The standard 35mm film projector works like this: The film, spliced together from 2000-foot-long reels into one huge 12,000-foot-long reel of film that rests horizontally on a platter, is threaded manually through an intricate system of rollers from the platter upon which it rests to a second platter (sometimes called the “take-up” platter - okay, always called the take-up platter). The film is then threaded through the projector head and the sound head. The take-up platter is then turned by hand to cause the motor of the take-up platter to engage just enough to place tension on the film so that when the start button is pushed, the take-up platter motor and the projector motor operate in sync with each other so that the film moves smoothly from one platter to the other while a 2000-3000 watt high-pressure short-arc xenon lamp projects the picture onto the screen (a precisely timed shutter oscillates over the projected image to create the seamless illusion of motion) and an optical LED feeds information encoded on the edge of the film into a digital sound processor that then delivers dynamic digital surround sound first to a stack of amplifiers and then to the speakers strategically placed throughout the auditorium.
This process is one-way only. Once the film is threaded through the projector, all of the film must be run through the projector before it can be shown again. If something - say, a power surge caused by a strong thunderstorm containing an enormous amount of cloud-to-ground lightning - causes the projector to stop (ultra-sensitive electronic failsafe devices cause the the projector motor to stop and the xenon lamp to turn off at the first hint of trouble, including interruption of electrical power), it cannot be rewound. None of the projectors I have worked with (I’m not quite ready to admit defeat yet and call it a career) have been able to do this.
Maybe some of you out there have worked with projectors that go backward? I’d sort of be interested to hear about it - except that it would somewhat upend the point I had to try to impress over and over the other night that such a thing cannot be done. It’s possible that digital cinema can overcome this shortcoming of the moviegoing experience, as the shortcoming is entirely mechanical in nature; but the symbiotic nature of 35mm film and the machines that project that film makes “rewinding the movie” an impossibility for the vast majority of theatres.
So when we tell you that it can’t be done, that’s not male bovine fecal matter. It’s the truth. The male bovine fecal matter? That’s coming out of your vocal orifice, Elsie. If anyone out there knows of a cure for pretentiousness, would you please send me some in water-soluble tablet form? I shall perform a public service and dump it into the water supply that feeds Washington Township and lower Hamilton County.
Male offspring of a female dog. I should probably note that the last sentence of the previous paragraph is an example of humorous rhetoric. I'm obviously not going to do anything to the water supply. I wouldn't even know where to begin, and I sure as hell don't have the time.
5 comments:
While it is true that no 35mm Projector can run film backwards, it IS possible with a little extra effort from your projectionist to "rewind" the film, and start it at a point where your viewers wouldn't have missed anything.
Simply backwards winding the film off of the take-up platter, and un-threading the projector head, then pulling the excess film back through the top of the projector head (and generally pilled into an empty trash can), and once the film is re-threaded, if done properly it will allow the viewers to re-view a portion of the film they had previously seen, leading into the place where said power was lost.
Again, a little extra work. And, I generally don't do it for people either. I give them the same explanation that you do.
I am now curious if Digital Cinema does have a solution to this problem, I wonder if you can skip back one minute from where power is lost, or something...? A question for Devin!
John-O, while I am not sure of all digital projectors, I can tell you that the digital projectors that the AMC's here in Disney and Universal can not rewind. Many people seem to think that it is little more than a giant DVD player. That is, in fact, wrong. The film is downloaded and then saved on the hard drive. However, the options that come when you play it are play, stop, and pause. I would assume that at some point it will be possible to rewind, but at the moment, at least with the projectors we have down here, it is not possible in digital form either.
I always loved this argument. Was honestly one of my favorite arguments to have with customers.
Technically, that is possible - though I have a hard time imagining a group of movie theatre patrons displaying the degree of kindness and understanding after a technical glitch that would make me want to undertake that kind of effort for them. Interesting idea, though - thanks for the comment.
I'll never forget one lovely evening when a lady decided to rip me a new one for a similar incident. I put my hand up and told her that I was walking away and wouldn't talk to her until she was ready to have an adult conversation. I then walked away. She immediately ran after me apologizing, it was hilarious. One of the few moments when working for AMC that I still really smile about.
Actually, doing this once ended up causing me a headache later in life. I felt bad about something, and ended up "rewinding" the film for a small crowd on opening night because our projectionist didn't load the DTS discs and the first couple of minutes of the film played with no sound - it failed to kick back into SR. So, I did it for them.
About a month later, we had another problem, and a woman demanded that I rewind the film for her. I explained to her that it was impossible, and then she broke out with "Well, when I was here to watch Film A, they started the movie over for me!" Despite the fact that I knew I was the one responsible for doing it, I denied it, and told her I had no idea how they could have possibly done it.
I then had to go into the office and laugh at myself for causing myself a headache a month later.
I do agree, 99.9% of the time, I am not willing to do it for the customers, but if you ever do feel the small urge to do it, it is possible. But, let's keep that a trade secret...
By the way, isn't funny how audiences have NO IDEA what goes on "behind the scenes" in the booth? I've turned off fail-safes to make changes to prints while they were running, I've cut and spliced films halfway through to move them to another projector and neither audience ever new the film was in two halves, I've started a film with only the first five reels built, and added on the final two while the was playing ("The Mummy Returns") - it's just amazing what we can do in the booth, without anyone being the wiser...
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