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Topic: Film Break Tonight Castro Theatre SF
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 08-04-2016 09:10 AM
I'm with Jack on this one. As a person who (fortunately) gets to still
run 35 & 70mm regularly, I take film breaks as a personal blot on my
reputation, because, generally speaking, most of them are avoidable.
However, I don't want to second guess whatever happened at The
Castro. Even the best baseball, basketball, (or whatever) player can
occasionally have a bad game. That doesn't make them a lousy athlete.
(I don't mean to imply you were personally attacking the Castro's
projection staff, I was just voicing how I feel about when something
causes a less-than-perfect performance, and I'm sure The Castro guys
feel the same way, since, as you've pointed out, they usually do a great
job over there - and I'm sure they didn't think it was at all amusing)
And as an additional anecdote- - The last time I did have a film break
on me,I made a quick announcement from the booth, something like:
"We just occasionally do this on purpose to prove we really ARE running
actual film up here" . The audience applauded.
I'm glad I made them laugh, but I still felt bad about the break.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-05-2016 09:01 PM
I would speculate that what happened was that the print (if it really was a studio archive print) came with a sheet in the box stating that anyone who cuts and splices it will be taken to a cellar and introduced to The Gimp; that the print had edge or perf damage, or a bad splice, that the projectionist thought (s)he wasn't allowed to repair it and had to take the risk anyway, and that this was the result you see on the screen.
I'd further speculate that it was a Warners' archive print. Almost all the Sony and NBC Universal ones that pass through my hands are near pristine (have only been shown once or twice, and in many cases, I suspect, have only been used for taping), Paramount ones vary, but the Warners ones are usually worn out grindhouse garbage. In my reports I grade at least 3/4 of all the Warners prints I play as poor or bad for pix quality. They clearly don't examine them before sending them out: they just throw them into Goldbergs and stick a copy of that notice in there, hot off the photocopier. I even had one 70mm print of The Wild Bunch recently in which all the mag tracks on every reel were totally blank - the print had no sound on it at all! We ended up having to show a BD, and with some seriously p!ssed off customers. If Warners inspected their archive prints properly before sending them out, there is no way that this one would ever have been shipped.
Many have been built up and stripped down almost to death, and have 3-4 ID frames with multiple layers of tape over them at the starts and ends, and sometimes the tape splice is on one side only. We all know that this isn't going to end well if left untouched before projection, but these prints still come with official notices in the cans ordering me not to touch them, or else. Never mind the fact that the "or else" is that a loop will be lost and 1-2 feet of film destroyed rather than just 1-2 frames cut out and replaced with a viable splice...
Incidentally, getting the show back on the sheet very quickly after a film break isn't necessarily a mark of good craftsmanship. It may indicate a hasty and careless rethread, leaving fingerprints and goodness knows what else on the screen. I'd much rather take three minutes rather than 1, and repair and rethread the film without causing any more damage than has been done by the break already.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-06-2016 01:05 AM
A lot of studio archive prints were treated as regular release prints (i.e. no restrictions on their use such as a "no building up" rule) initially; indeed, many are actual surviving prints from the original release, the one or two (relatively) good ones that were pulled for future repertory use at the end of the run. Some are showprints that were made for a specific festival or screening, and some are taping prints: those are usually very nice. But the ex-circulation prints are just that, with all the wear, tear and evidence of poor handling that you'd expect from one.
As film projection became rarer with the transition to digital, these prints were magically designated "archival," and the sheets in the can threatening the death penalty for anyone who platters them started to appear.
The irony is that many of these prints are in such rough shape already that if I were to platter one, interlock it through 20 screens for a week, with projectors that had never been cleaned and with a guy chain smoking next to each projector all the while, then packed it off and returned it, whoever inspected it upon return would never know (well, they might notice that the reel end splices had been done right and wonder what was up with that, but that's it).
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