35 and 70 mm licorice pizza

[David Kornfeld]

Hell, even the projectors themselves have a limited lifespan.

Depends, one assumes, on your definition of "limited." There are working projectors out there from the 30s, 40s, & 50s. Theres a theatre in Rhode Island which has an old booth hidden up above their new booth (which was installed around the 70s). The old booth dates from 1928, & has Supers. The projectors are still there, & still wired up. Flip on the motor switch, & they turn over fine. You could run film on them tomorrow, just not onto a screen. So that "limited lifespan" thing......not so much.

(I assure you that would not be possible with a Barco....)

The Norelcos here at the Somerville date from around 1957. I would say they have 96% of their original components. It's true, Ive had to replace a couple of parts. But with reasonable maintenance, those machines will outlive everyone on this board, & their children.

So, again, "limited?' Sure, if by that you mean a couple of hundred years.

Just sayin'.

[Bobby Henderson]

35mm and 70mm film projectors all have parts no one is making anymore. Components inside those machines do break, wear out or just fail after enough time and use. Replacement parts have to either be cannibalized out of other existing projectors or custom made somehow. Boston Light and Sound had to do a hell of a lot of that parts cannibalization to get all those 70mm systems running for the Hateful Eight release.

There is also a BIG difference between a film projector that can still power up and run versus a film projector setup that can run without ruining a film print. Let's also not forget about the human operator who must know what he is doing. The vanishing skills base is probably doing more to ruin the future of film-based projection than anything else.

I've never made any claims about digital projectors being able to last many years or decades, so I don't know why you added the comment about a Barco d-cinema unit. Any computerized hardware is threatened with a pretty limited life span due to a wide variety factors, with hardware failures being only one category. That kind of gets back to my earlier points about 70mm film prints needing something else in addition to old DTS units for digital audio playback. I think one reason why the 35mm prints of Licorice Pizza are just straight SR•D is because there are very few properly operational 35mm DTS setups still in existence. 35mm Dolby Digital is arguably less complicated to get going.

[Steve Guttag]

The realities are, film machines, designed (and capable) of running 100-hours/week are now getting less than 100 hours/year (give or take)...so the longevity of even wearable parts is going to be very long. Even with Kinoton's and their delrin skates, I'm not too worried about them blowing through parts.

As for other projector parts in the mechanical machines, except for the sprockets and intermittent, most are not complicated for a machine shop. Getting exact bearing sizes for some Century bearings could be a challenge but again...the wear times now are going to be very-very long. And if one considers the scrap projector to running projector ratio, the odds that one can keep a mechanical projector running should exceed the lifetime of everyone reading this. For those that never grew up watching movies on film, seeing a film projection will be a flickery novelty that could be simulated with the computerized/video equipment of the day. It will be much harder to simulate the audiences filled into show places that are already long-gone.

[Peter Mork]

Wait Steve - are you wid us or agin us? The problem with film projection is not enough three-letter initials! No DPS, no KDM, no TMS, USB, PCI, IMB, DCI, or PSDs with their HDDs - nossir, everything has a name in English or some other language. What about the Ks? How are we supposed to know if film's any good if we can't talk about Number of Ks?

This will be solved (please keep this under your hat) by the next generation of film projectors, designed to handle prints on astonishingly thin "space plastic", a whole feature on what we now call a 2000-foot reel, cheaper than a thumb drive, easy to handle, Pappas-proof (don't ask), no emulsion to scratch, the picture's infused in the base, if that gets dinged you run it through a hot press, resolution beats anything we can conceive of today, not that it has to. This whole digital nightmare and all the cheap plastic junk used to run it will soon be obsolete, and all those tri-initials will go with it, Poof!