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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Endangered Theatres Around the World
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-10-2017 08:55 PM
These pictures are no doubt decades old, taken before the era of platter booths or the cinema multiplex -- all the setups look like they still are change-over operations in single screen theatres as no platters can be seen, so there would be no reason to convert the lamphouses to xenon. The only advantage xenon gave the exhibitor was to allow the use of platters and single projector operation and out of the growth of the multiplex. If they were still running change-over, then xenon got the exhibitor no advantage; he still needed those well-paid (relatively), trained projectionists to run each show. If you've got to pay a crew of projectionist, then running change-overs was just part of the job; no exhibitor would put in xenon just so the projectionists' didn't have to watch carbon trims. Most exhibitors wouldn't make the switch to xenon until the platter made it worth the layout cost.
Once the platter was introduced, then it made economic sense -- invest in the platter and switch to xenon and Mr. Exhibitor could once and for all, rid himself of that pesky, expensive team of salaried projectionists, who many times were the highest paid employees on the payroll. Instead, he could find an eager high school age splice jockey who would be happy to work for minimum wage, saving said exhibitor enough cash to torture his single into barely functional double, triple or even quadruple screens in the same building, but more importantly, with just about the same the number of personnel it cost him to run his single screen. What a concept. And so the number of screens multiplied like rabbits and so did the number under-experience, under-paid and most importantly, under-trained projection "attendants."
And that, boys and girls, is when we started to watch the slow but inexorable decline and side into the mire and goop of exhibition mediocrity.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 02-10-2017 09:51 PM
Frank: Sometime in the late 1970's, I worked at an old theater that had been cut
up into a triplex. One big auditorium downstairs, and the former balcony split in
half to make two smaller auditoriums. It was somewhere out on the north-east
end of Long Island.
They ran 6,000ft reels, and carbon arcs! They had a semi-automated
changeover system that would strike the arc and start the film for the
2nd reel. It only worked about 70% of the time. (biggest problem was
the arc auto-strike) Most of time I ran around to the different booths,
disabled the automation & did the change-overs manually, but there
was usually one show a day where the timing was too tight for me to
be in two booths at once.
So, I'd do the change-over in whatever auditorium had the biggest crowd,
and hope for the best in the other one.
They eventually switched to xenons & kicked the union out- for better or worse.
And yes- - for most of those years, I was the highest paid person on the staff.
I still am at a couple of venues I work at.
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