Digital all but killed film. Projectionist Robert Miniaci is fighting to preserve it

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/digi...tion-1.6807875

[Digital all but killed film. Projectionist Robert Miniaci is fighting to preserve it

Miniaci hopes to pass his knowledge on to the next generation


Philip Drost · CBC Radio · Posted: Apr 16, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: April 16


Montreal-based Robert Miniaci builds, repairs and preserves film projectors. (Craig Desson/CBC)


Radio documentary and reporting on Robert Miniaci by Craig Desson of CBC Radio's Doc Unit

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Robert Miniaci is a master of a nearly lost art. He's in his 60s, and says he is one of the few people capable of maintaining and repairing projection equipment in the world.
"I'm really the only one," the Montreal-based projectionist told CBC Radio's Craig Desson.
Miniaci builds, repairs and preserves all sorts of projectors. He makes sure they work properly, through periodic adjustment and cleaning.
He's set up projectors at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Tate Museum in England, and done installations for big names such as the late actor and filmmaker Dennis Hopper.
"Almost every gallery on the planet has a projector and a loop that I built," said Miniaci.
It can take time, and knowledge. But Miniaci has both. While he says there are some people who do what he does, most are retired, and few have the level of experience he has or the parts necessary for fixes.
And he's hoping he can pass his knowledge on.

Miniaci says there's something about a film projection that is more captivating than the digital movies people watch now. (Craig Desson/CBC)
Miniaci works out of his garage, but he used to have his own warehouse in the basement of a strip mall that was full of projectors and parts of all shapes, sizes and models.
It had tools that have been used since the 1950s, he said, and projectors he considers to be part of history. It even had a projector he built by hand when he was just a kid.
Miniaci was born in Italy and remembers his first time in a movie theatre. He was struck by the image being projected on screen, he said.
He was so fascinated that he wanted his own toy slide projector that would play cartoons, but knowing his parents were unlikely to oblige, he set out to make his own. After some work and a bit of trial and error, he was able to build it.
"I had a beautiful little projector working … and then my parents looked and said we should have [bought you one] but I said, 'I'm glad you didn't. I had a lot of fun making this.'"

Miniaci says the tools he needs to fix projectors haven't really changed much over time. (Craig Desson/CBC)
From motion to mundane

Miniaci is, unsurprisingly, a staunch defender of the experience that comes with film. Movies were first known as motion pictures, thanks to the frame by frame motion that was projected onto screen.
But, Miniaci said, the digital version doesn't have that same beauty of movement.
"You're getting something static, which is synthetically put together through zeros and ones."
He remembers when his children were little, and he had a room set up downstairs with a projector. The children and their friends would be captivated by the latest Disney film.
And he said that same experience translates to cinemas.

Miniaci has a catalog of projectors and tools to fix them. (Craig Desson/CBC)
"In the cinema, when you're looking at it and you're looking at film, you have that sense of believability that you're actually transported into something that you're not," said Miniaci.
"The digital … it has a medical, technical quality to it, a very metallic look."
He uses the example of the opening scene of The Godfather, which was shot in low light, showing mostly shadows as the mob boss listens to someone asking for a shady favour.
"Nobody can see anything.… But that was the whole point, that you saw shadows almost of the individual. The most important thing was what the words, and film allows you to do that in such a perfect way," said Miniaci.
"When it's digital ... it can over-define things in a certain way and you lose that ability to create the artistic impact that you want to create."
The push to digital began in the late 1990s, and it really started taking over in the 2000s. In 1999, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the first film in North America to be played through digital projection. Now digital movies are ubiquitous in commercial theatres across the continent.

The North American box office brought in $7.5 billion US in 2022, which is up about 65 per cent from 2021 but still far below pre-pandemic levels. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Martin Lefebvre, chair of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University, said it was done as a cost-cutting measure.
It was expensive to film, edit and then ship large film reels to theatres across the globe. A digital file could be sent on a simple CD or transmitted through a satellite.
"Film is an art form, but it's a business as well," said Lefebvre.
But Lefebvre doesn't believe there is a major difference in quality between having a projected film or a digital feature.
He acknowledges some of his colleagues prefer to watch a projected picture, but for him, it's hard to pick out a difference. It can just come down to preference.
"Sometimes you make your wish come true. You think this is going to be better and it looks better and you feel better about it. So there's a lot of mythology around the relationship between legacy media and new tools," said Lefebvre.
"I can't say it was definitely better on film. And I think that talented directors of photography can pull off digital filmmaking, and digital projection will live up to the work that they've done in making a film."
Lefebvre said there is still value in keeping the skills Miniaci has alive, as there are some films that can only be viewed through a projector. At Concordia, Lefebvre said students learn how to use projectors and film.
But he doesn't foresee a return to film on a mass scale.
The future of film

Miniaci still has hope for his art form. He's sold systems to places in Los Angeles that have opened strictly analog theatres.
He said the push is coming from young people, and from organizations such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which promotes watching films and the preservation of analog. The Cinémathèque québécoise, a film conservatory in Montreal, does the same.
"I think they definitely want to have a distinction between their iPhone and a theatre experience," said Miniaci.
Business has been good for Miniaci. Almost too good, as he struggles to keep up. Many of his former colleagues are in their 80s, and no longer working.

Miniaci loves reel-to-reel film, and he hopes to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. (Craig Desson/CBC)
"I am not stopping. You know, it's as simple as that. I said, 'I'll stop when everything stops,'" said Miniaci.
But he knows he won't be around forever, and he wants to make sure his knowledge lives on. Film schools have approached him to work on passing along those skills.
"I do have a plan in place that I want to hopefully get this knowledge transferred to younger people. And it's possible. It's not impossible. They're not stupid," said Miniaci.
"You just have to have the time. And right now, unfortunately … I don't have the time that it takes to really train meticulously."

[Jon Dent]

Ah the classic Eiki projector! That was a classroom fixture all the way up to high school. It was even on the exact same cart.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Ah the classic Eiki projector! That was a classroom fixture all the way up to high school. It was even on the exact same cart.

I worked for a school district in Wheaton, IL that had just over 800 16mm projectors in the district. About 650 were Eiki's and the rest were Kodak Pagents. Both were really easy to service...

As far as digital killing off film goes... Film is still used more than one might think for the shooting end of productions, Speilberg, Nolan and Tarrantino are three that continue to shoot film. But the exhibition end has certainly lost film as a medium except for a handful of cinemas that are keeping it alive.

[Bobby Henderson]

Film-based exhibition is going to be dead if serious efforts aren't made to preserve some sort of skills base to show film prints and maintain the projectors.

This situation is a little similar to what's happening with neon in the sign industry. It's disappearing fast across much of the nation. Places like The District in Downtown Nashville are a rare "oasis" of neon use compared to the rest of the country. Our neon guy at my workplace is almost 100% retired and we have no plans to hire anyone else to replace him. Very few young adults are learning the craft (or art form), so the skills base is literally aging out and dying off. The cost of the materials (glass tubes, electrodes, high wattage ballasts, processing equipment, etc.) has all grown very expensive because the materials are now being produced at far lower scales. LED has taken place of neon in so many sign making purposes. There are few things left bent neon glass can do that can't be visually mimicked by LEDs -such as exposed neon lettering in open-faced channel letter signs. Customers will get a quote on such a thing and almost always balk at the price (and the cost of servicing it). They end up buying channel letters with colored acrylic faces and internal LED lighting instead. The decline of neon has also been accelerated by various municipalities adopting increasingly strict sign codes. Some of the regulatory push against neon started quite a while back, thanks to bad or hazardous practices by some sign companies wiring the stuff in ways very not to code. But ultimately, cutting costs is the thing killing neon. A channel letter sign lit with LEDs needs only a couple or so 60 watt power supplies instead of high wattage ballasts and the LEDs require far less service calls.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Bobby, That part of town, known as Nashvegas, is very spectaculuar at night because of all the neon. Otherwise it's just a string of get drunk bars and Ernest Tubbs record shop. There are 2 or 3 famous old bars there, and some great barbeque. Most of the really good music places like The Bluebird Cafe and the current Grand Ole Opery are a short ways out of down town. The only place left down town is the Ryman Auditorium. Built in 1892, it has absolutely incredible acoustics for live music. There are several sign companies here that can fabricate large neon stuff....

[Mike Blakesley]

I have yet to see an LED "neon" sign that looks as good as real neon. Fortunately our area sign company still has a good neon guy, and he's not very old either. The only downside is they come out of Billings so the mileage costs are a killer, and it's true that the materials are getting outrageous. I might have to convert our sign over to LED just to lower the maintenance costs, although that conversion might cost as much as just replacing the whole thing. That's probably why you see some old marquees that have a cheap LED (or just a flat panel) sign bolted onto them.

[Bobby Henderson]

It's a pretty sad situation. I've been to a lot of sign industry conventions where various companies (often from China) show off all sorts of rope-like LED products. But none of it works in the same way as bent glass tubes filled with neon or argon. And, yeah, it doesn't look the same either. The light and color from electrified neon and argon gas has a certain natural "organic" looking quality to it. The colored LEDs used in things like border lighting on buildings are bright, but the color output is artificial looking. That's because it's exactly only one color. When you look at a tube of clear glass pumped with neon the "red" is a lot more than just red. There are tints of yellow, orange and burgundy that kind of trick the eye. It's just more pleasing looking. Signs with visible neon on them tend to look a lot more vibrant than signs than just have colored faces that are back-lit with LEDs.

Theater marquees have been a natural "canvas" for neon use. The way sign codes have been changed in various cities around the country it's getting difficult to install any sort of marquee at all. Modern buildings aren't very receptive to those vertical "blade" signs either. Architects need to incorporate structural support into the building for such signs. Cities with restrictive sign codes will try to confine you to installing a modest sized channel letter sign on one side of the theater building. LED-based variable message displays are getting better and better. They're sometimes incorporated into theater marquees. The El Capitan theater marquee is one example. 30+ years ago when I lived in NYC the Times Square district had lots of neon signs. Now it's mostly "jumbotron" displays. But some cities are even banning or severely restricting the use of those things, out of concern for "city beautification." Here in Oklahoma the OKC suburb of Edmond is one example.

[Harold Hallikainen]

A little while back, we visited the Ignite Sign Art museum here in Tucson. Very nice!

[Leo Enticknap]

In his picture, the Eiki is a darn sight easier to maintain and fix than the NC900! Unless it's the cork clutch assembly on the take-up spindle, which is an absolute nightmare to replace and achieve a clean, firm take-up.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

In his picture, the Eiki is a darn sight easier to maintain and fix than the NC900! Unless it's the cork clutch assembly on the take-up spindle, which is an absolute nightmare to replace and achieve a clean, firm take-up.

That was an aspect of the projector I never had fail in almost four years of working on them. Ditto for the Kodaks. The worst part to ever have to replace is that nylon gear in the B&H's. Almost an all day project, and after doing a couple of them, future broken B&H's got dumpstered and replaced with Elmo's. Eiki's had become very expensive by the late 70's.

[Leo Enticknap]

The worm gear on the direct competitor (to the Eiki RT and NTs) Hell & Bowell models was infamous for (a) breaking, and (b) requiring a PhD in mechanical engineering to replace. This guy out of England is making new replacements, and his photos give you some idea of what you're in for if you try to swap out your own.

In the my last few years in England before I emigrated I helped an experimental filmmakers' group near me look after their Eikis, and my memory is that worn clutches leading to weak and/or uneven takeup was the biggest problem with them, with crackly potentiometers running it a close second. If the picture was getting a bit wobbly, I found that carefully removing the dried out, factory fill molybendum grease (which smelled like concentrated poo - yeughhh!) from the camtank and replacing it with lithium grease worked very well.

The hippie 16mm group once told me that they had their eye on a B & H TQ3 on Ebay. I replied diplomatically but firmly that if they bought it, they were on their own with it. I knew all the horror stories about the worm gear, and had no intention of being sucked into that nightmare.

The manual thread Eikis were like gold dust: very rare, because most of these portables were bought by schools, and the teachers needed to be able simply to poke the film in one end and have it come out of the other. To their credit, the Eiki autoshredder (not the later slot load - the original version) was probably the least destructive of all the mass manufactured 16mm portables. But the manual thread versions were beauties - very easy to keep the entire film path spotlessly clean, and to maintain the machine in general.

The other issue with all of these 16mm portables is that they tended to come from the factory with a 50mm lens in them, but most of the people who use them now do so in homes or much smaller rooms (or desiring to fill a larger screen) than a typical 1970s classroom. Eiki did make a 25mm lens, but again, they're like gold dust, and the few surviving examples go for silly money on Ebay on the rare occasions that they pop up. So people started to make adapter barrels to fit lenses intended for Super 8 projectors into 16mm classroom portables: most produce fringing artifacts around the edge of the frame.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Leo, I think you used different grease, or perhaps you had different model projectors. We used a Teflon based lube that was basically clear going in and brown coming out when it had to be rebuilt. The brown being from particles of the fiber up-down cam. The lube we used came from Eiki. I believe we had model RT's, although there is also a model NT. Was too long ago for me to remember which...