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Author Topic: I Finally Met The Booth Monster! Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-27-2005 06:49 PM                     It started out as a normal day.... a drive of about 35 miles to my service call... Stop at MacDonalds for a Cinnamon Roll and Diet Coke then the leiserly drive into the west Utah Desert area to this theatres location whom we will just refer to as "My Service call". I was to replace and adjist 12 lateral guide rollers and ruby balls in 6 Christie P35GP's as well as a dead fan in an Ashley power amp... and check on a few other things, all pretty basic stuff on "My Serice call". I arrived At "My Service Call" location unscathed by any of the ballistic heading insane Utah drivers and having enjoyed getting the Cinamon roll all over my shirt. I figured oh what the heck, I'll probably be getting dirty anyway working on these Christies! I get into the building and up to the booth and turn on some lighting when out of the corner of my eye I see what appears to be a snake going across the floor.... I switch on some more lighting and low and behold I meet the booth monster . Now in 25 years I've never ACTUALLY met a booth monster, ever! Here I was face to film with one and geez its nearing Halloween too... what to do... I approached it very, very carefully so as not to ruffle it too much and not to drive it onto some other complex form or shape after all this is a real monster that I've heard alot of stories about...... I happened to have my digital camera with and pulled it out ever so carefully so the monster retained its existing shape and wouldn't waver. Snap! I got its picture and what I captured is below ! Now what to do with it......? I thought I could just suck it up in the vacuum, but this just didn't work......... Clearly the little red shop vac was just not big enough for this monster. So how did I get rid of it.... well, I called the theatre's head office and told them to send their dam manager over to deal with it. I had work to do!  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-27-2005 07:00 PM                  Ya know Mark, that 1st pic sorta reminds me of a scene from "The Blob" when it's in the projection booth and about to pounce on the projectionist... YIKES!  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-27-2005 07:03 PM                     Yea Phil, Its a good thing the port glass was in that night! I fear someone down stairs in that auditorium woulda been hanged. Mark  |  IP: Logged Jon Miller Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 973 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 10-27-2005 07:21 PM                     Yow...looks like the Attack of the Mutant Film! Any chance the automation was a Christie CA21 with the early EEPROM version that, after a power glitch, ignored a dropped failsafe and allowed the film to mindlessly motor onto the floor?  |  IP: Logged Matthew Bailey Master Film Handler Posts: 461 From: Port Arthur,TX Registered: Sep 2000 posted 10-27-2005 07:27 PM                     Looks like you'll need the 6k's & MUT.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-27-2005 07:43 PM                     quote: Jon Miller Any chance the automation was a Christie CA21 No not a CA-21.... Its the very worst there is... A Smart automation unit . And no I didn't sell or install it, I wouldn't ever put a customer though that much hassle. I think its visible in one of the photos... if not then you don't want to know.... Well, the cause is always a totally incompetant operator but there was another reason for it not shutting down...we can't blame the incompetant operator 100% for this one...... but I'll peg them at 95% for sure! The failsafe arms were stuck in the run position... Thank you Christie for selecting one piece of crap cue detector to sell and thank you SPECO for building it.... The cheap 25 cent bushings were siezed to their shaft! But there is more to the story...... Why on earth didn't it take up? From looking at this photo its obvious that the incompetant operator didn't bother to take up the film slack when he/she/it threaded up. Some people just don't belong in the booth! Heck, they didn't even look to see if the platter(S) were running and they had to walk right past it to go back down stairs. I waited for a couple of hours and no one showed up to clean it up so I wound it back through the top projector feed roller and onto a platter ring using the mut for control... took only about 45 min... not a single snarl or pretzel problem, it just went right back where it came. Yhe more I thought about it the more I was afraid someone with scissors and splicer in hand would show up to make an arrempt to cut it apart and put it back in order... so I went ahead and took care of it myself. Mark  |  IP: Logged Robert Harrison Expert Film Handler Posts: 239 From: Harwood Heights, Illinois, USA Registered: Jun 2005 posted 10-27-2005 08:12 PM                     Mark, You wound the print back on the platter in 45 minutes without any chopping and untangling? You are TRULY a FILM GOD! Perhaps you can come to Illinois again the next time I accidentaly drop a print down the hatch from the #1 projection room. Thankfully, that hasn't happened since the first "Flintstones" movie.  |  IP: Logged Jon Miller Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 973 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 10-27-2005 08:18 PM                     That so-called "projectionist" needs to be hung by his nutsack with a noose made from the spilled film for not taking up the slack while threading up. From the looks of things, I wouldn't be surprised if that numbnut's little filmic felony was aided and abetted by a show start timer. One more reason why timers are another one of those -y ideas to hit the booth, along with thoughtless operators.  |  IP: Logged Jason M Miller Master Film Handler Posts: 284 From: Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA Registered: Jul 2004 posted 10-27-2005 08:43 PM                     now, how hard is it to look at the platter and see the thing is not moving, really did they hire a blind projection.  |  IP: Logged Brian Michael Weidemann Expert cat molester Posts: 944 From: Costa Mesa, CA United States Registered: Feb 2004 posted 10-27-2005 08:50 PM                        I met the Booth Monster once. I was visiting my first theatre again after I had left and they said, "Hey, could you come upstairs and ... help with something really quick?" Since I wasn't technically employed with that chain at that point, I got kicked out of the booth by the manager when I was found helping them out. I met Son of Booth Monster not too long ago, relatively. A newbie made an innocent mistake, but a VERY GUILTY lack double checking or paying attention for the subsequent two hours. Especially since the platters for that projector are OPERATOR SIDE! Neither instance, I can guarantee you, was corrected in 45 minutes!  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-27-2005 09:19 PM                     quote: Robert Harrison Perhaps you can come to Illinois again the next time I accidentaly drop a print down the hatch from the #1 projection room. Thankfully, that hasn't happened since the first "Flintstones" movie. Remember Bob, I told everyone back in Illinois last time I was there that if you want to visit you have to come out here... heck we have tall enough mountains here to dangle 12,000 feet of film from and just let it spin its own twists out..... Much easier and alot more scenic this way!! Yea, it really only took about 45 minites to get it back on the deck but it was tail in on the ring. If I thought it would take me a long time I would definately left it for the manager to deal with. After it was back on the deck I free-wheeled the platter it was on and used two pulleys on the MUT to transfer it head in to the next deck down. Worked fine and took about another 30 min. Believe me dropping a print is much worse than this. This looks really bad... it is really bad.... but it all comes back up off the floor no tangles involved exactly the same way it gets laid down. Mark  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 10-27-2005 09:45 PM                        Hopefully that's "The Fog" and not something more cinematically important like "Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story".  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 10-27-2005 10:36 PM                        It's probably The Fog print that we're supposed to get tomorrow...we got a call today that it will be delayed until 4:30.  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 10-27-2005 11:18 PM                    Boy that photo brings back memories. Had that exact same thing happen many many moons ago. How long ago? The film was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since it piled up nice and (relatively) neat, we were able to pull it all up onto 6K reels with a MUT without too much difficulty, and then build it back onto the platter. I think we cancelled one show. I don't even think the film (acetate) broke once.  |  IP: Logged Barry Floyd Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1079 From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-28-2005 03:30 AM                        Had that happen to me last November during the opening "sold-out" weekend of "The Incredibles". My 2 year old son wandered into the booth and grabbed ahold of the bottom (take-up)platter deck. Once it stopped spinning it no longer interested him, so he left the room. His older brother decided he would tell me about it about 10 minutes after it happened. We were able to disengage the drive motor from the platter and spin it on by hand, but it took a good 10-15 minutes. The show never stopped, and no one in the field ever knew anything was out of the ordinary. Since then, my boys have learned NOT to cross the tape line on the floor to Daddys' office!  |  IP: Logged

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