Currently running a 10 day film festival, so we have lots of prints running just one show. As Saturday was my day off i left a list of jobs to do - films requiring building and breaking down. So got in today (Sunday) to find most jobs have been completed.

Then our print of Harry Potter (which was built on my day off) had a brain wrap. But there were only a few wraps round the brain, so it couldnt have been an underspeed/overspeed (understand i was just concerned with getting the show back on, i wasn't about to waste time looking at the wrap to determine why). While i was between the projector and the platter, joining the film and cutting out the damaged sections i noticed a bad splice. I said 'this splice is shit! whoever made this just put tape on one side'

Guess what? After getting the show up and running, the culprit identified himself - He made up the film and only taped one side of the reel-reel splices.

The reason given being that the show was only going to be run once, and he had used that practice before in his previous cinema.

Well this get's worse - the next reel end also caused a breakdown.

Now to be fair, he sat with the print for the rest of the run, and noticed that alongside the reel ends were some sticky residue that appeared to cause the print to stick - maybe that was the cause, not the single taped splices.

But in my opinion, WHY? Why not make proper splices? I wouldn't even attach scrap to my leader with a splice taped one side. Laziness?

Does anyone here ever make splices taped on one side? I doubt it, i have never heard of it until today, and i swear i was speechless!

I really don't mind leaders reattached with single-sided splices. I think it's a reasonable compromise between those who figure the next person will just be building it up anyway (it's easy to flip and peel apart a one-sider and creates less temptation for someone to cut yet another frame) and those who will run reel to reel. I'll do the 2nd side on the head leader during my inspection. Anything is better than masking tape.

BTW, you have my sympathy for running a film festival via platter. Been there; done that. What a pain.

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Ken- Good post, i was getting round to thinking that the one-sided splice wasn't the source of the breakdown but what you described was exactly the way the first break happened.

By earlier posts, the consensus is that sticky residue from the non-taped side was causing the problem - this may or may not be true, but i know that he said the sticky bits were a wrap or two in from the splice. I'll know better when i look at the print. I'm off tomorrow (hurray!) but i'll examine that print when i have some time.

I have seen single-sided splices run just fine, for many shows, and i have seen them fail almost immediately. My opinion is that it is un-proffesional and lazy to make one-sided splices. That goes for my newbie and my boss. Period.

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