How did you get started in the film/cinema industry?

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

In replying to Mr. Guttag in another post, I said something that deserved to be a topic of a full thread. So here it is, and this is my story.

I got into cinema service in the military. I was a projectionist on the base theatre, and we were upgrading out old Peerless Magnarcs (with 1k Xenon conversions) to a 2k LP Assoc. lamphouse and rectifier. I first had to dig up a three phase breaker for the booth panel (stole an unused one from the stage panel) and then, after the AAFES tech got pulled into an extended troubleshooting phone call, had to wire the second lamphouse and install the bulb myself. (We had a show that night and it was 1700 hours.) I had also had to figure out why the sound was always so horrible there. (They had a relay in the rack that turned on only the side wall speakers for music, and only the Big Altec A7 for film.) That relay was bypassed so all three were driven that the same time always, which not only stressed out the amplifier but created a horrible time alignment issue, made worse by the very live room. Once I corrected that (and noted the higher fader setting for film) everyone raved about how great the sound was.

After I left Active Duty and signed up for the Air National Guard I worked at the UA 8 Buena Park where I met an RCA tech who suggested I work for them. I eventually started my own company which I ran for around 20 years. The rest is history.

I later found out that my maternal grandfather, like me, had a knack for all things mechanical and electrical. Mom's family home movies were shot on 35mm (nitrate at first) films, and later, with granddad's connections to Bell Labs and Western Electric, they became sound films. He built his own optical recorders and soundheads. He also built a 78RPM record cutting lathe, and at one point my parents had the records of their wedding ceremony. (And when mom tossed those out, it was the biggest fight I ever had with her in my young life.) Sadly, after he'd passed (I was about 7 or 8 and had already shown interest in electro-mechanical things) his films and equipment all went the church diocese. When my parents tried to recover them, the bishop claimed no knowledge of its whereabouts. That ended my church going immediately.

Dad wasn't spared from my insanity though..at age 8 I started to take apart all of his power tools to figure out how they worked, with maybe a 30% chance they would work after I put them back together. (I got shocked a lot and learned the electrical burning smell at a very young age.) He eventually gave up getting mad at me and bought duplicate tools. The nice ones he kept locked up (I never did find that key), and bought the cheapest ones and left them out for me to destroy.

So that's my background and the story of how I got involved in film projection and sound. What's yours? Leave a comment below and be sure to like and subscribe.... (oops, wrong media)

[Lyle Romer]

I'll give my story when I have more time but just wanted to say that your Dad did you a great service by letting you disassemble those tools when you were a kid. All parents should support their children's technical interests as much as financially practical!

[Harold Hallikainen]

I'll give my story when I have more time but just wanted to say that your Dad did you a great service by letting you disassemble those tools when you were a kid. All parents should support their children's technical interests as much as financially practical!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zee9HV7c11E

[Harold Hallikainen]

Like Tony, I took stuff apart at an early age. My father had started an electronic manufacturing company ( Hallikainen Instruments ), so I grew up around electronics. In fourth grade, I would bicycle from school to his company and work (until the California Labor Department got upset). My first job was sorting hardware. My father said he had engineers who did not know their screw sizes. I was going to know screw sizes. My next job was doing electronic assembly. This was all vacuum tube circuitry. I soldered components between tube sockets and terminal strips using a heavy 100 watt American Beauty soldering iron. Here's a photo of me and that heavy soldering iron. You can see a Kennedy tool box in the photo. I still have it! Once I was old enough to work legally without the Labor Department complaining, I worked in every department of the company. I worked in engineering doing drafting, in accounting filing time cards by job number, in the test department grinding capillary tubes to calibrate viscometers, and in the machine shop generating lots of scrap.

Back to fourth grade, I got some telephones from a surplus store near the Oakland (CA) airport and ran a wire across the street to talk with the neighbors. I had run just one wire and fed it against ground. I had to convince the neighbor mother that it was safe to connect this to the water pipe. I got a buzzer out of an old toy and made a spark transmitter by connecting an antenna and ground across the interrupter contacts. I built an AM transmitter kit. I still have one of those, though not the one I built.

In junior high, I continued with the telephone adventures. A friend found a busted up pinball machine at the dump. We used the steppers to make a small dial telephone switch. We ran wire (field telephone wire from a surplus store) through the trees to several neighborhood houses. The telephone adventures continued in high school. My high school had been given a bunch of Strowger switch equipment by Pacific Telephone. The school finally decided they were not going to do anything with it, so they gave it to me. Time to build another telephone switch! I took over the garage and built a system with two digit dialing to reach friends all around the neighborhood. I still remember some of the relays in that. The A relay was a dual coil relay that detected off hook and dial pulses. We put -48V on one end of the relays coil and ground at the end. The middle (where the two coils met) was connected to the line going out to the "subscriber" telephone. When off hook, the relay would pull in. We also capacitively coupled the voice off this relay center and sent it to the stepper contacts to the phone being called. The B relay was a slow release relay. It separated out dial pulses from on-hook...

Also in high school, I got into amateur radio. I'm still at it as W6IWI. When a friend needed money to pay his motorcycle insurance, I bought a Teletype from him. I'm also still at that. My latest teletype projects are here and here.

In college, I started working at the college station KCPR. After my first quarter at Cal Poly, I went home for Christmas and visited the FCC office in San Francisco. I got my "First Phone" with radar endorsement license. At the end of my first year at Poly, I became the "Chief engineer" of a local AM station and also worked for another on air.

By 1974, I knew all the people doing technical work at the local radio stations, so we started a company to do radio station service. Within a few years of working on broadcast equipment, we figured we could make this stuff. So we designed and manufactured several products until 1995 when we sold the company to Dove Systems, and I went to work for them designing light dimmers and control systems.

In San Luis Obispo, there was an electronic manufacturers' association that met each month for lunch. Since I had been head of a manufacturing company, I continued to go to the lunches. In 2001, I met Jack Cashin at one of those lunches. He had just moved USL to San Luis Obispo. He needed someone to work on a new sound processor which became the JSD-80. I did firmware and some hardware design on that as a contractor as I continued to work for Dove Systems. In 2007, I walked across the street from Dove Systems to USL and became an employee. Then I started to learn about Cinema!

More than you EVER wanted to know!

Harold

[Martin McCaffery]

I got started in 1974 when my best friend got me an usher job at the Springfield Cinema in Springfield, VA. It was a Neighborhood Theater (name of the now defunct chain) and one of the last of the single screens built in the DC area (and now a parking garage). I worked there about a year, went to first semester of college, came back and worked spring break and then the summer, and transferred to the Univ of MD.
In 1976 I applied to get into the projectionists union - IATSE local 224. After some persistence, they took me in and trained me. I worked as a relief projectionist full time plus in the DC Metro Area until 1985, with the exception of a few months having my own booth (Byrd Theatre in Arlington), and six months in LA playing Hollywood (did relief work for the local there).
In November 1985 I moved to Montgomery, AL to become director of the Capri Theatre, a non-profit arthouse, built in 1941 as the Clover. I've been here since, and will be handing it over to someone else at the end of 2025.

[Frank Cox]

A friend of mine ran a theatre in the town where I lived. He showed me how everything worked and so on, and I decided that I liked the theatre business more than the job I was doing at the time.

I found a town where there was no movie theatre and there was a building for sale with a high-enough ceiling that I could make it into a movie theatre.

It didn't take me long after opening the theatre to realize that my lobby was too small. If there were ten people at the show there was a line-up out the door. But there was an old wreck of a building next door that was about ready to fall down, so when the city took it for unpaid taxes and tore it down I hotfooted it right down to city hall and said, "I want to buy that lot." Which I did, and built a lobby on it.

And I've been here ever since.

[Steve Guttag]

I guess, I've always been a projectionist. I'm at the end of the Baby Boom generation so, just like in the "Wonder Years," we had home movies (on regular-8 and super-8) and Mom was very good about shooting movies as we were growing up for all sorts of events and trips. Once the reels were edited together (again, by Mom), we'd have movie night. Oddly, while Mom did everything regarding the movies, Dad showed them...I guess that was his contribution to the whole thing. Even at a very early age, I took to running the projector (which I'm sure Dad appreciated...he was exceptional at a great many things...mechanical things, not being on that list).

Through grade school...I was the kid that ran the projector...mostly Bell & Howell, in our school district (I did film strips too).

FF a few years, I met a guy through a mutual friend (he was 2-years ahead of me in school) who had a job as a projectionist in a commercial theatre. After seeing a film, he invited us up to the booth. Have you ever just felt at home in a place? That was the projection booth for me. It was an old 1930s theatre (I think 1938, so it was an Art Deco) with a typical booth of that era. It had been updated along the way with Simplex XLs for projectors on RCA soundheads. The remnants of a Simplex XL sound system were there but they were running on Bogen amplifiers when I started and the chain (K-B Theatres) would move portable(ish) sound racks to theatres needing a stereo system. This way, the existing speakers from the 4-track days could stay in the theatre while a CP50 or Eprad Starscope, complete with amplifiers and booth monitor could be brought in, patched into the system and the theatre could be stereo for the duration of the title. Back then, Dolby Stereo movies were few and far between (at best 10-15% of the titles). It wasn't cost effective to spend $5K on a processor, plus amplifiers for every theatre when 90% of the time a low-cost mono PA amp would suffice. $5K in 1979/1980 dollars would set you back nearly $20K today. Dolby Stereo was THAT expensive back then. And yes, a CP50 would set you back around $5,000.

That was my start. Within 2-months of getting my driver's license, I had a job as a relief projectionist. Oh, and that projectionist friend...he was my best man at my wedding too!

Time passes, I work my way up the ladder at K-B and eventually became the Projection Supervisor for the chain (what some would call a Technical Director now). It meant that I was in charge of all matters for projection and sound for the chain, including staffing the projectionsist (K-B was all projectionists while I was there...no manager/operator). I was working directly for the owners of the chain and I was only 22, at the time. It's a bit young to top-out.

I resigned from K-B, head off to college while still working in the industry as a projectionist (the best school study job I can think of...back then...TVs weren't allowed, nor visitors and phone calls were, typically, 1 per shift). I also picked up work as a freelance technician as TAP was in full-swing then and 70mm was still quite the popular thing during Summer/Winter, not to mention new-builds. Even while in college, if possible, I do projects with a cinema bent to them. Need to write a technical paper? I did so on a movie reel. Need to write a program in Mathematica? I did one on calculating the optimal reflectance on a curved movie screen...that sort of thing. Not to mention, taking a Film Appreciation class (imagine getting credit for watching movies!!!)...the class was taught by a grad student that would later become the Library of Congress' head of motion picture...a client of ours! (you never know whom you will meet along the way).

I attain my Electrical Engineering degree and start the path of seeking work in that field. Unfortunately, I graduated at a time when there was a downturn and there were massive layoffs (the first time ever for IBM, for whom I got a 2nd interview). As such, companies could get engineers with 5+ years experience at entry level salaries/benefits. Many of my classmates went on to grad school to wait it out, I turned to cinema, which I never left. I made it my full-time gig and tried to apply what I learned in college to the industry, but at dealer/service level. Every once in a while, one of my projects will show up. The biggest one was the SDDS changeover interface. Back before there was a real active internet, I could go from idea to finished PCB in 1-2 weeks. Of course, you'd have to upload your files at the breakneck speed of 19,200, at the time (that's dial-up for you younguns). But still, turn arounds for a PCB fab house, back then, were in the 4-5 days, not including shipping. And that's if your prototype met their predefined specs.

As I said, I've always felt at home in a booth. Projection and Sound have always made sense to me. The control systems have always made sense to me. People...that's another story.

So...45-years later...I'm still in the industry...still installing, servicing cinemas in the Middle Atlantic area.

[Rick Raskin]

I was always fascinated by that beam of light coming out of the projection portholes and wondered what type of equipment was up there. I found out when one day I went to the old Tivoli Theater in Washington DC and met the projectionist. He invited me up to the booth when he commented that all the equipment was Simplex and I responded it looked complex to me. A few years later one of my parent's friends was working non-union at a theatre in Maryland and I learned how to operate Norelco projectors. I worked as a scab for a while before being drafted into the US Army. In Vietnam I built a small outdoor theater when our site got added to the film distribution list. Nothing compares like watching episodes of "Combat" while the real war is booming in the background. After Vietnam I was stationed at Ft. Benning where I had a part time job as a projectionist at the post theaters. After leaving the military and returning to college I met a guy who was a union operator and with his coaching got involved with Local 224 in DC. I worked most of the downtown houses before latching on to KB Theaters where me and another guy ran the Baronet for two years while the regular man was recovering from surgery. After that I worked mostly KB houses until I took a full time job with C&P Telephone, later Verizon, where I eventually landed a job in Standards Management helping to write broadband specifications with an international consortium of service providers and manufacturers. I got to travel the world on Verizon's dime but still have a fondness for my time in the booth.

[Steve Guttag]

Hmmm...you have me thinking...Norelco in Maryland. I can't think of any. I seem to recall Noel worked the Baronet back when (I guess it would have to be back when since the Baronet was raised when the Metro (subway) came in). The Tivoli was a barn of a theatre (had to be DC's biggest or way up there). Cinema tour claims 2,500 seats.

[Mike Blakesley]

I was always fascinated with electronics and sound from an early age. I was actually allowed to play the "good phonograph" in the living room because my parents knew I'd be careful with it. My grandparents had a 16mm sound movie projector and we were always going to their house to watch their home movies, and I was fascinated with that too. I was an introvert, painfully shy, and had no life at that point, so when I was about 12 I set up a "theater" in my bedroom where I would use Grandpa's projector to show documentaries that I booked through Modern Talking Picture Service. I would have a showing most evenings. for a good couple of years. Sometimes I would coerce my mom and dad to come in and watch. Dad probably thought I was crazy, which maybe I was.

My first memory of being in the Roxy was when it played "The Sound of Music" sometime in 1966, when I was 9. I was a die-hard music fan by then and was enthralled by the songs in that movie. (I wasn't into the "damn rock and roll noise" until I got to high school.) After getting home I kept asking my parents if we could go to the movie again, which they did not want to do, but Dad called the owner and asked if I could "hang out" at the theater the next night. I still remember walking in there all by myself, it was pretty intimidating! For some reason -- maybe to get me out of the way? -- they put me in the projection booth. I sat on a stool and watched everything, and the guy working told me about the projectors and explained what he was doing. By the end of the movie I was rewinding reels for him. It was pretty fascinating.

Then when I was 16 and in high school, I became friends with a guy in my study hall whose parents owned the local drive-in. He invited me to come and hang out with him in the booth there, which was a real learning experience. They fed me fast-food hamburgers and I gradually learned how to run the machines. I was basically an unpaid employee. Their machines were ancient and in pretty rough shape. I learned some things NOT to do, such as making splices with masking tape. They used to run double features where movie Film-Tech Forums was a current hit, and the second feature was an old John Wayne movie, because the owner loved the old John Wayne movies but would always go home to bed just after the late show started. Without fail there would be just four or five cars left in the lot during that second feature, and their windows were all steamed up, so occasionally we would leave a reel (or maybe two?) out of the second movie "by accident" so we could get off work earlier. Nobody ever noticed.

In 1975, a friend told me that there was going to be a projectionist job opening up at the Roxy so I should apply for it. By this time, the theater was owned by an older couple, Don and Georgie, who were friends with my parents, so getting the job was really easy. I worked three nights a week and made $5 a night. A friend of mine, Tom, was also working there.

After four years, Don and Georgie wanted to retire. Don suggested to Tom and I that we should partner-up and buy the theater. We decided that it might be a good investment. He was 20 and I was 22 at the time, and we had no money, so we'd have to have our parents co-sign for us. We figured we'd buy the theatre, fix it up, and sell it for a handsome profit. Amazingly, the folks all said "yes."

So we bought the theatre in 1979, and put in new seats and projection by mid-1980. We did a lot of remodeling, expanding the space in the lobby, increasing the concession offerings, and refurbishing the exterior. We had our disagreements -- mainly, I was wanting to put in stereo sound, but he didn't think it was necessary due to the auditorium being only 35 feet wide -- but overall we had a blast. Within a couple of years, I knew I would not want to sell out.

About 10 years later, Tom suddenly got a chance to move to another town and run a golf course with two friends. He would be leaving town in three weeks and wanted to know if I'd like to buy him out, or else we could sell the theater. The idea of being sole owner was kind of scary to me because Tom had handled all of the business end of things -- but I didn't want to get out of the business either. So we finally remained partners, he moved to the other town, and I ran the theatre myself for about three years.

During this time, for unrelated reasons, Tom and I had a bit of a falling out and were barely talking. After a few months I realized he was basically paying no attention to what I was doing. As long as I was taking care of business, he didn't really care what I did. So I made an "executive decision" to install stereo surround sound.

Finally I realized that I really did know what I was doing, and made him an offer for a buyout, which he accepted. I kept my day job at the auto parts store, so I didn't have to live on the theater, and have continued with many upgrades over the years. Eventually Tom and I patched up our differences, and are back to being buddies again. He got out of the golf course business and today works for the Montana Lottery.

In 2000, I got married, and my wife Lynn runs the theater with me today. I think it's better now than it's ever been because of her inspiration and dedication. We've continued upgrading and improving. November of this year will be my 50th anniversary in the theater business. Six years and nine months from today, the Roxy will be 100 years old.

[Frank Raia]

My father was a projectionist most of his life. He would take me to the theater all the time. I always thought I was the coolest person in the theater because dad would let me push the green start button! My grandfather was in the theater business all his life also. He was also the vice president of Altec. They both let me play with all the equipment and taught me how to be a projectionist. When grandpa passed and dad retired I found a job at a local drive-in and also a Quad theater. I worked as a projectionist for about 10 years. Now its all gone. The theater that dad retired from turned into a gym (rt4 NJ), the drive-in sold and the quad closed. Now I am trying to build a theater in my house... well we will see what the wife says about that!

[Dennis Benjamin]

I am writing a book about my movie theatre career.

Picture it. July 1989. Cape Coral, Florida.

I was 17 and had just graduated high school. My father informed me that I when I turn 18, I was going to have to move out of the house. I had planned to go to college, but finding a job and eventually, a place to live would become more important short term. He drove me around town, having me apply at various places. A funeral home, a grocery store, etc. He pulled in front of the local movie theatre and told me to go in. I did not want to work at a movie theatre. Next door, I spied an arcade. I immediately went over there and asked for an application. The guy there informed me that I had to be 18 to work there, which I was not. He told me to go apply at the movie theatre (!) He mentioned that the movie theatre and arcade were owned by the same company and once I turned 18, I had a chance to apply at the arcade.

I headed over to the theatre (Cobb's Coralwood 6) and asked the guy in the concession stand for an application. His name was Tom (he and I are friends to this day). He handed me the application and told me that "It was a really fun job". I filled it out. He radioed the manager (John Zampi - a legend) and Mr. Zampi strolled out of the office and took a look at my application. He looked at me and asked if I could start Thursday. Which was two days away. I said "yes". I started working in the concession stand at that theatre on July 13, 1989.

That was the beginning of a 34-year career in the motion picture exhibition industry. I did attend college and took courses in computer programming (which would later prove invaluable circa 2012). I have lived in 6 states and 30 plus cities during my time in the industry. I have managed close to 30 movie theatres and opened probably just as many. Since the advent of Digital Cinema, I have found myself more on the tech side of things. But I sure do miss film and its heyday in the nineties.

I became hooked in two ways: One of my bosses asked me to go upstairs to help move the movie "Batman". I was perplexed as I had thought movies were shown on tape at that point (HA!). When I went into the projection booth with him, I immediately exclaimed "How do I get to work up here?". he told me I had to be 18 and I had to be trained and pass a test. I would later get my projection booth certification from Cobb Theatres. I still have the certificate framed on my wall to this day. The other thing that occurred in March of the next year, was a film opened called "The Hunt for Red October". I experienced my first "Standing Ovation" at the end of that movie opening night (it sent chills up my spine!). Also, I was asked to escort a Naval officer up into the booth that week. It ended up being a Navy Admiral and he acted like a little boy up there. He said that if he could, he would have gone into the movie theatre business rather than the Navy. Which made me feel really good about my decision to work there.

[Mike Blakesley]

No replies in almost 2 weeks. Out of this whole forum, there are only the above 10 of us who are in the theater business these days? This thread needs a bump.

If that doesn't work...clearly a membership drive is warranted.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

No replies in almost 2 weeks. Out of this whole forum, there are only the above 10 of us who are in the theater business these days? This thread needs a bump.

If that doesn't work...clearly a membership drive is warranted.

Even worse is the nearly 400 views with only the few responses here. It's a pattern with threads I start, guess I'm not good enough or interesting enough for people to care.

[Steve Guttag]

Damn...I fell for the Tony started a thread bait again!