(editor's note: this is a part of an ongoing - if very sporadic - series of essays about when the Cap'n worked as a projectionist a decade ago. Here are parts one and two.)
Today's trip down memory lane deals with something many audiences may not be aware of - some multiplexes, while having up to twenty screens - have only one projectionist at any given time. The Carmike theatre the Cap'n worked for had sixteen screens, and during the week they often saw no purpose in having anyone other than me upstairs running all of the projectors.
This was not always the case, however: when I started at this theatre, there were anywhere from three to five projectionists on hand to serve a number of purposes. Some threaded films, others assisted management with troubleshooting or ordering canisters, but for the most part three of us would split up the screens while the other one / two would "build" the new arrivals.
Without being a bore, "building" a film is roughly what it sounds like; new arrivals arrived in cans containing reels of film, usually at eleven to fifteen minutes in duration, that needed being cut together. Each reel comes with a "header" and "footer" - lengths indicating to projectionists the number of the reel and where to make a splice. Typically, we'd cut the header and footer with one frame attached, so when "breaking down" a print, it was easier to link up reel with extraneous material. The process can be time consuming, as you're literally unwinding a reel of film until the image stops, removing the "footer," taking off the "header" of the next reel, and then joining the film together with a piece of clear tape.
I mention this because after a month of so if working as a team, management decided to cut back on payroll and staff, and reduced the projection crew to one person during the week and two people on Fridays and Saturdays. One of their rationales is that there are periods when all of the films are running that projectionists have an unmitigated amount of "free time," which I spent reading, but others would wander downstairs and flirt with the girls in concessions of box office, or just shoot the breeze.
It's true; we had stretches of free time, during which it appeared we did nothing, and I can understand why you might not want to pay five people to hang out upstairs when you could pay one instead. The catch is that when the films end - and all of them do - they need to be re-threaded, properly framed in the gate, set up to run again, and started by the time the next audience comes in. Multiply that by sixteen, drop the staff down to one person, and let the games begin.
Personally speaking, it wasn't an impossible task - challenging, yes, but not impossible. Every day I came in (and particularly when screening times changed), I needed to make a chart of what film started when, when it ended, when I needed to thread it, and what order to move from projector to projector in order to assure everything was copacetic for an audience that only expects their film to start when the schedule says it does. I assure you, they don't know only one person is running around like a maniac upstairs, nor should they.
The difficulty was that after I mastered this balancing act, the newly hired "projectionist manager" that was suspiciously never around when help was needed, would show up during "down time," assume that the entire shift consisted of sitting at a desk with a dim light reading Hunter S. Thompson*. Therefore I was ordered to start "building" new arrivals, which is a bit of a time consuming process, and one that tends to undermine a carefully organized schedule designed to juggle sixteen different films. It didn't help that you could only "build" a film using a lower tray of a projector you were already showing a film on, and the resulting weight differential could offset the film above it, causing "head wraps" - where the film wraps around the metal ring the reel feeds from.
I could build a film, and I could run all of the screens, but doing both meant that one or the other suffered. The manager didn't really care, because it was easier for him to go to lunch with the general manager and do whatever it was he did when I wasn't being accused of having an easy job.
Okay, let's qualify something - being a projectionist is an easy job, compared to 99% of other jobs out there. Don't get me wrong. It is a skilled job, in that not anyone could walk in off the street and do the job right (let alone well) without having some serious mentoring and training. Do one thing wrong - put the lens on "flat" instead of "scope," misframe the image, or thread the film one sprocket off - and believe me, you will be hearing from a disgruntled populace. While being a projectionist isn't on the level of most positions, it does require demonstrably more knowledge than the next step down in the theatre chain - the usher, who is responsible for tearing tickets, pointing audiences toward their screen, and cleaning up garbage.
After a month or two of barely getting films together on time and being chastised for not "building" films fast enough twice a shift (at best the most times I saw the manager) I reached my breaking point. I can do either very well, I can do both acceptably - most of the time - but doing both while being derided by an absentee authority figure was unacceptable for a one step above minimum wage job, so I put in my two weeks notice and moved on. I still think back fondly on the projectionist area - the foreboding darkness and silence in the morning, the clattering of projectors at night, the challenge of keeping every element in synchronicity while always appearing invisible to the attendees on the other side of the glass.
I certainly intend to make this a more regular feature on the Blogorium than it has been in the past - you've heard the end of the story, but it's far from the only anecdote I have about my time working directly with film, so stay tuned for future Adventures in Projectioneering...
* Or Thomas Harris' Hannibal or biographies of Jim Morrison...
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