The Scary Parts of Projection.

Like most jobs involving machinery being a projectionist has it's hazards.

While running the projector has a lot of sprockets and rollers turning at very high speed. The sprockets have teeth on them to catch the sprocket holes on the film. If one was to get clothing etc caught in the machinery it would not be pleasant.

If you ever meet me in person you may notice I always have my sleeves rolled up, even when I'm not working, force of habit. I usually cringe when I see a projectionist with long hair.

The light from the lamp's is incredibly bright. Just under normal operation it get splashed in your eyes every so often. It's tough on the eyes to look in the projector while it's running if there's a problem and I need to figure out what is causing it. I knew one guy who had been projecting for a lot longer than I have, he said everything he looked at had a kind a haze around it.

Changing the bulb or opening the lamp's can be one of the most dangerous things. The bulbs are under very high pressure and can explode. The image below is a bulb and the plastic protector it comes in. I've only heard of one guy who had one explode on him, luckily it was already is the plastic protector. He said it sounded like a shotgun going off and the air was full of tiny particles of glass.

I change our bulb once a year and wear a face shield, I rather value my sight. I'm supposed to wear gloves but it's pretty much impossible to maneuver in such close quarters wearing welders gloves.

Projectionists these days do have it comparably easy though, back when they used nitrate film it was a whole different story. The film itself was highly flammable and was going past a very bright hot light. Not the best combination. Theatres used to burn down on a regular basis. Some of you may have seen the Italian film Cinema Paradiso. It shows an example of nitrate film catching fire. Great film by the way.

I had heard something about nitrate film I didn't believe until a few days ago. I was told years ago it could burn underwater?!! That didn't make sense to me since there would be no oxygen supply. However a few days ago I saw the below footage on film-tech.com. I couldn't get a direct link to work but if you follow these directions you can see it.

Goto www.film-tech.com
Go to videos listed along left side
scrool down to miscellaneous
Click on last item, nitrate film buring underwater, requires Quicktime.

Talk about freaky.