I am here in Telluride Colorado working at the 21st Mountain Film.
Mountain Film is a film festival where films about mountain sports, living
or environment are presented.

I am working as a video technician as 60% of the festival originates on
video. I am responsible for installing our two new Digital Projection 5GV
video projectors. They are very good and make Joe Kane’s Video
Essentials look great. We have reached a consensus that our video
projection looks as good or better than average 16mm. Now really good
16mm can look better, however we are just talking averages here. Now
when I present Beta SP tapes, the quality is all over the map as you can
imagine. Next year I will argue for a better tape format. Any suggestions?
We can show 70mm film here, but I don’t think that VHS will look any
better blown up to 70mm.

I had to remount two Brenkert BX100 projector heads in the Masons
hall. We took them out last year to be rebuilt. They haven’t been rebuilt,
but they still work.

Mountain Film uses 35mm film, 16mm film, Video (Beta SP preferred),
Slides, prints, and hand puppets where appropriate.

Mountain Film is trying to be a socially conscious, environmentally aware
and a politically savvy film festival. There are lots of programs on Butan,
Tibet and other oppressed backward countries. There are still a few films
on mountain sports like skiing, climbing and the always amusing
base-jumping.

Today I was helping the projectionist at the Nugget run her trailer reel.
She started the projector and said that something was rubbing. I looked
and saw that I had pushed the video projector over too far and the power
cable was rubbing the take-up. I gently pulled the power cable away and
there was a shower of sparks. The BX jacket cut the power line. Boy I
thought I had screwed the pooch this time. We had no power to the
projector motor. It was 3 hours to show time. We have a festival to put
on. Twenty minutes later and a couple of wire nuts we were back in
business.

Tomorrow I get to figure out why the scope lens in the number 2
projector at the Nugget tilts to the right. The 1:85 lens does not. I get to
try to figure out why the number 1 projector has loose framing. It can
actually drift up or down; they haven’t explained which. I also get to set
up a 2 slide projector dissolve unit complete with tape sync. I hate slide
projectors! This is where the hand puppets would come in handy. After
two 35mm projectors, one 16mm projector, one large video projector
and the video rack, I have no idea where to put the slide projectors.

The Nugget booth is only 6 feet tall. I am 6’ 4” tall. I will be bent over by
the end of the festival. It was in this booth where I got my nickname
“Large Ian” in 1991.

We get to show a lot of shorts here. Some as few as 1 minute long. There
are only 3 feature length 35mm shows. One was Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid. That played this evening and was a pretty rough print. We
get to show Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. I really like this film. It ties in
with the whole Tibet / Butan thing.

The theory is that I will not be running any film this weekend, but I
probably will. I wish I could have brought some RP40 with me. Does
anyone have any idea where I can score some inexpensive test film?

Telluride is at 9,000 feet above sea level. It has been down in the forties
at night and gets up to around the 60s during the day. It poured rain twice
today. Hopefully all these mountain people are prepared for the different
weather.

I get a charge out of working these film festivals in Telluride. The old
equipment is held together through hope and prayer. As evidence the
town is strung with Tibetan prayer flags. The people are warm and
friendly. The town puts itself out for these festivals. It’s fun working with a
great group of dedicated people who really care about what they are
doing. I wish I could sustain this feeling all the year around. Come
Tuesday it will be back to the grind in Denver.

Take the lens and barrel out of the projector. Loosen the screws on the
barrel just enough so you can maneuver the lens inside it. Reinstall it into
the projector. Get you a scope trailer that is matted to 1.85 flat (vertical
black bars on the sides) and make a loop of the green band (since you
don't have test film). With the green band loop running and WITHOUT
touching the focus knob, adjust the lens in and out as well as spinning it in
the lens barrel until the picture is level and in focus. Then, very carefully
remove the lens and barrel and re-tighten those screws on the barrel.

Re-install the newly adjusted lens and make sure you didn't let the lens
slip while you were taking it out after adjusting. It should slide right into
focus and be level.

As for the line-multiplying device like a Farujia line doubler or quadrupler
the Digital Projection system doesn't need one. The T.I. chip can't handle
scanned video. It must store the entire image and present it to the
micro-mirror chip all at once. It can refresh a thousand times per second
and so it is like line doubling only better. Digital Projection recommends
you don't use any outboard processing. Trust me it really works. The
5GV uses three chips each with over 800,000 mirrors on them. The
resolution is 1024 X 768

Imagine you are waiting in line at the Nugget Theatre to get in to see the
movie “Dirt”. The full moon is rising over the mountains to the west of
Telluride. Your breath is taken away by the scene. The doors open and
the line is let in to the theatre. You walk in to the auditorium and there is
some music, perhaps a little new age. On the screen is a high definition
image of the exact scene you just left. The full moon rising over the
mountains west of Telluride.

I had a thought when I knew I was coming up to Mountain Film, to be a
video technician. I wanted something on the screen while our audience
was walking in to the theatre. I wanted to bring a DVD player with me
and play some neat things to the crowd. This idea didn’t work out
because of copyright problems and programming choices. The fellow who
procured our video projectors is also a videographer. He brought in his
professional DV camera and shot the scenes for our “Video Intermission
Music”.

Scenes of the mountains and the moon are not subject to copyright laws
that I know of and I think the audience appreciated it without knowing
exactly what was going on. Scenes of mountains fit in to the concept of
Mountain Film, I hope. Remember “The show begins on the sidewalk”.

My biggest contribution to the festival has been to rewire the Dolby
processors in two theatres to play the Non Sync in stereo. The Dolby
processors are set to matrix the stereo sound off of the videotapes. If the
stereo track is just two-track the sound comes from the front. We get
good stereo separation and the surrounds keep quiet. If perchance the
track is matrixed Dolby four-channel then the surrounds kick in nicely. Up
till now those processors have been wired to play mono in Non Sync.

All the projectors (Video and Film) are running great and the audience
loves it. Chuck from Digital Projection showed up in Telluride and seems
to be happy to have the Digital Projection projectors here at Mountain
Film. We at Mountain Film love having them here as well.

Tonight I had a phone patch to Paris. The filmmaker was supposed to be
here in Telluride. However he had to go to Africa tomorrow. I telephoned
him at 7:30 p.m. in Telluride. I dialed a hundred numbers and then had to
decide whether the tones I was hearing were rings or a busy signal. I got a
recording in French and was wondering if it was an answering machine or
the French telephone guy telling me I was an idiot, when I heard the
familiar beep. I asked “Jerome? Jerome? Telluride Mountain Film calling.
Jerome? Jerome, are you there? Jerome? Mountain Film calling.” I heard
a click and a groggy “Oui?” The phone patch was a success as the
audience was able to hear the filmmaker talk about his film. I was a
nervous wreak. I had to walk around and cool off after that one. Luckily
the film was in 35mm and the other projectionist showed it so I could take
a break.

Tomorrow should be fun. It’s all Beta, all day. I won’t see daylight at all.
The booth really heats up with three Xenon lamps on all day. (Two 35mm
projectors and one video projector) Tomorrow I will not have to turn the
film lamp houses on until 5:30 p.m.

We will have to come up with some interesting things to show the
audience for our “Video Intermission Music”. Any Ideas? We are thinking
of having our M.C. take over the booth in a hostile manner and order us
to show the film. This would all be fed live to the theatre from the booth.
We have to find a filmmaker who is game.

I was skeptical about a film festival that had so much video in it. I thought
it would be cheesy. I am surprised that it works great. The video looks
good and the audience can get in to the story without worrying about
what format it is in. There is no mention in the program about what format
the “films” are in. The audience doesn’t seem to care. It is a good test for
“Digital Cinema”. Now this is a far cry from Digital Cinema. Yes we are
using Digital Projection video projectors but the source is analogue Beta
SP in the 4-3 format. The images look great but it is still video. Good
video to be sure. No one is fooled for an instance. But you know those
people who just don’t think of these things that are not aware of what is
happening.

I was talking to a fellow on the bench out front of the Nugget. He was
going on about how good the film was. This, I think, is a tribute to the
subject matter, not the presentation. I asked him what he thought of the
video and he answered “What Video?” That was a tribute to the
presentation.

Remember that it doesn’t matter if you are showing Imax, Film, Video or
Hand Puppets, presentation matters and the story matters. A gimmick is
just a gimmick without a good story.

I worked for 14 straight hours. That wasn’t the whole day, but then there
was actually film in the evening at the Nugget.

We continued our Visual Intermission Music with a couple of skits. Some
were successful some weren’t. The day was a blur of activity, for me it
was mostly centered in the Nugget booth.

We had a fire shutter not open on the Brenkert while starting a film. I’ll
bet there isn’t a fire shutter on any of your projectors out there in
Film-Tech land. I don’t know why I remembered what it was. I thumbed
it open and on with the show. It worked for the rest of the day as well.

There was the excitement of when the Masons called because their Digital
Projection 5GV’s picture had gone white. I looked at my assistant in my
booth and said “you know how to run a VCR right?” and I was off. I
grabbed the spare lamp and took off to the Masons. We have radios for
the festivals and everybody was chipping in. We tried switching inputs
while I was walking (quickly) to the Masons. When I got there I tried a
few things and then I applied the fourth rule of electric equipment.

Fourth Rule: When it is electronic and messes up, Reboot the sucker!

The afore mentioned assistant at the nugget was reading the manual and
suggested that it might be overheating. They weren’t even showing porn. I
let it cool down for three minutes and powered it up and it worked. This
is always fun to do, in front of a live audience.

After that I let the assistant handle the last show and I went to see a show.
It’s called A Year Along The Abandoned Road. It was shot in super
Panavision 70mm and uses time laps photography to present an entire
year around a lake in one shot. The film is only 12 minutes long.

I was walking home after helping close the Nugget when I just wandered
into the Opera House to see what was up. The movie was called Genghis
Blues and is about Paul Pena a blind San Francisco Blues Musician who
taught himself to sing in the Tuvan Throatsinger style. He then travels to
Tuva to sing with them.

Tuva is north of Mongolia and is a province of Russia. They are like
Mongolians.

I wanted to go home and sleep but Rick (The Director of the Festival)
wouldn’t let me leave. He plied me with beer and Jack Daniel’s to keep
me there. After the show the screen was flown and there was the most
famous Tuvan throatsinger to sing us some songs. It had taken him six
days to travel here from Tuva.

This is what is fun about these festivals. I didn’t know about Tuva or
throatsinging and I got to hear the best in the world. I know more today,
than I did yesterday.

I must sign off and get some sleep so I can get up tomorrow and do it all
over again. Keep me in the dark and feed me Coke and Popcorn and I
will be just fine.

Until tomorrow;

Large

In case you are interested, here are the other three rules of electric
equipment.

First Rule: Plug it in.

Second Rule: Turn it on. Or check the power switch.

Third Rule: Check the breaker or fuse.

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There is nothing to report on the projection equipment. Everything is working well
now. This usually happens on Sunday afternoon. Now that we have worked the
bugs out of the equipment, the festival is over.

There are a couple of programs in each theatre tomorrow and then on to the
picnic. We will still have to do strike in each theatre. The Nugget and the Opera
House will be left as operational movie theatres. The Masons has to be turned
back into the Masonic Temple. High Camp has to be turned back into the Elk’s
Lodge.

Today I saw three films worth noting. Black is a short about some Australians
who jump off of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and parachute to the bottom.
It just looks scary.

Wind-Born is the story of a family of New Zealanders who are teaching their
teenage daughter to fly a sailplane. After she solo’s they soar around the south
island of New Zealand. The cinematography was brilliant. The only unfortunate
thing about it was it was PAL format video, transferred to NTSC. That's too
much change to put your video through.

I also watched half of Lost Horizon. The restoration is real good, but I couldn’t
stay awake for the whole film.

For our Visual Intermission Music today we did a neat thing with the Kidz Kino
program. We did Child in the Street interviews before the show and played them
Back on the big screen after we let the audience in. The kids loved it.

The fellow from Digital Projection did a seminar on Digital Cinema. It was hard to
get too much information out of him because he had to educate the ignoramus on
the basics first. He did point out that they would have a new projector on the
market in the next few months. It is supposed to have a 1280 X 1024 chip in it
and a contrast ratio of 700 to 1. It is still not good enough for the theatres to
replace film with, but I would love to have one on a theatre so you could show
video and experimental work.

At the picnic, Rick asked if anyone would be interested in taking a Tibetan
woman to the train station in Grand Junction. I raised my hand. I figured I could
take her to the train and then go have a beer with my cousin.

Tuesday, when I went to the office to take the Tibetan woman to the train station
they asked if I could fit any more people in my car. I said sure. It turns out that the
Tuvan throatsinger whose name is Congar oh and his daughter needed a ride to
the Airport in Montrose Colorado.

It was a very multicultural experience in my little car. The conversation wasn’t
going to be great because Congar oh only speaks Tuvan and Russian. I speak
American and Spanish badly. The Tibetan woman spoke Tibetan, Chinese,
English and perhaps some Indian dialects.

I passed my bag of CDs to Congar oh and indicated that he should select one to
play in the car. He selected The Blues Brothers. (The soundtrack to the film, not
the album) We listened to it all the way to the airport. I couldn’t tell if he was
grooving on it or not. I suppose he chose it because it had the word Blues in the
title. His friend Paul Pena is a Blues musician.

I spent the day dropping people off at stations and had my beer with my cousin. I
drove back to Denver and arrived around midnight. Now I am back in the real
world and fighting rush hour traffic on my way to work.

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