Film Inspection Reports

[Michael Rousselet]

I worked at a University and some small theaters as a film projectionist, the film inspection report was fairly basic, title, film specs, aspect ration, cue marks, frame count, notes, etc. Here is an example. Is there something I can do to make this better? more detailed. I feel like film handling needs to be more descriptive because it's rarer, or fragile, and unstable we should really let them know how the print is? any suggestions?

[Leo Enticknap]

I would suggest being clear what information you are trying to gather, and why. At the last theater I worked as a projectionist as - a major arthouse - the objectives were fourfold.

• To cover our asses if we were accused by a print's owner of damaging it after its return
• To gather information needed to enhance the quality of presentation (e.g. what the end cue image is)
• To provide information for programmers when deciding what print or DCP to book when playing the film again
• To help us prepare if and when we played the same print again

I inherited a paper form from my predecessor, which I turned into a Word document with some pull-down menus, free text fields, and check boxes, to enable quicker completion and easier forwarding to others as needed. It would have been great to evolve that into a proper database, but I didn't have the time or expertise to do that. Here are some examples:

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I didn't see the point of separate rows or fields for each reel, because in the vast majority of cases, they were all similar in terms of both physical and photographic quality. Where there were significant differences between the reels, I noted it in the "further information" field.

The form evolved over the four years I worked there. For example, you'll see in a later report that I added a field for the perforation type. This was because we once received a magoptical print with CS perfs that needed repair, and discovered that we didn't have a Catozzo splicer with CS-compatible teeth. So I decided that the perforation type would be useful to know if a print came back again.

[Ryan Gallagher]

This will be a useful thread, i've been wanting to modernize our xerox sheet, and have collected a few others for reference. The problem I see with making nice digital one is you need a display and keyboard or laptop close enough to the inspection bench for it not to be obscenely annoying to use. Maybe one day.

Our current blank:

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One I took a photo of from Music Box:

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And he is what at least one distributor/archive was generating and sending along, a bit more in depth than your average booth report.

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