often looks like he's not doing anything most of the time. That's because he doesn't have to. He did everything right in the first place.

The job is similar to a boiler tender. If he does his job right, the factory doesn't explode and all the machines have enough steam to do the work but, if he fucks up... KABOOM! Even if he doesn't blow the building up he could still end up shutting down the factory for the rest of the day.

In both jobs, the guy might spend a large portion of his work day sitting at a desk or a workbench, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar. To all the world, it looks like he's just screwing off.

People who don't comprehend the job don't understand. Many people who are don't understand the projectionist's job, who are probably incapable of doing it well, are the very same ones who try to tell us what to do and tell us how lazy we are.

The truth is that the projectionist could probably do the manager's job better than the manager could do the projectionist's job.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 11-14-2012, 07:27 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
You've never met an operator who spends most of his shift watching TV while sitting in a lounge chair?

I don't think I've ever been in a booth that had a TV that could be watched for recreational purposes.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-14-2012, 08:45 PM:

I had it nice: I could even sit down to lace up an XL. The booth that was Chief Projectionist at, the booth, being underneath the balcony, had low cut portholes.

Thus, the bases had to be cut down 6 inches so the machinery can be centered with the portholes. The lower magazine would almost touch the toekick of the base. With this adjustment, it made it easy to lace up the machine sitting down. We sat down doing changeovers and in between the two machines with all controls right there (including main, scrib curtains, lights masking, et.al.)

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 5226) on 11-15-2012, 11:26 AM:

If I had one regret and that is not taking photos of the old single screens in this city. I remember one such visit back in the 70s when the Cinerama theatre was running a series of 70mm prints, one such film was "The Mag Men in their Flying Machines".

The managers in those days were well dressed "suit and tie" and made there presence downstairs known and to greet customers arriving, anyway at the time I knew the manager and he invited me to have a look around. The first stop was the projection box and I think it was a Philips DP70, a very impressive machine and it was all ready to go, also had a interesting chat to the projectionist and during the intermission the look around continued at the screen, the kid operating the intermission slides etc. Those days of film presentation on that scale with changing coloured lights, screen curtains is long gone as with those wonderful cinemas, sadly very little record in the way of photos exist.

Graham.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 11-15-2012, 03:44 PM:

I worked a lot of jobs in Washington DC and the surrounding area in the late 60s through mid 70s. I don't recall that any of the booths were particularly filthy, but some were better than others. I do recall that many were rather cramped and not too people friendly, but that was mostly in the really old theaters. One theater was so tight that we used to say the projectionist wore the machines. The booth was on stilts in the alley and attached to the rear wall of the theater. Access was from a metal staircase at one of the exit doors.

I enjoyed viewing the photos mentioned earlier but I have to agree with Joe. If you are intending to show the dying art of projection then show the people actually doing something. It wouldn't be off base to show an operator waiting for a cue, threading up, making up a show, operating lights or trimming carbons (although the latter may be difficult to find). Those things made up the art of projection, not sitting under a rewind bench.

And yes, it did get boring. I remember one Saturday night walking in seeing the reel turning and thinking I had to unwind that thing three more times before I could go home. That was one of the last times I worked a booth.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 11-17-2012, 05:49 PM:

The least attractive booth I ever worked was accessed via a rusty iron ladder from the second balcony, through a wooden trapdoor with an iron ring and padlock. An unshielded toilet bowl stood in the center of the booth, ready for use, and the browned-with-age sheetrock walls were pierced with holes containing reused lunch bags containing copper-coated stubs of carbons too short to use,with notes saying "Don't touch--these are mine."

The complaint that the artist did not really show people working, made me think of Michaelangelo's sculpture of David.
He chose to show David, not in a hero's stance of throwing the stone that killed Goliath, but in a very relaxed posture, with
the sling draped casually over his shoulder, and a stone in one hand.
Had he been striving for realism, he would have had David wearing a tunic, or if nude, circumcised. (As the son of Jesse,
and the chosen representative of the Jewish people, he would have undergone the ritual practice in infancy.)
However the sculptor was more interested in surpassing his Greek and Roman predecessors and revealing the beauty of the
(male) human form, even if following the examples of the ancients made for artistic license.

Posted by Tony Gallimore (Member # 5358) on 11-17-2012, 10:49 PM:

Interesting pictures, Mike. One thing I noticed missing in discussing the drab dirty booths of yesteryear was the plague of burning carbons. The first two booths I worked in had no forced air exhaust system to move the carbon soot out of the lamphouses. It had to find the way out of the lamphouses on it's own, usually right into the booth. We vacuumed those things out at least once a month but it didn't really help without a draft ststem. I'm surprised more projectionists didn't come down with black lung or something. I know that soot was all over everything including your clothes, hands, mops etc. I wouldn't take anything for that experience, either! The theater was fun back then, not just running a business... we were entertainers.

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 11-17-2012, 11:33 PM:

Geeze Tony, since you are on the East coast I assume what you experienced was on the East Coast. I worked carbon arc booths from 1950 to 1971 from Southern California to Seattle and never ran into a booth that didn't have good exhaust systems. Maybe the fact that they were I.A. booths made the difference.

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 11-19-2012, 06:19 PM:

Looking at these pics and the faces of the people in them remind me of Brad Pitt's quote in Fight Club about what a "shit" job it is (something like that, been a while since I've seen it). Only like 2 or 3 of them seem happy.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 11-19-2012, 07:16 PM:

"Before the house lights go down at the movies, I find myself turning around to look up into the tiny window above the audience." One local theater has a doll head (the kind cosmetology students practice on) sitting in one of the booth windows. It was put there so kids would see it and figure someone was watching them.. so better behave.

Harold

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 11-19-2012, 08:24 PM:

Hello Harold: Back in the early 60s I worked for the SLO I.A. local at the Lompoc theatre and drive-in. I assume that local no longer exists.