I've thought on occasion about sharing some of my booth/projectionist memories, but many of them are a bit too short to really share anywhere other than in brief, blog form. So here goes one.
One year, the movie theater where I worked decided to run a series of midnight movies in order to help get some extra business during the slower, winter and early spring months. From the action of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to Goth cult classic "The Crow," we had a decent variety. One of the films we got was Terminator 2: Judgement Day. As one of the more experienced projectionists at the theater, I was given the task of not only building up the movie, but of previewing it to make sure that the build had gone okay.
Oh, not sure what a build is? Well, let me give you a quick crash course. Basically, the films would come shipped to the theater in a couple of large, metal canisters, each canister held a few reels. Each reel would have a number on it that would designate what number in the sequence that it was. The reels would go in succession from one to what ever the final number was (The biggest one I saw was for Gods and Generals at a whopping 13 reels, but that's another story.) It was the projectionists' job to take out the film reels, examine them to insure they were building the film in the correct order, then use a series of splicing devices and "build tables" to construct the film. This is a bit simplified, but, it will do. The main point is that as a projectionist, I basically had to be there from start to finish to make sure that the film was constructed correctly. This is much harder to do the older the film, as the stock changed over the years, and the older the film, the more likely that the film would be so brittle from age that it would snap easily. A usual build would take maybe 30 minutes to an hour depending on film size. I was extra careful with Terminator 2, not just out of respect for the film, but because of how hard it was to build with any decent kind of speed so that the film wouldn't break in my hands.
A typical build night would mean constructing the movies Thursday day and early evening, then preview/verifying the movie that night to make sure you didn't screw up and post things upside down and backwards.
That evening, I had settled in around a fairly decent midnight hour, fairly early actually, to watch Terminator 2, big screen style. All was going well, nothing better than getting paid to watch an Arnie flick--unless it was Junior, my heart goes out to those projectionists who had to verify that one. Anyways, about a half an hour into it, a couple of managers walk in to watch the show. Still no biggie, I was looking forward to watching this one on my own, but it wasn't a problem. But then disaster struck.
The T-1000 appeared on screen, staring coldly and dispassionately at some unseen thing as he walked robotically away from the screen--backwards and upside down. Now, that sort of thing can totally be hillarious--for about 3 seconds. Then, as a projectionist, you realize that the one who has to fix it is you. Then about 2 seconds after that you realize that there is no really quick fix, and you will be there for another half an hour just to undo the problem. At least that is how it should have happened. However, what did happen kept me there until nearly four in the morning.
The two managers who came in were dating, so the guy manager, in what I can only assume was some oddball attempt to try to impress the gal, came up to the booth area to "help" me. Already I was tired and frustrated that I had made such an elementary mistake, but they do happen. I was ready to take that in stride and learn my lesson in humility. I was even ready to let the guy pretend that he had a clue so that he could look informed. (Not to mention he was my boss at the time.) An easy solution to the problem, though not necessarily quick, would have been to pull out the offending reel, take it to the build up tables, get it oriented correctly, then bring it back to the projector. I would have meant another 20 to 30 minutes of work, but oh well. The guy, in an attempt to "approach it from a new angle" decided to pull out the reel and completely unravel it from one end of the projection area to the next and feed it slowly into the projector so that it corrected. Now I already mentioned that the film is somewhat brittle when it gets to be a bit old. But what I haven't mentioned is the fact that if you were to take a typical film and unravel it, it would reach up to a mile in length. Each reel has several hundred feet of film on it.
As the guy merrily undid the film, despite my protests that, besides possibly damaging the film, it would make us have to stay there until almost next morning, I couldn't help but stand there and think to myself, "This sort of thing is the exact reason why I'm an insomniac."
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