Which in a rather sad way proves me right about getting a burglar alarm to the booth, too, something I've discussed with the theatre management on more than one occasion. They've promised me one, but nothing has happened so far. I wonder if I'll get one now.

Luckily, the only items missing were a bottle of whisky that was presented to me as an appreciation of a film festival show well screened, a large screwdriver, and an old, unused anamorpic lens. I can understand why the burglar took the bottle, and I now know what he used to destroy the door, but the disappearance of that lens beats me... He left the (rest of the) projection equipment alone, surprisingly (and thankfully) enough.

 |  IP: Logged

Here is this guy, probably half in the bag by now. Wandering around looking at these machines. He might as well be in a machine shop. I suppose the lens was the only thing that looked interesting or valuable that wasn't bolted down.

When I was 16, I worked at a small store near me. The owner used to just leave a $50 bill in the cash register (registers were expensive then) just so a burgler wouldn't destory the place if he didn't find anything to his liking.

I have this vision of the burglar sitting in the gutter, the empty bottle in one hand and the lens in the other. Again and again, he stares into the lens, turning and twisting it, giggling at the distorted image of his naked feet...

 |  IP: Logged

The day after he left, the trainee who had been left running the place attempted to start the first film. Lamp on... douser up... changeover shutter open... but still no picture. This bloke had cut discs out of plywood, disassembled the lenses (10 of them - 5 ratios, 2 projectors) and inserted these exact-fit plywood sections in between two elements.

 |  IP: Logged

Aaron wrote:
>>"If they were serious/'pros' they would have cleaned us out of close to $750,000 of sound equipment and stage lighting gear..."<<

This is a bit strange, actually. I talked to a projectionist friend just now, and he said the same thing. He's seen many incidents like this one through the years, but no one has, to his knowledge, stolen power amps or other valuable sound. Not once. Whisky bottles, sure; cheap CD players, yes; but power amps worth $2000 a piece, no.

To illustrate: Where would you fence a movie projector? It would have little value to 90% of the people. The other 10% would probably turn the rat-bastard in to the cops!

Remember those old Cinemascope RCA speakers? Someone swiped the drivers. At another place they took some lenses and a small rack complete with amps, monitor, exciter supply, and CP55. At a third place (a D150 theater we closed), someone took all five A4's; I know that was an inside job!

A manager used to leave the change money in the safe, and hide the box office and candy money in a crack in the wall (to deposit on Monday.) One Sunday night, thiefs broke in to the safe and got $300 in change, but didn't know there was $15,000 right above their heads. In a typical "big company" move, the DM thanked the manager for not letting the money get stolen- then wrote him up for not following company procedures (which stated that all money be placed in the safe.)