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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: What is the worst film mess you've had to deal with? How did you fix it?
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Justin Hamaker
Film God
Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 05-30-2008 04:11 PM
I'm just curious to hear how people have fixed some of the worst film messes they've encountered.
I have 4 that particularly stand out.
Problem: Loading Inspector Gadget onto bottom platter, Star Wars Episode 1 ends and the tail whips out of the rollers and gets tangled in the film winding on. The problem isn't caught for several minutes and we have a major wind bind up under the platter around the hub.
Fix: In this case we had some seriously damaged film. I cut the film in sections to make it easy to untangle. I had to cut out several sections and always tried to splice at a cut.
Problem: Carrying a clamped print of Cars from our cinema to our drive-in, the print was knocked out of my hands by an overhead box.
Fix: I kept it as round as possible and use the MUT to unwind it onto 6K reels. I had to cut several times because the film was too seriously tangled. But only the last 3 reels were messed up, The first 3 were in good shape.
Problem: Bad News Bears: for some reason the take-up platter lost tension and the take-up side fail-safe didn't work. Wound up with about 2 reels piled under the projector. This happened right after I started at my current theatre before I knew all the problems with the various equipment.
Fix: This one was surprisingly easy to fix; I manually wound the take-up platter which pulled the film from the bottom of the pile. I had someone help to make sure I didn't have tangles feed into the bottom roller.
Problem: Lastly, a print I can't remember. Projectionist/Assistant Manager is threading the projector and as they start to motor down to the start position, they are distracted by a customer problem and walk away - only to return after about 2 reels have piled on the floor. Before calling me, they attempted to fix it themselves. They manually wound some onto the take-up platter. Then for whatever reason decided to pull the film off the payout platter onto 6K reels without a centering ring in place. The film didn't come off the platter, but it was seriously out of round. Fortunately they were only 2-3 minutes into the credits when they stopped.
Fix: cut the film on the take up platter and manually wound up what was on the floor. Then spliced this back onto the take-up platter and wound it on. For what was left on the pay-out platter, I made a cut where it was going onto the MUT and then got the print centered and as round as possible. I took the 1/2 reel that was seriously messed up in the center and cut it and wound it manually. This was attached to what was on the take up platter and wound on. Then I placed suction cups around the print on the pay out platter and attached to the take-up and threaded through the projector and ran in automation. Afterwards the part on the MUT was wound on normally. For the first show following, the film was run with a media film cleaner. No frames were lost, not film was bent or crinkled and dust and scratches were very minor. I feel really lucky on this one.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-30-2008 09:32 PM
I think my worst were:
Forrest Gump (reissue): The film was one of those last minute deliveries where I had no time to inspect, let alone pre-screen; I was still spinning reels onto the platter when the audience was coming in. There was a splice near the end of reel 5 that had "air" between the film ends that I didn't catch on buildup.
That splice ran thru just fine for the first days of the run, but on the very LAST show, the splice hung up on the failsafe reader. Thus the projector kept going, until it was packed tight full of film. This being the last night, I was in the office doing bookwork while the damage was being done upstairs. Finally the projector got full of film and it sheared a gear in the intermittent. So it cost me an intermittent rebuild and a night of shows waiting for a loaner intermittent.
The other one was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Our platter's makeup table motor had burnt out, so my plan was to run the movie thru the projector onto two 6000' reels, then take it apart on the Goldberg bench. Well, I started the first half of the movie and went outside to yak with some friends.... You can guess the rest; I lost track of time, the reel filled up and the film jammed against the bottom of the projector, and (as Sam Graham might say) "wackiness ensued." Fortunately this time the pile of film managed to pop the soundhead door open so the projector was not damaged, and film was cascading onto the floor when I had my "Holy shit!" moment and rushed into the booth. I fixed it by cutting the film, and just attaching the tail end of the film to an empty reel and taking it up onto the Goldberg bench.
I also had a print-throw during the first night of "The Game" that happened because the film was LOADED with static electricity. After a couple of runs, it was better but I taped down Poos, trailer cores and everything else I could find around the film to keep it from moving. This was before the "Film-Tech Platter Safety Ring," of course.
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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today
Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99
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posted 05-30-2008 10:44 PM
Problem: Shitty-ass Christie/Pennywise CA21 automations. These automations were perhaps the worst ever made. They did not even bother to look at the failsafe for at least 30 seconds after the show had started. We were having issues with our Christie platter LEDs or some such (hard to recall) where the take-up deck would not spin fast enough when the movie started and would therefore stop completely. Since the automations didn't look at the failsafes, it would just feed film out on to the floor. When the CA21 could finally be bothered to look at the failsafes, it didn't seem to mind that they were down since it kept feeding the show onto the concrete floor in our 16-screen complex and the status panels would indicate that the projector was in the feature (trailers had ended, show started, etc). It wasn't until the hapless projectionist wandered over to check something else until the huge, messy pile was discovered, the projector manually stopped and many refunds given. This happened a lot and took lots of time to fix and caused much damaged film.
The fix: Kick-ass awesome Christie/Pennywise CA21 automations. Since the technicians at Mann were either too inexperienced, lazy or unwilling to investigate projection booth matters at this theater, we took things into our own hands. I contacted Christie about several of our problems and they were extremely helpful. They put me into contact with Pennywise (who make the automations in Australia) and we personally came up with a custom firmware which fixed ALL issues and added several new awesome features to the automation. This is the best automation in the world and these particular ones I had are very reason Brad is a huge CA21 fan to this day. Oh, and we didn't have to pay a penny for the fixes. Pure awesomeness in a bottle!
The rest of the story: The techs didn't like that we were fixing things, complained to district manager, DM told us to stop fixing things, we gave DM examples of all things ignored by techs and fixed by us, DM tells us at a big group meeting with us and all of the techs to go ahead and keep fixing things. We had won!
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 05-31-2008 01:34 AM
Mine was on a AW2 and being stupid on tucking the tail under the filmroll:
I tucked the tail end under the filmroll,but didn't leave the tail out exposed.
Thus, with a full house and a 175min print on the deck with 20min left on the deck, the AW2 decided to whip into high speed (think the module unit was having hiccups) intermittently.
This shifted the print on the deck to where that tailend really found its way under the print to where the tail end managed to expose it self at the inside of the filmroll. That tail end decided to hook itself on that inside filmroll and pull the remainder of the film on the deck, OFF off the deck and over the side (and this was back in acetate days...) with the majority of that 20min of film snarling under the platter.
......and I was the only one on the premises (being the ast-mgr)at the time being this was the last show of the night.
Luckilly, the owner's wife was in this house and she helped me issue out passes
Then, I spent the rest of the night by disassembling the platter off the arm so I can untangle that huge mess of "spaghetti" wrapped around the platter arm.
Even though it took me a good 3 hrs untangling that mess with cutting here and there (not losing a frame) to get that all back on the deck, I actually lost only 3ft of that 'spaghetti'.
I learned since then NEVER have the tailend of the film completely under the filmroll, but have a good foot out so this wouldn't happen again.
............................................................
In my early years of operating platters, another situation happened to me, and also with AW2's:
At one twin that I did filmwork at, these AW2's managed to wind the film very tight to where the film was rock hard around the ring. Thus, when moving prints, it was a snap since it was like moving a big disk of film.
BUT, on one occasion, one print that I was beginning to move seemed a bit looser than normal, but I didn't pay any heed to this. Thus, I just had moved it from one unit and just about had it to the other unit (top platter) when the ring popped out and suddenly, I had 135min of film in my arms like a massive wet rag.
I suddenly dropped to the floor to do my best to prevent a major mess that was beginning to occur. That was the only thing that saved me and I managed to piece it all back on the deck within 2 hrs - only we had to cancel this one show, but the mgr of this twin was impressed that I had the sense to drop to the floor so the filmroll wasn't too messy to reassemble back on the deck.
And how I reassembled this mess, was break the reel change splices and invidually placed them back on the platter and wind each of these reels back on the ring as if actually building up a print. It was a slow and tedious process, but I managed to get it all reassembled in a reasonable time.
Then, from this lesson was the introduction of using a vinyl floor mat that we had extra on location as a print mover - the beginnings of boards and present film moving devices.
True, THE things you learn in the booth the hard way .... Monte
P.S. .. quote:
Transporting a print whole? Yikes, bad idea!
This practice we do all the time - clamp up a print and haul it to our prospective theatres. We never had a problem with this - as long as the clamps are tight and we also use a board to lay the print down to aid in moving..
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Jesse Skeen
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1517
From: Sacramento, CA
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 05-31-2008 03:48 AM
Sounds like they did that intentionally to show how digital is superior to film ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
I think the worst mess I dealt with was helping someone else after they had tried moving "A Knight's Tale" to another screen and gotten it all over the floor. I showed him how to deal with it while causing the least amount of additional damage, I made him do most of the work since it was his fault and I had a ton of other things to do, but I still didn't get out of there til about 8 the next morning. Another manager punished him by making him watch the whole movie after he'd fixed it.
Moving a clamped print between buildings was another one of the worst messed I dealt with- "The Preacher's Wife" (7 reels) had a sneak preview on a Sunday night (odd night for those, but that's when the studio wanted it) at a single-screen theater which was about 2 blocks away from a 6-screen theater, which were both run by the same projectionist at the same time. (The single-screen usually ran unattended for most of the show, but there were never any major disasters resulting from that.)
Anyways, the sneak played at the single-screen, then its regular engagement started at the 6-screen on Friday so after the show I clamped it, carried it down the stairs on a board then wheeled it to the other building on a cart. So far so good, until I get halfway up the stairs and it falls out of my hands onto a step. I catch it right away, but the center ring broke which made it harder to carry. I get it over to the platter, set it down and think I made it until I realize I put the film on UPSIDE-DOWN! There was no way I could flip it over without making a mess, so to get it right side up I had to manually run it through the rollers onto the takeup platter, turning the feed platter backwards since the film was upside-down. It took a couple hours but at least it ended up the right way undamaged. After that I always put films on 6000-foot reels when they had to be moved between buildings.
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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 06-01-2008 06:34 PM
Problem-uncertain suspected puck kid projectionist.
Symptom-Star Wars Episode 3 in a pile of spaghetti at the bottom of the booth emergency stairwell, including ring.
Solution-force the shitty projectionist to clean up his mess before he can leave (this was found in process of releiving him), and cancel that showtime, and lastly, after he reports that he's done, and it is double checked, present him with his "pink slip". "Ok, now that you've fixed you major screw up, turn in your vest and bowtie, we're letting you go" Yeah, he could've been fired on discovery of the spaghetti, but I figured it'd be more creul to make him clean it up first, and then fire him. It had to have been intentional, being the fire escape straiwell has a door there, he had to at least opened the door to allow the film (an entire platters worth and ring.) out the door and down the stairs. ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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Joe Elliott
Master Film Handler
Posts: 497
From: Port Orange, Fl USA
Registered: Oct 2006
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posted 06-01-2008 08:51 PM
Problem: Customer complained that something was building up at the bottom of the picture. One of my Asst. mgrs was running the show, and went to check. Turns out the take-up on the platter had stopped working (along with the failsafe) after the first reel, and the next 3 reels paid out onto the floor until it had piled up to the height of the window. He then grabs armfuls of film and drags them down the booth until he has it all cleared, cuts the film, and plays the last reel and a half onto another platter. He then tries to fix it himself, and what gets tangled (thanks to dragging it out), he clips (the other two assts refused to participate and ran out of the booth after the first few clips). It took our head projectionist and I about 4 to 5 hours (and a lot of cursing) to re-assemble the remainder of the movie. It ended up having 30 or 40 splices in it, but other than that, did not have any scratches or other damage. Don't remember the movie, as it has been over 12 years, and truthfully, I probably have been trying to block it out.
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