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Topic: Soundtrack to or soundtrack away from the screen

Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 12-31-2005 02:46 AM

In those pictures that have been added in the "warehouse addition", (and some of those location shots are excellent shoots by the way..my kudos to the photographers...) - of the booth pictures.

We see picts of the film travel from platter to machine. Some film travel has the soundtrack towards the screen and others away from the screen.

Myself, I've always soundtrack away from the screen (or soundtrack inwards).

The platters that are on the gear side of the machine, I've always come out of the brain with the soundtrack away from the tower and towards the tower coming back. Operator side platters, film coming out of the brain is soundtrack towards the tower and soundtrack towards the tower heading back to the platter.

Why I do this is that I don't like the way film looks (especially the CineMark's Jordan Landing 24) going into the machine. The film looks so distorted as it has to "bend" backwards as it's entering the Dolby reader, and the same as it's leaving the fail-safe unit and heading towards the lower guidance roller (which are those horrible, split SPECO roller assemblies, which I hate with a passion...- I know that they are the cheapest assembilies, but cheap isn't the word...).

It seems like with the film bending this way, the receiving roller is getting loaded on one side and not on the other side, whereas the other way, the roller is being loaded evenly-straight across.

Kinda curious on what kind of feedback is on this. Just that I've seen both and asked questions to the operators on this and their basic answer is to prevent scratching.

...Yet, I've never scratched any prints doing the film path method that I use.

-thx Monte

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Dominic Espinosa
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1172
From: Boulder Creek, CA.
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 12-31-2005 03:58 AM

I personally don't really think much about the way a roller is being loaded so much as I think about making sure the film is contacting it flat on both edges and not just riding one side of it, that can lead to other problems down the road.
As for soundtrack to and fro there's arguments every way from tuesday.

Personally I come off the brain with the soundtrack out, away from the column and keep it this way.
As our platters are gearbox side the soundtrack faces away the whole time to and from the projector.
I've heard that Potts style platters are happier the other way but I personally have never noticed a difference.

I've heard tell that the emulsion side of the film is harder and more resistant to dust and scratching and should therfor be threaded on as many rollers as possible.
If this is truly the case, and I'm sure Brad or John will correct me here, then the soundtrack should face toward the column and twist once going up to the top roller before the upper magazine roller at the projector.

viva estar prints!

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Brad Miller
Administrator

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

posted 12-31-2005 11:08 AM

There is a Threading 101 page in the tips section showing this. Bear in mind different platters are happier with different film twists, so there isn't one hard rule to follow. What should be followed are three guidelines:

*Keep as many rollers (without excessive twisting) running on the emulsion side of the film, as the base side will pick up and deposit more dirt.

*Watch the twisting. If you have an 80 degree twist threading one way and a 100 degree twist threading the other way, you should thread for the 80 degree twist. (The twisting is more important than which side of the film wraps around the roller.) In your example picture above from the Jordan Landing picture page you are correct, both the upper and lower arms have the film threaded backwards from what it should be, putting much more of a twist and stress on the film than is necessary. I think that's just an old corporate thing though, as they used to have a booth trainer that had all sorts of odd ways of running the booth I did not agree with. I remember one day him insisting on running the answer print to a set of new policy trailers for the owners "his way" (soundtrack down/soundtrack towards the screen/short leaders/etc), so not wanting to have anything to do with his procedures, I stepped back and let him completely run the show. The second time he ran the print, low and behold THERE WERE GREEN SCRATCHES ON THE FILM!!! I'm still laughing (but I bet he would like to forget it ever happened since that blatantly proved his practices wrong). [Big Grin]

*Soundtrack up on the platter, always, regardless of platter model. If you have any kind of wrapping (not a brain wrap, but a partial drag) around the brain and you are running soundtrack down, you will scratch the film because the emulsion is soft, whereas the base side can handle it. This also prevents the film from warping and getting excessively curled, which will affect focus.

As far as the rollers, if they are properly aligned, they will exert even tension on the film. If they aren't, then the roller is not properly aligned.

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