Fun with Film Shipping!

Something happened this week that happens every so often, a problem with shipping and receiving a film.

Film is shipped on small reels about 20 minutes long. Most films are 6 reels. The small reels are shipped in metal canisters that hold from 2-4 small reels. Most of the time we expect to receive 2 canisters.

We book on Monday and the movies usually show up Wednesday or Thursday. To get a movie ready to play we splice it together with special tape. Add the trailers to the front and it's ready to go.

This week I'm playing three films, Prada, Scanner Darkly and Friday Midnight show of Crash. We already had Prada sine we played it last week so I was expecting Scanner and Crash to show up.

Nothing showed up Wednesday which isn't uncommon. When I got to work Thursday afternoon I checked and found the following: Both parts of Crash, 1/2 of Scanner and 1/2 of ANT BULLY! Needless to say I made a very fast phone call. The second half of Scanner was shipped today (Friday) on the bus so it all turned out okay. I'm glad we aren't far from Toronto.

We have had some other similar problems.

Every so often Purolator loses half of the film and sends it to Windsor or something.

Last week Universal didn't tell the warehouse to send You, Me and Dupree so it came in on the bus on Friday.

Sometimes small mistakes add up to bigger problems. We played a movie called Walking Tall once, it came in late for some reason so I was putting it together during the 7pm show to play for the late show. It ended up being one of the few times I have lost a show. The small reels weren't labeled properly so I had no idea what order the reels were supposed to go in?! The only way to tell was to play the small reels and figure out the right order. If the movie had come in on time I would have been able to figure out the order Friday afternoon. Since it came in late I couldn't check before it was supposed to play and had to cancel the show.
The worst example was a couple years ago. I don't remember what movie it was (probably blocked it out). It was the 7pm show. The studio didn't tell the warehouse to send the print. When I called Thursday the warehouse sent a print by Purolator. Purolator lost half and all I got was the first half. Another canister of the second half was put on the bus and should have arrived Friday Afternoon. There was some sort of natural gas leak or something in downtown Toronto which messed up the shipment. The canister didn't come on the 5pm bus and the next one was supposed to come in at 7pm.

So now I had a choice: do I cancel the show or take a chance and do the following.
Put together the first half, about an hour's worth, and start it at 7pm. Pick up the second half at the bus depot after 7 rush it back and put it together while the first half was playing. There would have been a short intermission while I threaded up the second half but other than that it should all have worked smoothly. I took the chance and guess what happened? The second half didn't show up on the 7pm bus.

I stopped the show about 40 minutes in and explained exactly to the audience what had happened. Thankfully most of them thought it was funny and no one yelled at me. The canister showed up in time to play for the Saturday show.