Special Instructions To Projectionist From Distributors

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Back in the olden days of film, we would occasionally get special instructions from the distributor stuck in the shipping cases. Sometime it was a request from the filmmaker on how to present the film, sometime on how to frame the image because they screwed up and need you to compensate, other times it was just print handling instructions.

This one is circa 1975:
mickey_msg.jpg

[Frank Cox]

I remember a few that said something like "The end of reel 3 has several seconds of black. This is intentional so do not remove it."

I've never understood why they didn't just make the changeover after the previous or next scene and avoid that issue.

[Geoff Jones]

I worked at a movie theater in the summer 1988 (though not in the booth) and we got a new flick with a TV comedy star in the lead role.

The print came with a letter from director John McTiernan that said something like: "This movie starts out loud. It's supposed to be loud. Don't turn it down."

Not expecting much, we stayed late to preview the print after hours, and were all blown away.

I wish I had held onto that letter.

Yippee Ki Yay, Motherf*cker!

[Martin McCaffery]

So, you failed to follow the final instruction and leave the notice in the shipping case?

[Mike Blakesley]

I remember the note about Twister. It was one of the first movies we played in DTS. (For you kids too young to remember, Twister was a movie about storm chasers and had several great hurricane scenes.) The note said the movie was supposed to be loud, so play it loud. I kept that note to show people in case I got any complaints, but I didn't get any.

The best part of it was, one night when we played that movie, a real storm came up during the show, complete with lightning, rain and pretty good winds. So it was really cool to watch the audience's faces as they came out of the movie and into the real storm.

[Rick Raskin]

I remember running roadshow with instructions on how long into the overture and entr'acte to begin dimming the houselights.

[Jim Cassedy]

What I always enjoyed were the 'instructions' that made no sense. I remember one that said something like that
you needed to be sure to play the feature "using your flat scope setting". My favorite was the one that told how
important the sound mix was to the movie, and that "you should make sure to play it at 7db"
( I think someone posted a scan of that one on the old FT website)

In the 1970's I was still handling a lot of mag/opt prints and there was always a warning printed on the
reel-bands (often in red or some color other than black ) and also notices plastered inside the film cans
warning about the permanent damage you'll cause if you run that print on a machine not equipped with
Fox sprockets.

I also liked the absolute irony of a full page "Anti-Piracy" notice- - that came enclosed with a pirate movie.

[Peter Mork]

A note from "Your friend, David Lynch" requested that you frame Mulholland Dr down a bit, to give it more headroom. That's because it was originally planned as a TV serial, but when the rug was pulled out from under that idea, they recut and released it as a 1.85 flat-format feature.

Reel 1 of Woody Allen's September ended with something like 40 seconds of black (the story called for a power failure), and an enclosed note from Woody pointed this out. I believe the first time we ran it (as a changeover) we were not aware of this ("oops, must've missed the cue") and cut it off too soon, but no one noticed.

[Stephan Shelley]

While there was no note but should have been, Stranger than Paradise every edit was cut to black cut to new scene. So when running reel to reel you always changed over to black. First time I ran it many years ago, first changover I thought I must have been a little sloppy but when it happened the second I started measuring and aha it was suppose to be that way and then I noticed every cut was that way. I doubt many platter housed got it right.

[Frank Angel]

There wasn't any note in the can with the movie HEAD (Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson) in which here was a scene where the film seemed to wobble out of the gate -- you could see sprocketholes, then it froze between two frames and finally the fim blistered and burned. It also happened a minute or two at the beginning of I think R2, so no question, you were right there looking at the screen. And of course, no way you didn't slame that dowser closed the second you saw it. It was part of the film; it was VERY realistic. My guess is, there probably WAS a notice in the can, but some wisenheimer thought it would be great fun to let the next guy find out for himself that is was part of the film.

Very interesting film, BTW...worth a watch for anyone interested in alternative-type, avant garde film-making. Plus, interesting to see a VERY young Jack Nicholson. It was clear he was going to go far.

There was a notice in a print of Disney's FANTASIA (I made a copy of it, but not where I can find it now) that said be sure to play the Dolby Stereo print in stereo ONLY. Playing it in mono as it will cause very bad phase-shifting distortion. It MUST be played in Stereo, it said. Those original tracks were very badly time misaligned and if you mixed them as a mono signal, yes, the Rodent was right, it would sound like flanging was going on all over the place.

[Stephan Shelley]

Lets not forget Gremlins 2. With the fake film break in the gate. This time at a multiplex with platters and I was doing an advanced screening. I went to check on things right at that scene, I went running up the stairs and get to the top to see the shadow puppets. I understand they later did enclose a warning about that scene. Another good one is the hair in the gate with Whats up Tiger Lily. A projectionist friend told me he about passed out trying to blow it out of the gate and then he saw the hand on the screen grabbing at it.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

I was the projectionist for the first showing of the original Godfather film. The first show was at 7pm and the house was full. The house phone rang and the manager, Ellis Merkley, said I had a phone call in his office. I asked him to take a message. He was very upset and said, "it's Hollywood and they want to speak to you NOW!" It turned out that the lab had placed the color chart test image in the opening credits and I had to remove it before the first showing. The opening credits of The Godfather are a black screen with white lettering in the center of the frame. The person on the phone said there was no guarantee that the test footage was in frame so "be prepared."

Fortunately, the framing was correct and that was the only patch in the print after I showed it 265 times on my shifts. We did the usual 5 shows a day seven days a week. I was the swing shift operator.

[Stephan Shelley]

Back in 1991 the 50th anniversary of Fantasia they added opening credits that were never there before. Someone misspelled Stokowski. While they were able to correct the 35mm prints they also made 70mm prints as well that were pillared to the proper ratio. Those prints went out with the misspelling. A week or so into the run we got a new reel 1 with instructions to change it immediately.

[Jonathan Smiles]

Avatar 3D 15/70mm IMAX had an onscreen subtitle mistake, BFI IMAX projection team got the note and corrected shot, they reckoned it was a day's work to patch.

[Dan Allen]

I believe this is what Peter was referring to -