I've always kept one as i've always worked for not so organized companies, i have found it to be a blessing when you get that phone call a few months later wanting to know what happened to the print that was last seen at our cinema and has since gone missing and you tell them on whatever date 'so and so' picked up the film and took it off the premises. We only work one projectionist at a time and the company wil not pay for any crossover time at shift changeover, so we dont always get a chance to communicate all the reqiured info, so the diary serves it's most important function for us in that way.

I have on occasions found the diary to be a ball and chain, we all know that at times you dont have time to stop and write in the book and some things are forgotten, in an official diary this CAN mean that it didn't happen!
The management know that we have a diary but only rarely asks to see it (once in the last 3 years), so we try to refrain from expressing our feelings toward the company and their decisions.

Do you keep a logbook or a diary?

 |  IP: Logged

-Aaron

Projection logs are still kept by many cinemas in the UK. UCI / Filmworks cinemas make it mandatory for their projectionists to keep a log and I am sure other exhibitors do as well.

------------------
Les Brock
Principal Engineer
SDDS Systems.
Priestly Road Basingstoke,Hants
United Kingdom, RG24 9JP

Phone +44 1256 484924

Les.Brock@sonybpe.com

 |  IP: Logged

I also have a problem with people who go berzerk over the log. Hey, sometimes one of the projectionists may have been overly busy with other work than to note "had to turn up volume in #5 at customer request". Get over it! Logging things like that is just annoying anyway. Do I really need to know the status of a fader or focus setting on a show by show basis? NO!

That being said a simple routine of leaving a warning note of anything not working right or any info that the other oprators need to know on the desk has always worked well in booths I have operated. Once the warning of "move this print to this auditorium for the screening today" has passed, the note is simply thrown away. Equipment associated notes are taked to a corkboard and once the problem is fixed, the notes are tossed. Trying to read through pages and pages of a journal is a huge pain when I am trying to research the problems someone has had with a particular piece of equipment. I much prefer coming into a booth and having a board of notes pinned up to check.

I know people will disagree with that way of communicating, but I'm sick of the drama queens writing novels in a log and throwing hissy fits because they are reading into someone's daily diary submission too far and manipulating it into a personal insult. Notes are pretty restrictive with how much can be written and force people to be brief and get to the point.

I also have an occurence report that must be filled in if there is a problem that the public would have been aware of. It has a check box for equipment failure or human error. God help anyone who make's a report blaming equipment and I spend hours trying to find a non existant fault....

The report has to be handed into the office no later than the end of that day. The duty manager should also be informed immediatly of any such problem by house phone so they don't look foolish when they get complaints..... Let's not get into how foolish some of them are anyway!!

Unfortunatly any reporting system relies on honesty and consistency... can anyone tell me how to achieve that!

A print log sent along with a print, documenting its' complete projection history would be ideal, since each projectionist would honestly tell of any problems they caused or encountered with the print. (We can dream, can't we?)

From time-to-time, there has also been a print log. There also used to be a show log...that is, how many shows each print had. We could easily calculate how many feet of MAG film had run over each head. We must have been one of the few theatres that wore out Teccon mag heads!

Steve

------------------
"The greatest thing you will ever learn, is just love and be loved in return."

In other places, communication is normally done with notes left on the rewind bench. If some particularly important piece of equipment (for example, one deck on a platter) is having problems, someone will usually leave a big "do not use" sign on it as well.

Green for projector problems and blue for sound problems. It makes it easier to quickly flip through the book and track problems.

When you show up for your shift, you are required to read the log book all the way back to your last shift.

In addition to the log book, there is a daily log sheet to keep track of instrument readings and showtimes and print passes, and a print log to detail the history of the print while it's at the theater. The print log gets copied and shipped out with the print when it leaves. I'm not sure I'd do a print log in a 20-plex, but it's great for large format.

I also think its valuble when you make changes to something, or learn how to fix something that you know the other projectionist don't know. You explain exactly what you did to fix the problem, so when they have the same trouble they'll know what to do.
I found an old log book in the booth while cleaning the closest one day thats dated as far back as 1995-1997 long before I arrived in 1999. And while most of it was just doodles and rants about why someone had to close on Sunday etc, there were a few valuable things I learned from it that I never knew before.
For example in 1996 there were problems with the sound going out in our #4, the projectionist noted that he found a work around by switching to a Bypass mode. If I had not read that in 2001 when I had the same sound problem in the same projector, I would not have known what to do, and would have wasted time calling the head projectionist. And probably canceling the show....

Point is, noting all of your experiences in the booth in a log, can help every other progectionist, even ones years later after you're long gone, gain more knowlege and better themselves. In a way its better than a manual if done right, because the log book talks about things specifically in that booth the projectionist works in.