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Author Topic: Booth Nightmares Chris Medley Expert Film Handler Posts: 180 From: McKinney, TX, USA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 02-08-2004 11:53 AM                        This thursday when I was building, I was standing next to the buildup table talking to one of the other managers. I mentioned to him that one of my worst nightmares was the spindle on the shaft coming off and the reel flying off....it was not two seconds after that when I heard a pop and off came the spindle and the 6K reel spinning at full speed. I hit the break on the table and put both hands on the reel so as not to break a finger. Lucky for me it was right at the tail so there was minimal film damage. The problem was a loose hex screw that holds the spindle onto the shaft...this is one of the worst design flaws I have ever seen...anyway...just wanted to share that booth nightmare come true...any other good ones???  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 02-08-2004 12:11 PM                       A Technicolor reel came apart on Rachel a year or two ago. It hurt her pretty badly.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-08-2004 05:36 PM                     I have a big dent in the drywall in my booth from where a reel flew off and hit the wall. I know a kid who tried to stop a spinning 6K reel full of film by grabbing it with his hands and ended up bloody. He had been told that spinning reels like that are pretty much analogous to a big buzz saw but, still, he was stupid enough to grab onto it!  |  IP: Logged Mike Babb Master Film Handler Posts: 250 From: Norwich UK Registered: Jul 2002 posted 02-08-2004 05:47 PM                        Are we talking about true nightmares? I've had a few with variations of the one thing going wrong, then another while fixing it, then another...plus people asking how long until it will be fixed... Probably the worst one that came true was a diode going out while I was working alone both upstairs and down, and people asking to see me downstairs while I was troubleshooting and replacing it...  |  IP: Logged Chris Hipp Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1462 From: Mesquite, Tx (east of Dallas) Registered: Jul 2003 posted 02-08-2004 06:34 PM                     quote: I know a kid who tried to stop a spinning 6K reel full of film by grabbing it with his hands and ended up bloody. He had been told that spinning reels like that are pretty much analogous to a big buzz saw but, still, he was stupid enough to grab onto it! Think about a Goldberg Platter reel with 8 reels loaded and try stopping the shipping reel. OUCH If the reel doesnt have any knicks to cut your glove open in it then you are goign to get burned, even with a glove on. [ 02-08-2004, 07:47 PM: Message edited by: Chris Hipp ]  |  IP: Logged Jason Thode Film Handler Posts: 20 From: Frisco, TX, USA Registered: Aug 2003 posted 02-08-2004 07:45 PM                     My worst nightmare was on a Thursday, I had just gotten finished building up all of the prints when one of my staff comes up and says "I think I broke the projector". It turns out he tried to clean the projector with the motor running and got a like rag jammed in the intermittent sprocket, it seized and broke the back gearing. All this happened right before a special showing for a church group. Needless to say the staff member is no longer a projectionist.  |  IP: Logged Robert D. LaValley Film Handler Posts: 58 From: Florida Registered: Aug 2003 posted 02-08-2004 08:03 PM                     Built 14 prints for a theatre opening, broke down 12. 38.5 hour shift. ---- a person who was helping me during that had a bad brainwrap while running a print through. He proceeded to take the film off the platter from the outside (like pulling a core) and put it into a cup cardboard box. We had film everywhere trying to straighten it out.. It was the worst thing I ever saw. knock on wood that is also the closest I have ever came to seeing something like a thrown print. *shutters in fear* ---- I worked at this one plex and you had to run reel to reel 6 thousand foot reels.. So for the change overs you had to rewind the already shown reel. To be funny I decided to play a joke on a staff member. I put a bunch of old trailers on a 6 thousand foot reel. I made them look all wound up and crazy. Then I took my tie off and threaded through the film and reel to make it look like while I was rewinding the film, that my tie got cuaght and pulled in. so then with the reel of trailers and tie I ran downstairs in a (fake) panic and started with the acting.. The facial reaction was priceless.. After about 10 minutes I let him in on the gag. He was cool about it becuase not to many people could trick him and I did.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-08-2004 08:57 PM                     quote: Mike Babb: Probably the worst one that came true was a diode going out while I was working alone both upstairs and down, and people asking to see me downstairs while I was troubleshooting and replacing it... I have had more than one call to a theater for "Projector Down" because of improper diode changing: One place caught the projector on fire because they monkey-fucked the diode change so bad. I'm talking actual flames! Another theater melted down a power supply so bad the capacitors blew their guts all over the inside of the lamphouse. I spent about six hours just rebuilding the inside of the thing. Every wire and every terminal block was melted down. Try calling up electrical supply houses on a Saturday afternoon to scrounge replacement parts! I got the thing almost ready to go and the manager came up to me to ask how long I thought it would take to finish. I told him, "Oh, about 1/2 hour..." 20 minutes later he came up to me asking if he could thread the projector. When I asked why he wanted to do THAT he simply said, "The customers are waiting." It's lucky I had only a few minutes work to do. I didn't pre-test the thing like I always liked to do. I just kicked the tire and lit the fire. It worked! (Sigh of relief!) Here's where it gets good! The picture is on-screen just fine but the sound is all screwed up. I took a look at the sound head. It was quite obvious that somebody had tinkered with the sound head. I got the manager, pointed at the screwed up sound head and asked, "What the fuck is THIS?!" (My exact words.) "Oh, I forgot to tell you that we had problems with the sound yesterday..." I just tossed him my car keys and said, "Go get my 'scope! It's the big black case in my trunk." While he was getting my case I was quickly realigning the (Simplex) sound head by eye. That was probably the fastest A-Chain I have ever done! This is the same theater that totally disassembled a sound head all the way down to a bare chassis because some idiot forgot to check the backup/normal power supply switch on the sound processor. (You know, the USL JS-200 series processors that seem to go dead when you press the backup button without the external supply attached.) If I had a gun I would have shot the bastard!  |  IP: Logged William Hooper Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1879 From: Mobile, AL USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-09-2004 01:03 AM                        Ding, ding, ding, end of reel, there's the motor start, start the motor, move the foot over the changeover pedal, shoelace gets caught in the changeover pedal, changeover pedal rises sideways up into the air with the foot, WHAT THE..., changeover cue, stomp, miss it, pick foot up to stomp again, pedal flies up & whips around, frenzy of stomp, stomp, stomp like trying to stomp ants or that stupid put the ball on the string in the cup game with the pedal flying around at the end of the shoelace, bend down to try to grab it & slam it by hand, SON OF A DAMMIT!, off balance & foot goes back dragging the pedal away... Went for about 6 seconds, but was mighty stupid while it lasted. Fortunately it was between two shorts & the black which ran & slow fade-in missed was no big deal. ------------- Showtime, top of a show, big house, reach over to strike the arc for the first reel, turn on the power to the lamp, NO ALMIGHTY KLUNK & NO POWER, mind goes into diagnosis overdrive, OH NO THE CONTACTOR IN THE RECTIFIER MUST HAVE BURNED OUT!, tell the house manager on the 2-way there'e a big bad problem which may delay the show a long time, run over to the rectifier, get the cover off, the screw on a terminal on the contactor had fallen out & the wire was about 1/4" away, put the screw back in, only 4 minutes late starting the show. And on the first reel instead of one after, can luck get better? Yay for low-tech light sources! ------------- Ed ("Perfect Show") Jurich once had a doofus booth tourist step on the film going back to the platter in the middle of a musical number.  |  IP: Logged Paul G. Thompson The Weenie Man Posts: 4718 From: Mount Vernon WA USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 02-09-2004 02:28 AM                     The biggest booth nightmare I have had was back in the carbon arc days. I was running the 11 mil "black stick" in an old RCA lamphouse (built by Ashcan [Ashcraft]) and the water cooling lines plugged. With the aid of a garden hose running from the bathroom to the lamphouse, I was able to save the show. Lots of water on the floor, big clouds of steam on the water discharge, and alot of cussing and praying. At the end of the night, that booth was like a boiler room. But the show continued..... Ah, the good old days.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Sisemore Flaming Ribs beat Reeses Peanut Butter Cups any day! Posts: 3061 From: Rockwall TX USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 02-09-2004 02:52 AM                     I have had my share of thrown prints in my career, most of them from Christie AW2, AW3, and MW3 platters...Gotta love when the motors short or the controller card fries and the platter decks spin at light speed (and the flames emanating from the AW2 motor controller that usually accompany it)... Once at the Phoenix, I was breaking down a print from a tower reel at top speed (Wolk rewinds don't have speed controls), and was almost done with the last reel (which by now was moving a incredible speed) when the reel came off the spindle, landed on the floor, cutting grooves in the floor tiles, then it skidded while spinning back into the spindle...*KLANNNNGGG!!!*...The reel caught the spindle, bending the 1/2" shaft completely 90 degrees upwards, and shearing the rivets that hold the reel together causing one of the flanges to separate and buzzsaw across the booth into the wall. Miraculously, the film never broke during all this action Another one happened when I was breaking down a show of 'Long Kiss Goodnight' onto 6000' reels in a big hurry for circuiting to another location, the [polyester] film broke under the high tension of fast winding, causing the MUT to scoot about a foot away from the [CFS Super] platter, and on the other end, the ring with about a reel and a half of film still on it came loose, sheared the brain right off the deck, and missed my girlfriend's head by about 4 inches before slamming into the wall leaving a huge dent in the drywall!!!! I had a couple of wonderful experiences involving sold-out full houses for 'Rocky Horror': The first was in the 80's running changeovers on Simplex E-7s, with a print brought over at the last minute by another theatre that also ran changeover: Well some idiot had a film break and mended it on the fly with DUCT TAPE and failed to tell me about it... So about halfway thru the 'Lips' opening credits, the film jams and breaks. I could hear the millions of objects hitting the booth wall from the angry audience... The other RHPS incident was a little more in control: Once again at the Phoenix, about halfway thru the show, the rectifier shorts a diode, taking out the cartridge fuse in the process. Having neither spare diodes nor fuses on hand in the middle of the night, I simply ran the show with sound, as the live cast took over for the missing image... Soon after we had a circuit breaker installed in place of the fuse box, and another rectifier was brought in to replace the one with the fried diodes. Another wonderful one occurred at the long-closed, now-a-church Cinema II in Ignacio CA: I came in to take over for the evening shift, and the end credits of 'Witches Of Eastwick' was rolling up the screen, so I went up into the booth to find that the first few minutes of the film had actually taken up to the platter before the film broke (no failsafe here) and now I was standing in a knee-deep pile of film... Took us about 2 hours to get it all collected upo and rebuilt to the platter. there are many more.... -Aaron  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 02-09-2004 08:20 AM                     The old story around our place is when one projectionist threaded Along Came a Spider all wrong. She managed to thread the ring so that the film was not flush with the platter it was going to sit on. As the film ran, it created a tornado shaped platter of film that rose to the ceiling. At the end of the day, the entire print would have to be replaced. EDIT: I actually found out it was only a couple reels that were replaced...they still reside at the theater. AJG [ 02-09-2004, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: Aaron Garman ]  |  IP: Logged Aldo Baez Master Film Handler Posts: 266 From: USA Registered: Mar 2001 posted 02-09-2004 02:40 PM                    I was tearing down me, myself, and irene and the ring wasn't in very well and I did not notice it and was tearing down. About 4 reels left I was going at full speed and the ring came out of the holes in the platter, the film then proceeded to hit the tree, tilt the tree so far and it hit the projector and bounced back and the film then flew off the platter to the ground. This all happened while a movie was running too! Amazingly nothing happened with the running movie but I stood there for about 5 minutes not believing what had just happened.  |  IP: Logged Adam Budweg Film Handler Posts: 22 From: Lorain, Ohio, USA Registered: Sep 2003 posted 02-10-2004 11:22 AM                     ive got one thats funny scarry and stupid all in one. i got called in one day to fix a brain wrap. cause teh manager on call didnt want to deal with it ( go figure ). so when i finially arrive the platter is still spinning. id imagine that 20 sec id take to cut the power to the tree cut into some very pressibng matter on a tues afternoon, but common it was still spinning when i got there. that easilly turned a 2 min job into a big pain in teh ass.  |  IP: Logged Chris Hipp Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1462 From: Mesquite, Tx (east of Dallas) Registered: Jul 2003 posted 02-10-2004 01:25 PM                     Ive had rookies that will just stand there and watch the platter spin until I get there. Unfortunately common sense is not a requirement at my theater.  |  IP: Logged

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