I got this picture off a projectionist's forum. This isn't at Western Film, it's a print of Angels and Demons somewhere in Australia. That's the film all over the floor, where it's not supposed to be.
The piece of equipment in the middle is called a platter. It consists of three revolving discs about 4 ft wide. On the bottom one you'll see a film as it's supposed to look, nicely wound in a big spool with the beginning of the film in the center and the end on the outside.
When a film plays off a platter it pays out from the center, goes over some rollers, through the projector and back onto one of the other discs. It wraps around a ring placed in the center and ends up looking the same as it started, just on a different disc.
What happened here is somehow the film was not going back onto the platter but was just spilling onto the floor. There's several things that can cause this, mostly projectionist error but sometimes it can be a equipment problem. Even something like a momentary power drop out can cause this. That's why you'll always see the projectionist at Western Film go into the booth after the power blinks, even if the film seems to be running normally.
The scary thing is the average film is 12,000 ft long, that's a lot of film to try to wrap back up manually.
6 comments:
This is a naive question on my part, but why are movies still in film format and not digital? I am sure there is a reasonable explanation, but it seems cumbersome to have huge reels to take care of.
Also, with all the CGI and digital enhancing that goes into a movie these days, do they have to transfer everything to traditional film in the end to make the reels?
Video projectors that can make an image even close to the quality of film are still about $100,000. More if you add 3-D. The problem is there's not any real difference between film and video presentation to the general public and so there's no real advantage to the theatres to make the investment in new projectors. 3-D is really the only driving factor there.
The Studios will save hundreds of millions of dollars by not having to strike film prints and ship them around but so far have been dragging thier feet on helping the theatres convert. This doesn't make much sense to me.
The other issue is going to be all the small theatres that can't afford to convert.
Most films are shot on film, converted to digital for editing then put back on film to show. Some films are shot with digital cameras.
Eventually it will all be digital but how long that will take varies widely depending on who you ask. I think in about 3-5 years it will be hard to run a theatre that hasn't converted.
This, indeed, is a projectionist's nightmare. I'm a projectionist at a theatre, and had a terrible experience where about 20 minutes of film ended up on the floor (thankfully it was all commercials and not actually part of the movie itself). That was a terrible evening...
The same thing as the pervious annonymous happened to me once - I was new and had threaded up the wrong movie and ended up with the ads and trailers all over the floor. I felt terrible. Thankfully, I now know how to handle that situation - but this? :(
As an old ex projectionist I remember losing the centre of a reel of film when it was taken out of the can. The film was quite old and oily which made it a nightmare to try and get back; and it was very late coming to the theatre I worked at. I ended up having to cut the film at the point it came out of the centre, make up the rest of reel so that the main part was on a spool and then make a join and wind the loose part by hand back onto the spool. I had just enough time left to lace it up before it was needed for a changeover. I must have lost half a stone that evening.
I have no idea how one would fix this mess, being a projectionist with my fare share of letting under 15 min of film on the floor know that even about 15 min becomes so tangled that it takes around 2 hours to fix. Like I said I have no idea on how one would fix that and I hope I never have to find out. (knock on wood)
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