Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Platter positioning

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Topic: Platter positioning

Mike Jones
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 108
From: Birmingham, MI, USA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-06-2001 12:39 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I place a question before you. I have the extreme pleasure of opening up a new 12 screen joint next week. However, due to space limitations the one area of the complex that got jipped was the booth. We have Christie platters and with most platters they are positioned with the tree closest to the wall and to the left of the projector. Two of our projectors have it so the only way to position the platters is with the tree flipped away from the way, thereby changing the threading pattern. Going off the roller and into the first roller the soundtrack must be facing away from the wall and going from the projector back to the failsafe requires a twist that is not normally there.

I'm wondering does anybody else do this and if so any problems or advantages you've encountered doing this? I was also thinking if we do it to 2 out of 12, we should just make them all the same as to not confuse anyone and make them all uniform.

What do you think?

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 11-06-2001 01:00 AM

Personally, whatever you end up doing, I would keep it the same throughout the entire booth.

Have you considered turning the platters just a bit like is pictured in the Studio Movie Grill (page 2) pics? The idea there is to keep the width of the platters (as measured from the wall to the point away from the wall) to no more than the diameter of the platters themselves.

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Wes Hughes
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 175
From: Raleigh, NC, USA
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 11-06-2001 11:30 AM

I would NOT keep everything the same. The positioning of the platters really doesn't "change" the way you thread up a machine, and I think you should place as many machines as possible up traditionally. I have seen (and have some in operation now) many insane platter-to-projector setups. In one theatre, the platters were downstairs and the film went up to and came back from the projector through an 8 inch hole in the booth floor! Besides taking a bit longer to thread, it worked beautifully. In a few of my theatres now we have some strange setups with platter/projector alignment...if your booth personnel are trained as PROJECTIONISTS andaven't just memorized the threading path to each machine they won't have a problem with it.

I like what I think Brad is saying about placement though. We have a couple of screens where the tree is towards the projector instead of towards the wall. It works great. And remember that (most of the time) you can move the platter stack around as much as you want until you are happy with its placement.

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Paul G. Thompson
The Weenie Man

Posts: 4718
From: Mount Vernon WA USA
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 11-06-2001 11:16 PM

This might sound stupid, but allow enough distance between the projector and platter to allow the film to "cool" to ambient temperature. I had some problems with stress "bubbles" developing on the CFS machines until I moved them further away from the projector.

Paul

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 11-07-2001 08:10 AM

Paul said: "This might sound stupid, but allow enough distance between the projector and platter to allow the film to "cool" to ambient temperature. I had some problems with stress "bubbles" developing on the CFS machines until I moved them further away from the projector."

That's not "stupid" at all. A LARGE lamp with POOR heat filtration will heat the film considerably during projection. This drives moisture out of the film, and induces some curl. If you wind the film up while it is still hot, as it cools, it's dimensions might change enough to affect the winding quality on some platters.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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