I was a projectionist for about a year in the mid-80s. Luckily it was after the transition to projectors that could show an entire film in one go. We had two screens, and four large horizontal platters that held entire films in a gigantic coil. We'd run the film from one platter to the projector and back to an empty platter where it would re-coil itself. Back and forth they would go.
While I was working there Disney re-released Pinocchio, and we were supposed to run one print through both projectors, and thus be able to sell twice as many tickets with only one print of the film. Unfortunately nobody told me about the switch that synchronized the two projectors to run at precisely the same speed, so when I started the whole thing up, one projector ran slightly faster than the other, which pulled the film taut and then broke it. I spliced the ends together and tried again with the same result (insanity, I believe?). We eventually got the theater chain's projector guru out and even he couldn't figure it out. Finally one of the concession stand workers came up to the booth, saw the switch on the wall and asked "What does this do?" The expert said "Oh yeah, that's the solution." But only after a few hundred tickets had been refunded.
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@DI Sounds like when I,as a young projectionist in the early 50's,were one of the few theater,s running 3D movies!
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@Richard I was also a 3D projectionist in the early '50's. Funny how 3D or stereo projection rears its complicated head every few decades. Also, remember nitrate film?
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I learned projection the same way as Mr. Modica. I worked in a local theater in high school.
The managers would show you simple stuff in the projection booth. If you really wanted to learn, you hung out after hours when we were releasing new films. They would show you how to cut and tape the reels together along with whatever paid advertisements and trailers the film was required to show. The sound was mostly digital at that point but you had to sync everything anyway. You'd check all the equipment and give the film a test run after the theater closed for the night.
I was there doing the marquee after close anyway. Yes, up on a ladder, by hand. Why not stay for a tutorial and private screening afterwards? The difference between 1:00am and 4:00am isn't big when you aren't working until 11:00 at the earliest. Besides, pre-release was always a party anyway. We'd bring in friends once the work was done and just kick it with a personal movie theater. Provided you did your job right on the film the first time, the night could be a lot of fun.
However, sadly, that type theater rarely exists now only a few years later. I didn't stay with the profession. My theater closed not long ago. Although, it could reopen thanks to local support and historic status. The theater opened in 1922 showing D.W. Griffith’s “Orphans of the Storm,” starring Lillian Gish. That helps. However, even before the close, our union projectionists were having a hard time finding work. The demand isn't there.
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I was a projectionist in college in the early 70s in a 35mm theater at Cornell University. We had carbon arcs ! People thought a projectionist had an easy job - flick a switch, kick back, watch the movie. It wasn’t true. The biggest test of our skill was 2001 - A Space Odessey. It had the shortest reel I had ever seen - less than 7 minutes, if I remember correctly. You had to start that reel, remove the previous reel on the other machine, put it on the rewind machine, get the next reel, mount it, thread it, adjust the arcs, check the reel and arcs on the machine that was already running, then watch for the switchover cues. There was also this scene in the movie that seemed to go on forever that had no sound ! No one warned me about that so I was in a panic trying to figure out why the sound quit working. I almost shut the machine down to fix the problem.
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@Bruce Cheney If you were really good you could change out the copper-coated carbon rods without turning off the projector. It was many amps of DC current and you had to be fast with the pliers.
Just as today people would preferred watching a low quality picture on tv over a movie. Years ago a friend of mine told me he was editing programming media for a 2 1/2” screen (he works as a video editor) I couldn’t fathom anyone wanting to watch anything in that format. Americans seem to always favor connivence over quality.
YouTube and MP3 is proof of that, both low quality products.
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Carbon arc was regularly used for 6,000’ reel (about an hour) changeover projection, and with the right lamphouse running at a lower amperage it was possible to use carbons with a platter system to show an entire feature using a single pair of carbons. And xenon short-arc lamps are not bulbs. Bulbs have filaments. Unless you go all the way back to the 1920s when they used Mazda incandescent lamps in for smaller auditoriums, nobody was using bulbs for theatrical projection.
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In point of fact, there were no "bulbs" in the original "changeover" era of projection. The light in projectors of the era was from carbon arc lamps, which produced an intense white light from an electrical arc between two carbon rods. The position of the rods relative to each other had to be adjusted every twenty minutes or so as they burned down, this is why film reels of the era were only twenty minutes or so. Beginning with the mid-sixties introduction of the xenon short-arc lamp (a true "bulb") reels could run an hour or more, or for the duration of the entire film.
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@kronos5 You are right. I was a projectionist in the early seventies. The projectors then used xenon lamps as you say. The limit of 20 minutes was simply due to the sheer size of the reels of film. (In the nineties, before digital, some theaters changed to large horizontal reels of film that could run much longer.)
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@Toby . . . toby orw anyone who worked the booths of the late eighties and nineties, general l cinena. from where I was "bankrupted" had five screens and was a "union" booth, which many claimed destroyed general cinema, was simply awesome as well. literally running from one end of the booth to the other for five starts and if everything started on time it was just time to smoke, yes, everyone did, and get prepared for the next "starts." and if something went wrong, the crowd was angry, and not understanding what it took to keep their movie on screen. it was beautiful and a time to be remembered. digital film will never look the same as 35mm. the projectionist of the time could do anything with film and I paid off my house with their help. william Wilson dallas texas
@kronos5 If the film broke and the frame stuck in the aperture it would melt almost immediately. If safety film, it would melt. If nitrate film, it would easily catch fire. The carbon arcs were so hot!
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