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Topic: first day in the booth
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 02-13-2008 04:59 PM
My father, when I was in grade school, was a high school teacher, and he would bring home the school's B&H model no.185, 16mm projector home to show us fam members, films that the school had scheduled for some classes for that week.
Now, a 6 yr old kid seeing a machine that can project images and sound from a strip of thin plastic was a sight to be seen. With this, I eventually went up the ranks in high school as a senior member of the A.V. department.
My first experience in a theatre booth was in my junior year of high school when my friend got a job as a projectionist in our local theatre in our town. NOW, that was the amazing part - seeing a different kind of light source, and different kind of machinery doing the same task as those 16mm machines in school.
Right then was the decision to find a way to be a projectionist-to work around this new style of machinery.
...and it took two years later to begin this, but in a drive-in, not an indoor house...where I didn't go to until 3 yrs later in that same theatre where my friend was working at.
Now..38 years later..still playing with the same stuff...
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-13-2008 06:16 PM
I was given a threading diagram and shown the location of the breaker panel. The print of "Amistad" was already made up onto 6000' reels. No one showed me how to advance the intermittent or even inch the film through the mechanism to make sure that it was threaded properly. Actually, I wasn't shown much of anything. There had just been a management change at the theatre and the new people were totally clueless. I had stopped by the previous night to suggest some films that I wanted them to book, and I ended up showing them how to replace an exciter lamp. At that point, they offered me the job.
Amazingly, I got the first reel started OK (out of frame at first, but on screen and in focus), but I evidently missed something in threading the second projector and the film jammed and screwed up the changeover.
The second show that day went fine. By the third show, someone showed me how to advance the intermittent and thread in frame and that show went quite well.
I had run lots of 16mm in the past, so I understood the concept of threading, optical sound, and changeovers, but the 35mm equipment was quite different from what I had dealt with in the past (though I had visited lots of 35mm booths as well).
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 02-13-2008 08:04 PM
Not sure if this is exactly what you're asking, but I suppose my earliest memory of being inside a projection booth was at the Family Drive-In, in Lexington, KY. We were watching "Gone With The Wind", so it must have been during the 1967 re-release. I also remember my mother talking about Vivian Leigh dying of tuberculosis, which was also in '67. So I would've been 5 years-old.
On a trip to the concession stand, I peered into the open booth door and stood gawking in utter amazement. At the time, that booth had two Ashcraft Super Cinex lamps on slanted Brenkert bases, with BX-100 projectors and 9030 soundheads. 20-minute reels, of course. Now, those were huge lamphouses by any measure, but they must have looked supremely enormous to a 5 year-old.
The projectionist kindly offered to let me have a closer look at the projector so I walked between the machines, looking at the reels spin reciprocally, not knowing entirely what to make of it all. I must have asked him why there were two projectors, because I remember he said, "This other projector will be running in a few minutes." I wondered how that could happen, since the one on the left was obviously running the movie at that moment? About then, my father appeared in the doorway and told me to leave the man alone.
Later that night, as we went back to the concession stand, I peered once again into the booth and the other projector was, indeed, running. I distinctly remember wondering how that had happened without us knowing about it.
That event had a lasting effect on me.
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