70mm DISCLOSURE DAY

[Jim Cassedy]

Here's a question for those of you who are running Disc-Day in 70mm:

>Am I the only one who has a momentary projection panic attack almost
every time I do the change- over from Reel 2 to Reel 3, thinking it's out of
frame?

That reel begins with a nighttime shot of a long single story building, which
I think is a motel. But the way the shot is composed, the roof-line is is center
screen, and almost every time I do that change-over I think for a moment
that I mis-framed it. But it's actually ok. "The other guy" who fills in on my
nights off said it caught him by surprise too the first time he ran that reel.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Here's a question for those of you who are running Disc-Day in 70mm:

>Am I the only one who has a momentary projection panic attack almost
every time I do the change- over from Reel 2 to Reel 3, thinking it's out of
frame?

That reel begins with a nighttime shot of a long single story building, which
I think is a motel. But the way the shot is composed, the roof-line is is center
screen, and almost every time I do that change-over I think for a moment
that I mis-framed it. But it's actually ok. "The other guy" who fills in on my
nights off said it caught him by surprise too the first time he ran that reel.

Not quite the same panic, but Mulholand Drive has a reel change from a normal sequence to one their long blur into focus sequences. Nothing a changeover would cause but still causes pucker.

I forget which film, but also ran one recently with an iris matte down to nothing, and an iris matte re-open after the change. Painfully obvious if there is any skipped footage due to reaction or motor ramp timings! Perfect test though!

[Marcel Birgelen]

In the days I ran film I had many panics... I'd consider this the typical "fast panic", as in... is there something wrong on screen? HELP!

But the best form of panics are the "slow panics"... It was 2004, a special pre-screening of Hidalgo... The reels came in an hour or so before the show, no time for QC, no time to build the movie, so we decided to run it in changeover. A colleague of mine would do the first half, I'd do the second half. I took a seat in the audience... After reel 3 it was clear to me that something was afoot... besides a lot of horses (it's a Horse movie...)...

So, I rushed into the booth and I tried to argue with my colleague that the story didn't make any sense, it's like I missed half of it and I wasn't even sleeping... It then became clear that someone had mislabeled the reels... About the only thing that seemed to match was the first and the last reel... The feeling that comes up in you, I'd like to call "Slow Panic".

So, we played the movie as delivered... little other choice did we have... At the end of the movie, once the credits hit, I went in front of the audience to explain to them what had happened and that they'd get a free ticket. It was pretty amusing how often I heard that they didn't even notice that the reels were in the wrong order...

Edit: The forum apparently eats hashes for breakfast.

[Ryan Gallagher]

In the days I ran film I had many panics... I'd consider this the typical "fast panic", as in... is there something wrong on screen? HELP!

But the best form of panics are the "slow panics"... It was 2004, a special pre-screening of Hidalgo... The reels came in an hour or so before the show, no time for QC, no time to build the movie, so we decided to run it in changeover. A colleague of mine would do the first half, I'd do the second half. I took a seat in the audience... After reel 3 it was clear to me that something was afoot... besides a lot of horses (it's a Horse movie...)...

So, I rushed into the booth and I tried to argue with my colleague that the story didn't make any sense, it's like I missed half of it and I wasn't even sleeping... It then became clear that someone had mislabeled the reels... About the only thing that seemed to match was the first and the last reel... The feeling that comes up in you, I'd like to call "Slow Panic".

So, we played the movie as delivered... little other choice did we have... At the end of the movie, once the credits hit, I went in front of the audience to explain to them what had happened and that they'd get a free ticket. It was pretty amusing how often I heard that they didn't even notice that the reels were in the wrong order...

Edit: The forum apparently eats hashes for breakfast.

Hell even a DCP delivered (or keyed) that close to screening is asking for trouble, perhaps even an unsolvable problem to be discovered.