here is one of mine.

One time the owner of cinemark decided to screen Titanic in his house. (he has his own in house booth and hires cinemark UB's to run film). The proj. ws returning back to the theater and was carrying the print by his lone self up the emergency stairs in the back of the building when all of the sudden, uh-oh the ceneter ring collapsed and down from the heads to the tails comes the famous unraveling Titanic. A movie i am guessing about 3 and a half miles long. the manager was not there at the right time to help him out. She just missed the print. I believe after countless hours of picking it back up and rewinding on to the proper reels, courier picked up print and sent it to, oh yes we all know him as, Brad Miller.

1) Grabbing a Neumade splicer in a hurry and hitting my fingers on the razor blades.

2) Doing an emergency lamp change (CFS lamphouse) -- I reached in to feel if the lamp was cool enough to change yet. Of course, you can't feel heat through a leather glove so I had to reach in bare handed. I didn't actually touch the lamp, just put my hand about 3 inches from it. It was still hot so I instinctively recoiled my hand out of the way. Dumb-ass-me! I hit my hand on the rough edge of the dichroic cold-mirror and split my knuckle open! I got the show going again before I went to the hospital to get stitches, however! (It only took 3 of them but it bled like hell.)

PAINFUL mistake ANOTHER person made in my presence:

While rewinding a 6K reel full of film, he grabbed the reel, spinning at top speed, with his bare hand. I don't remember if he had to get stitches but he bled like hell too!

So, the moral of the story is:
"When I say I give blood and sweat for this company, I really mean it!"

When we played "Mystery, Alaska" my manager had arranged a special sneak preview in cooperation with a local radio station. We do a lot of promo's with this station so this wasn't anything special.

Ok, so I build up the print right? This isn't anything new for me, and I'm not under any time pressure. I liesurely build it up and leave at 5, thinking the 7 sneak will go fine. I get a call about 9:30, "Geuss what you did." Well I....I can't believe I'm telling you guys this. Oh well. Somehow-to this day I don't knwo how-I got reels 6 and 4 mixed up. That's right folks, I built it in this order:
1, 2, 3, 6, 5, 4, 7

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I had built up the print, checking the leaders to make sure the reels were heads up. Loaded the film up, and me and another co-worker screened it. I was really getting into it when reel six comes up. At the end of reel five, the troopers have reached an outpost after the slaughter. They all split up and search the place.

When the reel change occurs, four or five soldiers are upside down looking at something on the ground. I'm hoping this is the viewpoint of a victim, but I'm not buying it. Just hoping. A few seconds later, the Russian like gibberish dialogue starts up and I'm hightailing it upstairs.

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The man with the magic hands.

And lucky me, it was "Saving Private Ryan." i'd been putting films together for quite some time at the point and had just been lucky i guess, cause i didn't know that a movie could come in tails-up and my boss, not the best teacher in the world, never told me.

Silly me, i didn't notice the problem til reel 9 when i noticed that the credits were at the beginning of the reel (i know these things have long credits, but 20 minutes?!) hehe

oh yeah, here's another: It was a sunday night i believe, when me and my coworker spent most of the night changing signs around (and not paying attention to the film). We were just finishing up the signs when i heard the music at the end of the film. i opened up the door to the booth and stood for a moment in shock and horror at the film, about 10% of which was on the platter, the other 90% had neatly distributed itself on the floor all around the booth. we were there for about an hour and a half untangling and running it back onto the platter. Annoyingly enough, while my coworker ran for a camera (before we picked the mess up) she later lost the film! that would have made a nice picture for my album.. *sigh*

jasoN

The drive-in I worked at in the late 1960's had old RCA power amps (I recall they each had four 807 output tubes) with brittle wiring that occasionally caught fire on hot nights. We always had a CO-2 fire extinguisher handy to quell the flames and minimize the damage and subsequent repairs.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

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When did this happen? I was just kidding when I said I would feed various of your body parts to the projector if you screwed off! Sheesh...

I recall a time when, during a print build-up, I attempted to slow a 6000 reel down by hand after the film had wound off it to another 6000. I was using the heel of my hand against the face of the reel out near the edge, just above the holes through the flange. This was an older reel without the free-spinning core and was warped somewhat in places so I had to watch what I was doing. Just then (dramatic intro music) the manager snuck up the stairs behind me and allowed the booth door to slam behind him. I jumped, spun my head around and promptly inserted my thumb through one of the rapidly spinning flange holes. It sliced the skin off the top of my thumb and trimmed my fingernail for me. Very painful...and profusely bloody.

I also have had a finger pulled through a sprocket, an upper pull down sprocket. Again, the film got lucky because it was the tail leader of the film. I was more freaked out than hurt for about a good two minutes. Then the pain caught up with me and the peroxide only seemed to accentuate that pain. But it took me about thirty minutes to stanch the bleeding, and I didn't need any stitches.

Don't ask me how it is I did these things to myself. I still haven't figured out what possessed me to display such an enormous magnitude of sheer stupidity. But I assure you guys, I am safer now. You can trust me in a booth. Really!

I've seen Joe Redifer's "Projection Seminar" tape. Is that you with the blood spurting out when you get your fingers caught in the Christie or under the tape splicer's guillotine? That bare-bulb xenon explosion wasn't too pleasant either. Thank heaven for the Red Cross and Joe's SFX.