I did something really stupid at work tonight, and the worst part about it is that I can't understand how I possibly could have made this mistake.

Why is it that you can make it through some fairly rigorous, complex stuff just fine, then you have the simplest and most straightforward of tasks which you then proceed to somehow foul up?

What did I do? I threaded the incorrect movie. Yes, it was corrected prior to hitting the feature (the final trailer had just ended!) However, with clearly marked schedules and my (usually) extremely vigilant triple-checking procedure, I cannot for the life of me understand how this one could have slipped by. Worse, this comes less than 24 hours after a satirical posting about the importance of checking things! What egg on my face?

I pride myself on the accuracy and consistency of my work, and errors are few and far between...but this is what makes this one especially annoying: it was so obvious and avoidable.

OK, so I can accept that mistakes will crop up from time to time. But the question is: what about the idea of stupid, inane mistakes cropping up? Shouldn't they be completely absent? What an embarrassment.

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Once, and only once, did I manage to build up a print with reels in something other than the correct order. I somehow put on reel 7 where reel 4 should have been, and reel 4 was where reel 7 should have been! (And this print played like this for three days without anyone noticing!) >_<

Well, I got the hang of the machine in no time and threaded up the projector without a hitch...or so I thought. When the picture hit the screen, something was amiss. Mirrored picture, no sound. D'OH! In my eagerness, I accidentally threaded the print soundtrack in and failed to catch that error . I had to stop the projector and, with the assistance of the theatre's "booth ushers," re-feed the paid-out film back into the center of the platter pack to get it going again. Five minutes and one red face later, we restarted the show, this time threaded as God and Norelco intended.

Sooner or later, a goof catches up with up. As long as no film was damaged, I guess we can live down to our human-ness, pick up the pieces, and get back to doing film right.

Bad thing was, the splice I replaced wasnt the bad one.

Josh

The Ashcraft lamps in our booth can be a little tricky to run these days and I suspect they need a good going over by a tech. If you don't keep a close eye on them, they have been known to lose their arcs when the arc gap gets a little too large. This little problem jumped up and bit us with one machine during this particular show while I was distracted with inspecting film and George was tinkering with the other machine.

As I was on about reel four, with my back to machine one, I suddenly got this funny feeling and thought to myself, "Uh oh, It's been too long since either of us have checked the arc on number one!" I then spun around and discovered that the lamp was indeed dark. I dove for the lamp and re-struck the arc, hoping that we'd been off-screen for only a second or so. Not so, however. Later, floor staff told us the screen was dark for about five minutes. And they never even radioed the booth to tell us!

Everybody makes bone-head mistakes once in a while. It's not so much about whether mistakes are made or not. (Obviously NO mistake is "OK".) What separates the "men from the boys", metaphorically speaking, is the way one conducts him/herself in the face of a problem.

Do you stand there, denying the mistake, making excuses or do you hop on your feet and fix the damned problem?

In my experience, it's an unwritten rule that the audience will give you a Mulligan if the mistake is relatively minor and it happens before the feature actually starts.

"And that's what happens when you try to do two things at once, class!"

Back in 1989 I had just been hired at a Cinemark. This particular location was their flagship at the time. My first shift and the first round of movies, the manager comes running up to the booth 5 minutes before #6 was supposed to start. (I have no idea what the movie was, but I remember it was #6.) He says that all of their policy trailers are in terrible condition and that the owners Lee Roy and Tandy Mitchell just walked in the door and were about to watch that movie. He was freaking VERY badly over it and demanded that I unthread it and get a clean copy on there.

To make a long story short, I grabbed a few policies out of the cabinet (all were in bad condition) and found one on a spot check that wasn't too horrible. It was labeled "FRJ head". (FRJ=Front Row Joe) I raced over to #6 with the splicer, got the thing dropped in and the machine rethreaded and hit START right on time. I guess I don't even need to tell you that whoever broke that trailer down should have written "FRJ tail"! If it hadn't been for the numnuts who mislabeled it and wound it emulsion in (and also the fact that I was rushed and had no idea what the beginning and ending of the policy looked like), I would not have screwed that up.

So just like Joe did, the second it hit the screen I saw what had happened. I turned the fader to "0", closed the douser and kept the lights at half and waited there, and waited there, and waited there, and waited there (these policies were in excess of 2 minutes), and then waited there some more until it finally played through. The manager was standing there freaking out even moreso over it (he was acting like he was a mob target) and demanded that I stop the projector and turn it around, but I had to keep explaining to him that such a thing would take a LOT more time. (By the way, he didn't last long.)

Nowadays if the head / tail is not obvious to me, I look at the emulsion in the reflection of the light to determine if it is heads or tails out. I haven't screwed up a trailer change in any fashion since that day (and I've probably done about ten thousand others in the last 13 years).

We're all allowed one mistake, right?

Right...but just that one.

The analog soundtrack is always on the outboard (towards you) side of the projector as you thread.

The emulsion side of a 35mm release print always faces the lamphouse. The base side of the print is always towards the lens.

The image in the gate is always upside down.

The image will always "read" correctly from the emulsion side of the print.

To summarize: As you look at the film coming into the projector head, the analog soundtrack should be outboard, the image on the print should be upside down, and the image (title lettering) should read correctly if you view the print from the lamphouse side.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Anyone who has worked in a booth for any length of time has gotten bitten by the flipped soundtrack, the wrong lens/aperture, change-over only to find the arc not struck, etc. What is REALLY embarrassing is when you've been in the booth for years and should know better, but because of some small distraction, it comes up and bites you on the butt again. But I've got one better than the soundtrack flip-a-roo. This is very much in line with Manny's, only with a lot more dire consequences.

I was called in for a screening at the museum it so happened at a time that they had just hired a new AV Manager, a young guy just out of college. He was in charge of everything technical in the theatre -- sound mixing for live shows, slide lectures, everything except 35mm projection -- for that he needed to schedule in a licensed operator. So on this his first film screening on his new job, as I am preping this short film, we carry on an animated discussion about the 35mm system, the integration into the house sound system, then moved to museum politics. I start the show; our conversation continues. I make the first two change-overs showing him how it works. He is impressed. But now as we are talking, out of the corner of my eye, I begin to check the third reel playing out thinking I have to bring the lights to "Credit" level soon. Now I begin to shut out his discussion and my mind starts to focus on the film on the screen I and realize something is very wrong. What's wrong is that the there's about 7 minutes on the last reel and nothing on the screen seems to be coming to a conclusion; in fact, what sounds like a new plot twist is beginning.

It would probably be really cool if someone was there with a camera to snap your face at that moment of revelation when it "dawns on you." I stop him in mid-sentence and ask, "Er, do you remember if there are any other film cans downstairs?" "Why?" he asks innocently. "Well, because unless they can get to town, find a lawyer and get some evidence to go to trial in the next 4 minutes, we are missing three, maybe four more reels of this movie." This kid goes white. I mean, he's very white to begin with, but now he looks like he is going to faint right there in front of me. I tell him to sit down and drink some water. He kept repeating over and over, "Oh my God, what are we going to do? "Well, in a situation like this, since we don't have the rest of the film, its simple. We just have to go out and tell the audience that we can't finish the show." I thought a little levity would help, so I add, "And by the way, who's this WE you speak of?" It didn't.

Knowing it was my fault for not realizing that the unfortunate fade-out at the end of R3 was NOT the end of the movie, I said, "Look you just sit here, I'll go out and tell the audience." I went out to the theatre and told the 200 people sitting there in CREDITS lighting that the distributor hadn't send the full feature and we are very sorry but we cannot finish the screening and they could see it next week, pickup passes at the door, blah, blah, blah.

I love museum audiences -- they are so polite. They took it quite well....seemed quite understanding of my explanation. I was actually a little pleased with myself thinking, "Gee, that was easy." And just as I was making my get-away, happy that no one asked the obvious, one feisty old guy down in front was a bit more vocal, a bit more Brooklyn. He yells out in typical Brooklynese, "Hey, the distributor didn't send you all the reels, so how come you didn't figure this out till just now?" "Damn," thinks I, "caught." My voice mumbled, "Yes, that was our error, sorry." while my brain thought, in perfect Brooklynese, "Yah, screw you, pal."

There is a good reason the union has a rule that no one other than the projectionist is allowed in the booth while the film is running. Beware distractions, my brothers!