At times, we have had trouble finding people that are we like and are capable over 18 but we have several under age that seem to be a perfect fit?

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In general:
There are seventeen prohibited jobs for youth under the age of 18 and over the age of 16.

1. Manufacturing or storing explosives.
2. Driving a motor vehicle and being an outside helper on a motor vehicle.
3. Coal mining.
4. Logging and sawmilling.
5. Power-driven wood-working machines.
6. Exposure to radioactive substances and to ionizing radiations.
7. Power-driven hoisting equipment.
8. Power-driven metal-forming, punching, and shearing machines.
9. Mining, other than coal mining.
10. Meat packing or processing (including power-driven meat slicing machines).
11. Power-driven bakery machines.
12. Power-driven paper-products machines.
13. Manufacturing brick, tile, and related products.
14. Power-driven circular saws, band saws, and guillotine shears.
15. Wrecking, demolition, and ship-breaking operations.
16. Roofing operations.
17. Excavation operations.

Operating projectors is a grey area. The potential injury from getting caught in polyester film feeding into a projector or in changing a lamp would fit the term "hazardous" employment by most definitions. That doesn't take into account exploding film reels, which we all agree are hazards. If you grew crops in the light of the projector beam, you could claim agricultural exemption, where kids over 16 can work at anything, hazardous or not. Laws don't have to make sense.

Michigan Child Labor Laws

I wouldn't take the chance.

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Mike, please do NOT create the same topic in multiple forums! Doing so destroys the organization of the forums.

In 1972, my old licenses having long expired, I re-opened a closed theater in an LA suburb and had to take the LA County test. This was administared by the Fire Department and it included questions concerning precautions about handling xenon lamps, questions concerning 70mm film and magnetic sound, and each examinee was required to make an acceptable cement splice.

http://www.film-center.com works.

Your 1935 quotation of Adolph Zukor, then Chairman of Paramount Pictures, who summarized the art and honored F.H. Richardson, author of the "Blue Book of Projection", is very appropriate to this group, and well worth remembering:
http://www.film-center.com/gb7.html

_____________________________________________________________________

"There comes in the career of every motion picture that final occasion when all the artistry, all the earnest constructive endeavor of all the man-power and genius of the industry, and all the capital investment, too, must pour through the narrow gate of the projector on its way to the fulfillment of its purpose, the final delivery to the public.

That delivery is a constant miracle of men and mechanism in the projection rooms of the world’s fifty thousand theatres. That narrow ribbon, thirty-five millimeters, flowing at twenty-four frames a second through the scintillating blaze of the spot at the picture aperture and coursing by at an exactingly-precise 90 feet a minute past the light slit of the sound system, demands a quality of skill and faithful, unfailing attention upon which the whole great industry depends.

The projector lens is the neck in the bottle through which all must pass. The projectionist presiding over that mechanism is responsible for the ultimate performance upon which we must all depend.

The projector must not fail, and more importantly still, the man must not fail or permit it to waiver in its performance. It is to the tremendous credit of the skill of the modern projectionist that perfect presentation of the motion picture upon the screen is today a commonplace, a perfection that is taken as a matter of course."

_____________________________________________________________________

I'll say it again: the Bean Counters today just don't get it. We are in SHOW BUSINESS, and "Film Done RIGHT" is an important part of that. We knew that 65 years ago. Do we still know it today???

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

I love that quote, John. I've always found it incredibly strange that this is the way the industry has gone...one operator for 16 screens and minimum wage.

They spend tens of millions of dollars on making a film, years on the production, many more millions on promoting the thing, and at the very last minute...when it actually becomes a thing for the public to enjoy...after all this work, time, effort and money...THIS is where they scrimp?

It's more than a little perculiar...

Now having said that, I'm quite sure that 90% of the operators in most of the states multi and megaplexes are not licensed as the state does not inspect or enforce the law requiring them. If someone in Harrisburg got a bug up their butt about this, they could force most of the states theatres to close until they got licensed projectionist.

That's not to say that I haven't shown some 17 year olds who are really into the art some basic stuff (i.e. threading, the sound system, why I swear a lot sometimes when building prints).

I think that if I can get them interested, by the time they reach the "corporate age" they can have a head start at becoming a "quality film handler."