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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Author
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Topic: Worst booth disaster?
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Joe Redifer
unregistered
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posted 05-30-1999 02:13 AM
So what is the worst disaster in the booth that you have ever had or heard of? Mine had to be when The Fugitive came out, which was one of the first polyester
prints. It ran fine most of the time. This was back when I was just an assistant
manager, before being "promoted" to full-time projectionist. I was sitting in my
office late one night doing closing stuff when I heard a knock at the door. It was a
patron, and she informed me that The Fugitive had "melted" and been that way for
about 15 minutes. I run upstairs and the last 20 or so minutes of the film was on
the floor, and the rest of the print was hoola-hooping around the still spinning
platter. Refunds for everyone! It took a couple of hours to fix, but we did it,
however the print never looked very good after that. I was not prepared for the
polyester experience. Another time was with the print "Boogie Nights". One of the theatres in our circuit
was transferring the film to another, and the print fell apart while they were
carrying it, dropping out from the middle and continuing until the whole film was
on the parking lot ground. The manager chopped it up into about 18 pieces and
loaded it up onto 2000 foot reels and brought it down to my theatre for me to
help reassemble! We got it in linear order and I helped him load it back up back
at his theatre. I bet that print was missing about 20 minutes of footage! And the
remaining footage looked unwatchable I imagine, but I didn't stick around for that.
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Erika Hellgren
unregistered
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posted 05-30-1999 02:13 AM
My worst booth disaster would have to be a couple years ago when an order for
new Xenon bulbs sat on my manager's desk for a couple months (unbeknownst to
me until later). As a result, the 4000 watt bulb in our biggest house got
progressively dimmer with no replacement available. We couldn't even borrow
one from local theatres because no one had the right kind. So what happened?
Did it finally burn out? No! It exploded! Thank goodness I was no where near the
lamphouse when it happened because there was glass EVERYWHERE - inside
the projector, in every nook and cranny in the lamphouse, and EMBEDDED in
the carpet! It even ruined a few feet of the film. Of course it destroyed the
reflector, and the order for that sat on my manager's desk just as long as the order
for the spare bulbs. To this day, I'm paranoid about Xenon bulbs, cause I know
that I could have been seriously hurt if I had been next to the lamphouse when it
blew!
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Scott Norwood
unregistered
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posted 05-30-1999 02:14 AM
The "diasters" that I've had to deal with personally have mostly been rather
tame...things like exciter lamps burning out during the show (quickly fixed); curtain
jamming when opening on studio logo at the beginning of a film; ten-second
"coming soon" tag accidentally spliced in upside down; out of frame splices
between leader and start of film; a couple of missed changeovers (I hear bzz-pop,
screen goes white, I yell "oh, #$%#" and then the audience learns how to count
down from eight to three. My co-workers have managed some more "interesting"
feats: showing the wrong movie or wrong reel of the right movie; showing films
with the wrong lens, aperture plate, or both; forgetting to open the curtains (yes,
I'm told that it has happened!); forgetting to switch the sound input from non-sync
to optical; probably many others. The worst disaster that I had the misfortune of
having to deal with was when someone didn't close the pad roller on the holdback
sprocket in the soundhead just above the takeup reel; of course, the film slipped
off the sprocket and the guy had left the booth to talk on the phone in the office.
I'd stopped by the Theatre to pick up some stuff that I'd left there and arrived just
as people were complaining that the film had jammed in the gate and was burning.
I ran up to the booth to discover that the film had begun winding so unevenly that
the takeup reel could no longer spin, and hundreds of feet of film had ended up on
the floor and inside the soundhead and picture head. When I opened the
glass-window doors on the projector and soundhead, hundreds of feet of
crumpled film spilled out. Needless to say, I was not amused. I just cut the film
(with scissors) where it was coming off of the takeup reel and got it going on the
other projector and then cleaned up the mess (this was with 6000' reels).
Amazingly, the film that got ruined was one of fewer than fifty prints of a rather
obscure foreign film (although this was admittedly a very late run). Amazingly, the
distributor never charged our theatre for the two reels' worth of film that were
ruined. They actually did manage to get things in good enough condition to run it
the next night, but I'm sure that it wasn't pretty. When wound on the shipping
reels, the print resembled a severely warped/vinegar print.
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Brad Miller
unregistered
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posted 05-30-1999 02:14 AM
Worst personal disaster? Once we had the sounddrum bearings on our lovely
Christie projectors seize and it laid black scratches throughout the last 4 reels of a
movie. Worst disaster I've ever heard of? I heard a Cinemark theater up north had a
brain wrap on Natural Born Killers (polyestar print) and it actually pulled the
platter over on it's side!
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Paul Konen
unregistered
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posted 05-30-1999 02:15 AM
This is a retelling of the story I heard. Bringing Titanic from the screening for the owner of the chain, two guys were
carrying the print up the outside stairs. (Titanic was a large print and the clamps
weren't large enough). Anyway, the center ring fell out and you know the rest. It
took about 6 hours to wind back up. I did not hear about the condition of the
print afterwards though.
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Tom Ferreira
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 203
From: Conway, NH, USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-16-1999 09:32 AM
I've had two xenon bulbs(a 1600 and a 2000)blow in the last month alone. It can be heard very clearly in the auditorium as something akin to a firecracker going off. No matter how thorough you are at cleaning the glass out of the lamphouse and the surrounding area, you will still be finding glass in the area for months.
About five years ago, when I was still an assistant manager, the manager and myself were in the very small booth of our twin theatre, trying to figure out why the picture in cinema one was so dim. I was on the other side of the platter near the cinema two projector, and she was standing near the cinema one projector. When the bulb blew in cinema one, it sounded like a shotgun going off. Needless to say, the glass flew out of every nook and cranny of the lamphouse. Luckily, she wasn't injured, but had to go home to change her clothes and take a shower to get the glass out of her hair.
When they say that precautions should be taken when handling xenon bulbs, it's no joke. If fact, if you ever have one that you're just going to throw away, try tossing it into a dumpster from a safe distance. Guaranteed it makes you jump.
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John Pytlak
Film God
Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 12-16-1999 10:20 AM
I agree that xenon lamps MUST be treated with respect, and only handled by properly trained personnel with the proper safety equipment. At Kodak we use full face shields, protection for the hands and wrists, and Kelvar jumpsuits. NEVER open the lamphouse while the lamp is still hot. Osram and some of the other lamp manufacturers have literature and training materials on the proper handling of xenon lamps.BTW, almost none of "The Fugitive" prints in the USA were on Kodak film. I remember helping quite a few theatres deal with the problems, even though it was not Kodak film. ------------------
John Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Professional Motion Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
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Tyler Skinner
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 115
From: Pa
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 12-16-1999 02:14 PM
Not me, but a fellow projectionist I work with attached reel 7 of Music Of the Heart tails out, so with about 30 minutes left in the sneak preview with 300+ people in the theater, the picture goes upside down and the sound backwards. Funny as shit, I don't think the people were very happy, nor was I. Needless to say, I now build everything that comes in, and we screen as much as possible, especially our sneak previews.Not as bad, but, this was my fault. I was sick as a dog, hopped up on Nyquil trying to get the print plattered so I could go home and die, when I forgot to add reel 4 of The Bachelor. The funny thing is, no one noticed until saturday afternoon that something was missing. The movie was so horrible that no one complained or noticed 20 minutes missing from the movie.
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Masao Garcia
Film Handler
Posts: 34
From: Lancaster, CA, USA
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted 12-16-1999 03:10 PM
Once, one of my newer usher-bs was breaking down Tarzan from a AW3R and the ring had been removed....ask you might've guessed, the film ended up on the floor. I think it was four reels that ended up on floor. The stink of it was, instead of breaking down each reel individually, she just started tugging from the middle. I believe she had started at about noon or so and I was eventually called in at about five or six o'clock, and there were piles of tangled film everywhere. I guess they had started cutting at random spots and labeling them with masking tape and it was just horrible. I think we got finished around seven or eight that night, and that print was trashed beyond belief. We have a carpeted booth, so I'm sure the scratches weren't too bad, but there were just so many cuts in the film.
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