Introducing 35mm to our theater

[Steve Guttag]

Sam, believe it or not, the 5-Star, if properly set up, isn't the tight loop soundhead. It is all in the spring tension on the damper roller and the damping fluid. When one gets it right, there should be a slight bowing of the film as it enters the pinch roller. You can use a spring scale to set the return spring tension but the "field" way of setting it is to turn the roller assembly 90-degrees so the spring is trying to pull the roller up. It should have just enough strength to overcome gravity but barely. Bend both ends of the spring to achieve this. Make sure the damping fluid is well applied but don't go crazy as it will be messy anyway. Reinstall the assembly and it will track loads better and you'll see that the film is no longer under tension feeding into the the pinch roller.

With that said, I agree with Brad, there is no way to run a Simplex (or RCA) soundhead without damaging the emulsion of the film. The mod that Brad refers to removes the pinch roller, which will preclude the drum from being up to speed in time for the changeover and will also prolong the time the leader and picture will be slipping on the sound drum. It can work for platter houses because the leader can be as long as it needs to be to get the drum up to speed.

With respect to other film damage...I could go down section by section of which part is better worse on each brand of machine. There is no reason that a Simplex should have a dirtier print (aside from the pinch roller) than Century. I don't care to get into it right now as it won't amount to a hill of beans. Suffice to say, I prefer Simplex, most respects to Century, particularly on the gear side. My biggest beef with Simplex is that the pinch roller contacts the film...right in the picture area. If the pinch roller were redesigned with a mating drum (sort of like Kinoton did with the RSSD), that would remove the issue. Simplex does have to contend with oil so it is possible to have the oil get onto the film, which will attract dirt to stick to the film.

[Sam Chavez]

As Steve says, we could debate it all again but it comes to nothing at this point. I know of the spring and damper adjustment procedure as we all do but they came from Strong way too tight and mostly they were run that way thru their miserable life.

[Steve Kraus]

Re Chicago Film Society, their lead projectionist is the head projectionist at Chicago's Music Box Theatre,a 35 / 70 / 16 / digital venue, 35 & 70 via changeover. I don't know what they do in Sprocket School.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Re Chicago Film Society, their lead projectionist is the head projectionist at Chicago's Music Box Theatre,a 35 / 70 / 16 / digital venue, 35 & 70 via changeover. I don't know what they do in Sprocket School.

I figured you'd be the teacher at their sprocket school by now...

[Sean McKinnon]

Griffen, Look into AMIA they offer a lot of different workshops incuding projection ones.

[Kyle Mikolajczyk]

The company I work for currently has used (but bench tested and confirmed OK) CP650s available - email sales {at} movingimagetech.com if interested. However, availability does vary: we could sell all the ones we have tomorrow and then not acquire any others for several months, or we could receive another 10 on an upgrade trade-in and not have any customers for them for months. Your best bet would likely be to take the main analog output of the 650 into the analog input of the 750 and just use the 650 for film, as this would be least disruptive to your current audio system.

A significant challenge is going to be getting hold of prints. There are now essentially four sources for 35mm movies:

• The major nonprofit archives (UCLA, Library of Congress, etc.)
• The Hollywood studio archives
• A small niche of arthouse distributors that still offer prints (e.g. Criterion/Janus, Milestone)
• Private film collectors

Pretty much all of these sources will need serious convincing that (a) the projectors and all equipment used in film handling is maintained in near new condition, and (b) that all projectionists who will be handling the film are trained to archival standards and with significant experience in the job. They will also likely require you to carry insurance to cover the cost of replacing any damaged prints. More importantly, you'll need a booker or other contact who has relationships with these organizations, and can convince them to let prints out to you. In some cases, you will also need to arrange the loan of the print and the screening license for the movie from the rights owner as two separate transactions. Nonprofit archives and private collectors, for example, do not own or control the copyright to most of the titles in their collections.

I am a bit late to the party, but last time I checked with Criterion a year or two ago they said they have "no way of inspecting prints anymore" and if you requested a print from them it might not come complete or in a projectable state, so I would not count on Criterion or any other place that has no way of inspecting prints these days.

[Leo Enticknap]

Ughhh - that's disappointing news, and yet another hurdle in the way of arthouse and cinematheque type venues that are trying to reintroduce or maintain 35mm screenings. I've noticed that some are now explicitly advertising and promoting shows as being on 35mm, which is obviously problematic if the supplier of the print cannot guarantee that it is usable. Criterion has just laid off a bunch of people, and even though your contact with them was long before that, I do wonder if their economic difficulties go back to that time, and that one of their first responses was to let go the people they had who knew how to inspect a film print; possibly around the time they got into the streaming business (incidentally, I do not necessarily support the political spin this article puts on it, not least because if offers no evidence for what the author believes is the cause of the effect - the recession hitting disc and streaming sales more generally is a far more likely explanation than anything directly political).

The only silver lining is that the remaining houses that still play 35mm regularly likely have projectionists who know how to handle the prints, with the result that the prints now in circulation are less likely to suffer serious accidental damage than would have been the case 10-15 years ago. But even so, being in a situation in which you are offering 35mm as a selling point, but cannot guarantee actually to be able to deliver it until you have the print in the building and onto the bench yourself, is a significant risk to that business model slash cultural mission.