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Author Topic: Bad Judgement = Damaged Equipment = Destroyed Print = Cancelled Show Ever Gonzalez Film Handler Posts: 29 From: San Diego, CA Registered: Oct 2004 posted 12-18-2004 05:04 AM                     So today I was at the other theatre helping with their 5 prints this morning. Came in about 5am to take care of these prints. I was screening "Spanglish" when the projectionist asked for one of us to come over to projector 13. I waited a little bit and the Manager that I have been training for the past 3 months decided to go on up. So I was just chillin and she then calls for me. Great, now what? I asked her what the problem was and she said that the tail got entangled or something. So I thought I was going to show her how to fix a simple tail wrap. I head on up and as I turn the corner from the distance of about 50 feet I see bundles and bundles of film on the top platter of 13! I was amazed at this sight of film everywhere. As I got closer I could smell something burning. I looked at the motor (Christie AW3 Platter System) I saw film entangled within it. I figured the smell was from the film being caught between the motor and the platter. I was speechless and then I looked a little closer and I could actually see smoke coming out of the area in the tree where all the cards that control the platters are located. I unscrewed the bolt and opened it up and my jaw dropped to the floor. All 3 platter cards were blown. The transformer and the wire harness was burned to hell! The projectionist basically blew the whole platter system! It was obvious that after he had put the last 6000 reel on he took off at full speed AND walked away. I couldn't see any other way this could have happened the way it did. The motor was too hot to even touch and the entire print was destroyed. There was no way we were going to be able to salvage the print of Snicket. I paged our tech and he was just down the street at my theatre and when he came over he mentioned that he has never seen anything like this before either. I feel bad for him, because he had to drive to LA to get the parts to get this platter system up and running ASAP. He said, "maybe by tonight, but for sure by tomorrow." We pulled the platter off and we just took the print apart and threw it on a few 6000's. We ordered a new print and it would be at our theatre around 4pm. This incident occured around 11am. There was no point on trying to put the print back together in its proper reels. So much film was destroyed that it really didn't matter. Parts of the film were clear. You could see right through it! The brain was pulled right out of its place and entangled within the bundles of film. One of the pylons to the brain was snapped off, the other was bent, and the third was loose. The motor was damaged. Now to those of you who are new at building up, there are rules that you need to follow. 1. Do not build fast! 2. DO NOT BUILD FAST! 3. Never ever walk away from a platter system when a print is going onto platters. Keep it in sight when you are building and then move it over to the correct house. 4. How fast should u go? I'd say about as fast as you would like to go if you were on a Mary-go-round. It took 3 hours with 3 of us to clean up the print. This was with us not caring what order we were putting the film back onto reels. I took pictures, but I forgot to send them to my home e-mail address. I will post some later when I get them. Today sucked so much ass! So I was able to get the pictures. The camera at that theatre isn't the greatest. Here is the mess. We had to remove the platter in order to untangle the mess. No explanation needed. The brain that was pulled out of its home and lost in all the film. [ 12-19-2004, 02:49 AM: Message edited by: Ever Gonzalez ]  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 12-18-2004 05:24 AM                     quote: Ever Gonzalez Keep it in sight when you are building and then move it over to the correct house. No, this is incredibly stupid. Load the print on whichever platter will be paying out it's first run through (whether that is a screening show or the first public show). You risk cinch scratching when you move a print before it has been ran once. Tip of the day: buy a Goldberg "show shipper" platter reel and forget about all this ridiculous "loading the film" nonsense.  |  IP: Logged Edward Jurich Master Film Handler Posts: 305 From: Las Vegas USA Registered: Jul 2003 posted 12-18-2004 09:36 AM                     quote: Brad Miller You risk cinch scratching when you move a print before it has been ran once. I agree, the film tension is not equal right after building a print. I'm not fond of clamping and moving prints anyway. I had to build an old print of "Way Out West" that someone clamped and did a lot of edge damage to the old acetate print.  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 12-18-2004 11:41 AM                     If the wiring harness and the circuit boards were fried, I'd say a fast trip to Christie's parts department is in order.  |  IP: Logged William Valdes Film Handler Posts: 37 From: San Diego, CA Registered: Sep 2004 posted 12-18-2004 11:53 AM                     quote: Edward Jurich I'm not fond of clamping and moving prints anyway. We're pretty much screwed with print moves as there are typically moved all over the booth. Sometimes, the powers that be, decide they want to schedule a movie to play in one theater and then schedule the following show time at the other end of the booth just five minutes later. That can occur several times a day! Ever, that really sucks. It sounds like something that happened to us that same morning with only a small fraction of the consequences you experienced. Somebody built the second half of Lemony Snicket on to a platter and when it finished the tail got wrapped in the brain causing a "film cone" I had heard about this before but up until then, I had never actually seen it or have had to fix one. It took both myself and another projectionist forty-five minutes to fix. This has never once happened to a film I've built <knock on wood> I'm also very careful but I get more and more paranoid the more I hear about this problem. How common is this problem? Anybody else have any tips for this?  |  IP: Logged Ever Gonzalez Film Handler Posts: 29 From: San Diego, CA Registered: Oct 2004 posted 12-18-2004 01:23 PM                     I totally agree with you Brad, but when you have as many prints that open up and a booth that is so huge and you can't keep an eye on the print, it is better to keep it close and not risk destroying the print. I am actually saving up for one of those platter reels. Trust me, my projectionist already know about the plan on getting one and it will be a huge weight off their shoulders from the few prints a week we get only 2 hours before showtime for screenings. I love Paramount and their $50 rewards for sending back trailers. Almost there to be able to purchase one! Plus we run into screening prints just prior to it being shown to the public. We have to run it in a auditorium that its not going to start in the first place and still print move it to the correct house. Either way we are moving the print, especially during this busy season when we will be adding midnights in an open auditorium. William I heard about your little Mis-hap when I called over to check up and see how things were going. Good thing I had that Booth Meeting to show you how to fix stuff huh? Cinch marks? I rarely see them and when I do its in a trailer that got tossed around. I'll see if I can get those pictures today.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 12-18-2004 02:39 PM                     quote: Ever Gonzalez We have to run it in a auditorium that its not going to start in the first place and still print move it to the correct house. Sounds like you still don't get the point. When you load a print to the platter, you do not have even winding tension throughout the roll. The film MUST be played one time or more before you move it to prevent cinch damage. Once it has been played through a projector at least once, moving it is nowhere near as big of a deal. So if you are going to open the print in #5 to the public, but you are going to screen it in #8, you must build the print to platter #8, run it that one time for your screening, then move it wherever you want (in this case #5). Everyone should just set up platter arrays. This print moving nonsense is for the birds! There is a trick if you HAVE to leave the MUT unattended. *Always put the last roller of the MUT no more than 2 inches away from the edge of the deck. (By this I mean 2 inches away horizontally, not "too high" or "too low".) *If you have to walk away, lower the speed to something fairly slow. (Christie no more than 50% - Strong no more than 30% - new SPECO MUTs no more than 50%) This way when the film tails off of the reel, the last roller is close enough to the platter that it won't initiate a tail wrap, plus the deck itself is not spinning fast enough to slap the tail off of the edge. ***No I am NOT advocating unattended loading, but sometimes you have no other choice. In those instances, please do it as I wrote above. You will thank me later.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 12-18-2004 03:14 PM                     quote: Brad Miller There is a trick if you HAVE to leave the MUT unattended Answer to the trick: TURN THE DAMNED THING OFF! I "punish" operators for leaving a MUT unattended when in the "make/break" mode.  |  IP: Logged Ever Gonzalez Film Handler Posts: 29 From: San Diego, CA Registered: Oct 2004 posted 12-18-2004 04:25 PM                     Yes, that is what we do. We build it, screen it, move it to the correct house, unless we have the time to build it onto the correct house, then we do. Oh yeah, and we also build fairly close to the platter as well. The employee that destroyed everything yesterday HAD to be going more than half the speed for that type of damage to be created. Our booth is a maze and crammed, so running prints from platters to whatever projector you want it to is out of the question.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-18-2004 06:54 PM                     The first day I train any new person in the booth, the FIRST thing I teach them is where the [POWER OFF] switch is. Rule #1 is, "If you have trouble and you don't know what to do, TURN IT OFF then call me right away." Even if it turns out to be something minor, I'd rather have customers sitting in the dark for a minute or two than to have equipment be damaged and end up cancelling the whole show. I promise them that, if they follow rule #1, I won't blame them. (Unless they did something blatant.) I give your assistant a point of credit for calling you. I would subtract a point for leaving the equipment unattended. (Unless you never told them that.) But, don't feel bad. Your guy just made a dumb-ass mistake. I know a guy who actually beat a projector with a BALL PEIN HAMMER!  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-18-2004 07:29 PM                        Agreed 100% to everything Brad said. Don't move a print from one platter to another without running it first. There isn't enough tension to keep the film from sliding against itself and cinching when it is moved. I personally don't have any problem walking away from a Christie MUT while it is running in makeup mode feeding a 6000' reel onto a platter deck _if_ it is running at 25-50% of full speed and if it is near enough to the rewind bench to be checked on every few minutes.. If it runs any faster than 50%, the film will likely bounce against the deck, anyway, causing scratches. I'm not "recommending" this, but was often necessary when I used to regularly do makeup and breakdown at a platter house.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-18-2004 09:53 PM                     One question comes to mind: Has anybody been Jerry Rigging fuses? That's just about the only thing I can think of that would cause a platter (or just about anything) to blow up that badly. Yes, I've seen control cards that got fried. I've seen motors, wires and switches fry. But I've never seen ALL the cards and wires fry along with the motor! In a situation like you describe I can't imagine why the fuse didn't blow before such damage occurred. When I just started out at Cinemark, the fuse in one of our platters went out. (Speco LP-270. They used to blow fuses when you cranked the speed on the MUT too fast. Problem since resolved.) Well, instead of making a run to the store for some more fuses some genius got the bright idea to wrap a piece of metal foil cue tape around the fuse and stick it back in, thereby bypassing the fuse. As you know, temporary fixes like that often become permanent. That rigged fuse stayed in there for months before anybody discovered it. The moment of discovery was when smoke started coming out of the platter! I don't remember the whole situation but, like you, that platter was out of commission. It was down for a few days while parts were ordered. This is why I am reminded to ask you the question... Do you think it could have happened because somebody rigged the fuse? In my opinion, this bears investigating.  |  IP: Logged Michael Barry Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 584 From: Sydney, NSW, Australia Registered: Nov 1999 posted 12-18-2004 11:50 PM                     A lot of people here know that I'm very partial to a certain German brand of projection equipment (Kinoton). At the risk of being boring, it seems relevant to point out that using the latest of their make-up tables (which are totally tension-controlled) it is absolutely possible to make up a print and the wind on that print will be absolutely identical to a print that had been through the projector. So you can make up a print, then simply pick it up. No cinching - the wind is perfect. [ 12-19-2004, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: Michael Barry ]  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 12-19-2004 12:21 AM                     Don't forget to mention that when the film stops moving on the make up table (i.e. the tail runs through)...it stops the platter and MUT (going in either direction). Steve  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 12-19-2004 01:14 AM                     Brad, Say we have to build a print for a house that is split, and all platters are in use. In an ideal world, we'd build it on another platter, screen it, and then move it. But, in our booth, sometimes that is not possible. I never knew one could scratch a print like this. How exactly would these scratches appear on the film? AJG  |  IP: Logged

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