I book films on Monday and they usually come in by courier on either Wednesday or Thursday. Occasionally I pick them up at other theatres in town if there aren't a lot of prints around.
A film comes in metal cans in small reels that are about 20 minutes each, I've included a pic. Most movies are 6 reels. We then splice the movie together and play it as one continuous film.
Juno came in on Thursday as usual. The projectionist took it into the booth and opened it. I was just about to leave for my class (my last.one. ever!) when he said he had bad news. Reel 3 was missing!
Obviously this could have been a major catastrophe as we can't really play a film with 20 minutes missing from the middle.
In previous cases I would call our Booker who would have a print shipped out on the bus on Friday. Juno didn't have a lot of prints so I didn't know if there would be an extra.
Luckily I thought to check with the theatres that had just finished playing it and Rainbow still had their print. I went and picked it up Friday afternoon, took reel 3 out of it and finally had a complete print of Juno.
Fox's asked me if the Fox seals were still on the metal cans, they still were so the missing reel didn't get stolen in transit as one would suspect. Fox isn't too happy with Deluxe in Toronto, the warehouse that ships their prints. The print was supposed to be checked before it left and obviously wasn't.
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