The Projectionist: On the best job that no longer exists

I loved coming in after school to assemble the film on the large reels used for the projectors from the small reels used for shipping. It meant I was the first person to touch new releases, which was a cool feeling for a high schooler who loved movies but was a million miles from Hollywood.

Part of that process was to etch cue marks into the film at the end of reel 1 so that projectionists would know when to fire up and then switch to projector 2. Sometimes I kept a few frames from the head or tail as a secret memento of films I loved.

The movie theater projectors used giant xenon lamps. When they died and had to be changed, one had to be very careful because they exploded real good.

There was also a drive-in theater, powered by an absolute beast of a carbon arc projector. They were rare enough at the time that almost nobody knew how to run and maintain them — I was trained by a transient Hell's Angel who enjoyed sharing his erotic poetry. The arc itself was so improbably bright that it was like like looking into the soul of a god.

What I enjoyed most was the machines themselves. Far from the stereotypical "lens, light, and two vertical reels" image of a projector from the early era of Hollywood, a modern projector is (was, since I'm not a couple decades out of date) a fascinating piece of engineering. Most interesting to me is that the film reels (now massive horizontally-oriented platters, because you need a lot of space to fit one entire Peter Jackson movie) and projector communicate with each other entirely through film tension. On one side is a tension switch that cuts a motor in or out if the film has slack, and on the other side is a W-shuttle: the film is fed back-and-forth between a static and a travelling pulley rack in a W-pattern, and as it grows taut it pulls the travelling rack towards the static rack, which indicates to the payout engine that it has to let out film faster. The end of the film causes the shuttle to drop and a loss of tension on the pickup, which shuts the reels off. Flip a couple switches to reverse directions, re-thread, and show again. It was even possible to cross-thread one film through multiple projectors to show multiple rooms from one stock, though I never had to do that.

Brilliant machines that were clearly the product of a lot of fast "better mousetrap" evolution in an ecosystem of both high competition and a lot of surplus capital.

Cinema 21 in Portland had a union projectionist for many years. Per union rules, he projected his license during the opening reel. One day it stopped, and I never got the story why. https://www.cinema21.com/

The Hollywood in PDX also shows a lot of 35mm films. They’re a non-profit, and some years ago they had a funding campaign to buy a new 70mm print of the 2001 re-release. Seeing that on the big screen was unreal. https://hollywoodtheatre.org/

I still had a "projectionist." Getting the video and sound right in a room that was built for meetings and not for movies was an art in itself, and I hope I can get Craig to write about how he did it.

But yeah: not the same as real 35mm.

http://www.hypocritereader.com/11/brain-wrap

The whole piece is worth your time to read, but here's the essence of brain wrap:

> Matt also shows me how to work the platter system. Forget everything about film being stored in upright reels, the classic two-humped silhouette of the old-school projector. In the modern multiplex, film is stored off to the side of the projector on horizontal platters. This saves theaters time by eliminating the hassle of rewinding. A basic reel-to-reel system can only move film from the outside of one reel to the inside of another, reversing its order in the process. In a platter system, film is pulled up from the inside of one platter, run through the projector, and collected on the inside of another platter, ready to be shown again. Of course, every solution carries along its own problems, and the problem with spooling film from the inside can be best illustrated by wrapping a string around your finger, then yanking on it. Instead of unwrapping neatly, the coils of string just get pulled tighter around the center. Similarly, a projector’s endless hunger for film can pull the reel into thousands of tight, black ringlets. If these twists ever enter the projector, you have a gigantic mess on your hands.

> The machine responsible for preventing this disaster is called the brain, a squat cylinder that sits at the center of the sending platter. Film moves from the inside of the reel, through the brain, and out to the projector. When the brain’s arm is up, the projector pulls film as normal, but now the film coils around the brain instead of around itself. When the tension from this wrap builds up, it pulls the brain-arm down, telling the platter to rotate in reverse and unwrap the excess film. The brain can malfunction in many ways, but the most common is called a “brain wrap.” This happens when the brain fails to sense the tension building up around it and allows the film to wrap forever. Friction builds up and the rate of film going to the projector slows, or tries to slow. Projectors must take in film at a rate of 24 frames per second, and they will bring the entire booth crashing down around them before accepting anything slower. The film may slow down, but the sprockets keep their own time, and their teeth will shred any film that resists. Usually, the film just breaks, but sometimes, Matt tells me, the friction can build up so high that it burns instead.

I was born in '94, and by the time I was old enough to really appreciate the arts, analog media was already something you used because it was cheap or because digital hadn't quite caught up yet.

And I never did much of anything creative myself until well into the digital era.

There was definitely still a real mystique to things that were more than ones and zeros, but it's not the same as growing up or having strong early experiences close to analog.

So I didn't really form much of an attachment to physical media. It's just a way to make it so faraway people can see your performance, and digital was the cool new thing that does it with less resources..

But I wasn't quite expecting the art itself to change so much. These days almost all music is very heavy on effects and synthesized sounds.

I wasn't expecting CG to replace practical effects to that degree.

Seeing CGI become more common than Jurassic Part style animatronics, and Autotune become it's own style, was my death of film moment.

There might really be something to be said for the idea that the medium is the message. Maybe film really was an important part of filmmaking after all, and not just "The thing people had to use because they didn't have digital yet".

I don't see any reason why so much should change on an emotional and creative level just because the tech changes, and I don't actually want analog to take over again... but it does seem like digital tech can change anything it touches.

Maybe one day digital will seem like a normal part of life, but for now, adding tech sometimes does change the feel.

It almost makes me sad I never experienced analog film directly, aside from a week long class(Mostly digital).

But I'm also very glad to live in the digital era, where I can share a picture on Facebook and people can see it without burdening their lives with another object. Where we don't have to mine silver for every frame. Where only pros need a camera that doesn't fit in a pocket, and sometimes not even pros do.

Thanksfully I never had to mess with it since 1985 or so, but it still gives me shrills. When I became projectionist again in the last decade it was all digital, I could produce my own trailers and subtitles, all was much better.

And they were right. But it was lots of fun yelling out "cue" during random TV shows, or with platter projectors, when there really shouldn't even be a cue mark :)

I loved that job, I still do.