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Author Topic: film handling workshop, Austin Liz Coffey Film Handler Posts: 4 From: Roxbury, MA USA Registered: Jun 2007 posted 08-25-2014 12:46 PM                        Hi there, I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but... The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) will present a Film Projection Workshop in partnership with the Alamo Drafthouse to offer training for managers, curators and projectionists presenting 35mm film in theaters. The workshop will be held October 28, 2014 in Austin at the Alamo South Lamar location. The workshop will offer a hands-on tutorial for projectionists and theater staff working with 35mm film prints and will focus on film preparation and projection as well as special stipulations for archival projection, coordinating with lending institutions, and paperwork. Class size will be limited to 20 participants. For more information and to register go to www.projectionworkshop.org.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 08-25-2014 01:15 PM                        ... where you will find a webpage that says "This Site Is Under Construction and Coming Soon." I think you forgot something....  |  IP: Logged Michael Putlack Expert Film Handler Posts: 187 From: Fort Collins, Colorado Registered: Sep 2011 posted 08-25-2014 01:21 PM                        Remove the last period from the URL and it'll take you to the right place. http://www.projectionworkshop.org/  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 08-25-2014 07:28 PM                        It's a little late in the game trying to teach managers and curators how to handle film without damaging it and doing FDR (Film Done Right), isn't it? This might have done some good maybe 20 years ago when exhibitors started firing real projectionists in favor of letting high school kids at minimum wage have at film prints and giving them titles like "projection attendants" -- an AMC executive actually used that term in, of all places, an SMPTE meeting of the Projection Practices Committee -- and he said it with a straight face and even a hint of pride -- while everyone around the table groaned and the committee chair, our own late, great John (FDR) Pytlak, nearly choked on his coffee.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 08-25-2014 08:17 PM                        I'm guessing that the object of this day is awareness raising rather than the serious belief that a one day course will enable managers and curators to project archival prints in a theater safely and to an acceptable standard of on-screen presentation. If that's the case and the idea is that managers and curators come away with a realistic idea of what is needed to enable the presentation of archival film prints in their venue, then it's a great idea.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 08-25-2014 09:08 PM                     Should create one to show managers on the proper way in doing bulb changes, along with the correct way in focusing the bulb for best lumen outputs. Then, on the correct procedure on building SPL's with knowing how to read the content naming string and what each term inbetween the underscores means, how to cue the program and schedule it. Then, finally on projector prevent maintenance - like filters, lens and port glass cleaning, et.al. -Monte  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 08-25-2014 09:59 PM                        They've only got a day. It took us years of patient supervision and practice to learn this sort of stuff. I know many of the people who are organizing this event, and they're not idiots. They're not going to turn a manager or curator into someone who can change a xenon bulb or do an A-chain alignment (and I agree that film handling is only a small part of the skills needed for archival print presentation: projector and audio system maintenance and repair is going to be a big challenge for screening venues that are making a long-term commitment to keeping film running). But if the people who go to this event come away from it with a realistic idea of what the organizations they are working for will have to plan for, then it will have achieved something.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 08-26-2014 02:25 AM                        I didn't mean to sound snarky -- there certainly isn't anything wrong with the goal; it's just that so many of us spent a life-time doing all the things right, learning our craft, loving making film come alive on the screen and spending hour upon hours handling prints with the care and respect one would lavish on a living thing, and yet here we are with film presentation ripped out of our booths. Preserving prints might help in the short term....VERY short term, but training a few specialists, a few real craftsmen on how to preserve what little is left in the way of runnable prints has to be viewed within the reality that whatever very fuew pirnts may still be around, they have a finite life and once that life is over, it's over. How long do we give it? Another generation...possibly two before any decent film prints will no longer be around to run....by anyone? If the studios refuse to keep film alive by replenising that dwindling inventory there is, then the best trained, most meticulous film preservationist/archivist/projectionist won't be a skill worth much if eventually there simply isn't any film to handle.  |  IP: Logged Liz Coffey Film Handler Posts: 4 From: Roxbury, MA USA Registered: Jun 2007 posted 08-27-2014 09:10 AM                        Thanks Michael, and sorry about that bad link! True, Frank, I wish we had pulled this together a while ago too. This is aimed at people who are already experienced projectionists, but who have not worked extensively with archival film. As you no doubt are aware, many places that still want to show 35mm are running into problems finding prints to show. Many film archives have prints that can be borrowed under certain conditions, and this project is a step toward making more cinemas capable of borrowing archive prints. It's our hope that theatres that are trying to hold onto their film projectors in addition to DCP will find this useful. There are a lot of prints out there, and it would be a shame to just allow them to rot in storage instead of letting them out to entertain us. Sure, they won't last forever, but what will?  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 08-27-2014 11:22 AM                        quote: Liz Coffey This is aimed at people who are already experienced projectionists, but who have not worked extensively with archival film. In that case I tend to agree with Frank that it's going to be an uphill struggle. This is a 70mm print of The Untouchables I showed on Monday: We (as in, the American Cinematheque - I didn't work there at the time) last played that print in 2012, and the condition report from that screening describes it as being in near-perfect condition. In other words, those scratches weren't there then. The fact that they are now is significant for two reasons. 1. It's 70mm. Because there are so few 70mm prints that are now left in circulation, distributors and archives tend to be even more cagey about where they go than with 35. The fact that in the last two years, a 70mm house still did this to the print, in spite of the gatekeeping that now exists, shows us what we're up against. Frankly, I was very shocked to see this sort of damage. Until relatively recently, 35mm was a crapshoot because the prints - especially the ones from smaller rep distributors - will have gone to anywhere that would book them, including university film societies, places on a shoestring budget that couldn't afford decent maintenance, etc. etc. But 70mm, as a general rule, only went to relatively well-resourced theaters and was only handled by professionals. What I found on Monday is clear evidence that this rule of thumb is not true anymore. And then there's The Master - proof that film's not dead, etc. etc. etc. Most of the 70mm prints were damaged within a few passes, including the one in London on its very first show, so much so that the scratch was commented on in national press coverage, by a critic who thought that this was part of the natural charm of the analog medium! 2. The pattern and intensity of the vertical (in relation to the frame) scratches varies from reel to reel. In particular, the scratches are a lot worse (including a gnarly green one in the second half of reel 1, where the emulsion has been gouged away) in reels 1-3-5 than in 2-4-6. Therefore, this damage was done at a changeover house, and is yet more evidence that the traditional archive mantra of "no platters, and everything will be OK" is simply untrue. Spending a day teaching projectionists not to cut heads and tails and to look for changeover dots is not going to prevent this sort of damage from happening. Most crucially, you need the mindset that inflicting that sort of damage is unacceptable and the belief that it's worth investing time and care to avoid doing so. It's not rocket science, but it does require a certain level of attention to detail and consistency (i.e. working in a high pressure, "no second chances" situation: once you've made the error and scratched the print, it can't be undone) that basically, either you're willing to aim for or you're not. But after that, equipment maintenance is probably more important than film handling skills: winding and threading a film without scratching it is something that an experienced projectionist who has not worked with archive prints should be able to do. If (s)he can't or won't, that person is not a fit and proper person to be let loose on archive prints, however much training you give them. Therefore, if the focus of this day is going to be on educating managers and curatorial staff that they are going to need to have people who can align reflectors, maintain airflow and cooling systems, replace worn sprockets and pad rollers, keep mechanisms properly lubricated, keep film path components properly aligned and clean, maintain and adjust appropriate gate pressure, etc. etc., then it's a good idea, because they'll come away with a realistic expectation of what they need to achieve (or more accurately, facilitate the achievement of) than they will be reading "film forever" cheerleading type stuff. But any experienced projectionist who can't do this stuff is already a lost cause. The only specific archival training for a projectionist who already has significant experience in the basics I can think of is in identifying and playing legacy aspect ratios and audio formats.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-27-2014 12:14 PM                     Gee, that's some nasty damage!  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 08-27-2014 06:16 PM                        I saw this on a 70mm print of Ghostbusters, back in 2004 The yellow tape was, admittedly, fixable, but anyone who is running 70mm should be smart enough not to use it. And I ran across the same thing more recently in a non-platterable archive print from MOMA:  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-27-2014 06:59 PM                     Leo a big part of the problem is as theaters are tossing their 70mm projectors, people who have never handled 70mm are suddenly deciding "I'm going to run 70mm" and even though they THINK it's just "bigger 35mm", it isn't. A similar problem is happening with theaters that have also never ran 70mm, nor have a truly experienced 70mm projectionist, that gets their hands on a 70mm projector and starts to do 70mm revival shows. The prints are DOOMED because of this foolish mindset! There are probably only half a dozen projectionists in the US who should be handling 70mm that are not already retired. And as nice of an idea as this workshop is, it won't change anything. It's just TSA for changeovers, to give people a false sense of security in thinking that all is perfect and wonderful out there.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 08-27-2014 08:31 PM                        Your explanation is the only one that makes sense in explaining how this print got this badly damaged. In my past experience, 70mm prints from as far back as the early '80s tended to be in very good condition relative to the 35mm copies of the same title floating around, because 70mm houses demanded more from their projectionists in terms of skills, experience and pride in their work. But this clearly isn't the case now, or else that print wouldn't have got that way. I am wondering if a botched 35-70 conversion might have been done here, though, because the scratches are in two areas: in the middle of the frame and near one edge. Maybe a 35mm component should have been removed from the film path but wasn't, and this caused the center scratching and pushed the edge such that it rubbed against something it shouldn't have nearby? quote: Brad Miller And as nice of an idea as this workshop is, it won't change anything. It's just TSA for changeovers, to give people a false sense of security in thinking that all is perfect and wonderful out there. If that's what they're going to do (and I note that no detail on what they're covering and what not has been published as yet), I agree entirely; hence my point is that if they're going to focus this day on educating the people who will ultimately sign the checks to keep archival projectionists in work and their equipment working as to why those checks will need to be as big as they will be, then it might achieve something useful. But if, as you say, they're going to spend a day saying "Throw your splicer in the trash and watch for the little black blobs every 20 minutes", I fear that it'll be a futile exercise.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 08-28-2014 01:46 AM                     Leo, do you recall some of my horror stories about a couple of places that claim (and truly believe) they have super-projectionists missing a roller and scratching? I think that's what has happened here. Case in point that new print of Playtime in 70mm I prevented from getting scratched was because the projectionist skipped the first roller in the JJ penthouse. The angle of the film coming off the dts reader over the pad roller (like 35mm typically threads) meant the emulsion was dragging up against the penthouse casing just as is seen here. I saw it from 10 feet away, but the "skilled professional changeover projectionist" missed it. Fortunately the projectionist at that venue admitted his mistake after it was pointed out to him and just before the show started he threaded it around that first roller. Had I not been in the booth saying hi, the print would've looked just like that one you posted. Unfortunately that was not the case at another venue I visited which prides itself on running changeovers. Again I was 10 feet away and saw it plain as day, but that "senior professional changeover projectionist extraordinaire" guy told me I didn't know what I was talking about...so he tookup the film direct from the holdback sprocket onto the takeup reel, skipping the idler roller that kept the film from being scratched on the soundhead chassis. I at least have respect for the guy in the first example who admitted he was capable of making a mistake and fixed it.  |  IP: Logged

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