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Author
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Topic: Black vertical scratches
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John Walsh
Film God
Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted 02-18-2000 09:29 AM
Black colored scratches usually mean the scratch is on the base side of the film. If it's a scratch that "skips" than that's an indication it's being caused somewhere near the intermittent, or sometimes by the platter feed-out arm (as it swings back and forth). If it's continuous, than it could be almost anywhere in the film path, from platter to projector and/or back. Personally, I find that the projector almost never scratches film. It's usually somewhere on the platter or the "right-angle" rollers on the top/bottom of the projector. Where are the scratches? In the center, or off to one side, etc. We had a weird thing awhile ago. The on our platters (Xetron- new style) film use to just go from a platter deck straight up to the top of the platter mast. Later, we added a film accumulator (to prevent static platter wraps) to our platters. To make it work, the film now goes all the way down to the bottom of the platter mast, then back to the top. As it goes down, then back up, the film is parallel to itself with the emulsion sides facing. Static electricity was causing the two lengths of film to stick together while running. They stuck hard, too. That film did have scratches on it, but I can't say for sure that caused it. (We have too many "unknowns" here, if you know what I mean!) I meant to thread it reversed (with base sides facing) to see what would happen, but didn't get the chance. Christie' feed-out roller assembly has a nice feature where it puts a little tension on the film after the pay-out, which would probably prevent this.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-23-2000 10:37 PM
Oh! I feel your pain, Rob!We've had a lot of problems like this in the past. Problems would occur on one proj. then the print gets moved. It can be a nightmare! My advice is to try to figure out if it's caused by "operator error" or "equipment problems"... First, do you have any kind of record keeping on where prints were in the past? I use the trailer lists we have to keep as a kind of "history" log. If there's a problem I can just look back and see what houses that print has played in for the last few weeks. Problem is that you have to spot a pattern. That might mean that you'll have to scratch a couple of prints. Second, at Cinemark we have to sign off on a checklist for every movie we start. That way you can see who ran a particular show when a problem occured. People don't like to do it at first but if you tell them they have to or face "discipline", it'll become a routine thing after a while. Again, patterns will start to show up. For instance, if "person X" works on Wednesday nights and a problem always seems to appear on Thurdsay morning you can make a pretty good guess who's messing stuff up. Then you can supervise that person more closely and "correct" the situation. At Tinseltown (Cinemark) we were lacking in the presentation department for a while, despite the fact that we had a couple of really good people. We enacted a "Presentation Improvement Program" (Affectionately known as P.I.P) Since this summer we have improved things 1000%. (We also got rid of a lot of "dead wood" if you know what I mean.  ) We went from several wraps a week to zero. We are now averaging 1-2 interruptions per month (for ANY reason, including malfunctions) when we used to have them almost daily. Finally... Get FilmGuard! It will minimize ,if not eliminate, those fine scratches!
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