Frame by Frame
Alright. It's 7:30 on a Friday evening. You've paid your $6.50 for your ticket and picked up $14 worth of goodies from the concession stand. You've just sat your ass down for two hours of celluloid entertainment. Now, without much warning you're enveloped in a wall of sound and a huge picture is placed before the eyes of a couple hundred people.
What many people care about is the simple fact that the picture gets on screen, not how it gets on screen. Unfortunately it is my livelihood that depends on the process that gets your picture on screen. Some of you might still be in the dark on how it all happens. I am here to shed some light (no pun intended) on the amount of ass-busting work that gets film out of the can and onto that big white screen.
Every Thursday morning a little white truck slips behind the building to deliver all of the hot new movies premiering on Friday. It comes to us in metal cans that are roughly 20 inches tall and ranging from 6 to 12 inches wide. Inside these cans are the individual reels of film that compose your entire two hour movie. A typical two hour movie will encompass 6 reels, so lets just use that as a baseline reference.
All of the cans (usually two per movie) are taken up into the film room located inside the projection booth. The trailer ring (which encompasses all of the advertisements, movie trailers, and institutional snipes such as "this is our feature presentation" or "silence is golden") is built up first, and then every reel of the film is then added to it in order until you have a big fat roll of film that sits on a platter.
The journey for this film is far from over, however. On Thursday night the movie must be screened by a projectionist to ensure that all splices are made properly and that the image looks good on screen. There's no way around it, the movie must be watched in its entirety from the first advertisement to the end of the credits to ensure that every splice and cue is placed properly and that the public will only be exposed to the perfect show every time.
You've probably never thought of it, but when you're watching that flick you're watching film fly throught the projector at 24 frames per second or 1.5 feet per second for a little bit more perspective. The way a projector works is actually a miracle of synchronous harmony, really. A huge Xenon light bulb (that blasts out light at up to 7000watts, in comparison to your wimpy 75 watt bulbs at home) shoots through a path that leads to the lens. Immediately in front of this lamp is the shutter. The shutter is a finely sync'd wheel that spins and lets light through to the film at a rate of 24 flashes of light per second.
While that shutter is spinning, the motor of the projector is spinning an intermittent sprocket that is doing some of the yanking of the film. The intermittent sprocket is located under the film gate. The film gate is what keeps the film pressed flat and guided in a steady, straight line while it passes in front of the light. The intermittent sprocket is tuned to yank film down at exactly 24 frames per second in sync with the shutter. If the film isn't shoved through in sync with the flash of light that the shutter is letting through it can cause some severe blurring on the screen.
Now, its important to remember that you and your auditorium are not special. While you're sitting there all comfy in you seat there is one paranoid fucker upstairs in the dark running around and tending to 12 projectors. He cleans them between shows, he threads them up for the next show, and he starts up all the shows on a particular side of the theater. It's a very hectic job that probably doesn't get the amount of appreciation that it should. But we're a dedicated bunch of film lovers up there.
So next time you go see a movie and you see it start up turn around and take a peek at the window the projector shines through. You just might see me or my fellow projectionists making hundreds of people happy one movie at a time.
What many people care about is the simple fact that the picture gets on screen, not how it gets on screen. Unfortunately it is my livelihood that depends on the process that gets your picture on screen. Some of you might still be in the dark on how it all happens. I am here to shed some light (no pun intended) on the amount of ass-busting work that gets film out of the can and onto that big white screen.
Every Thursday morning a little white truck slips behind the building to deliver all of the hot new movies premiering on Friday. It comes to us in metal cans that are roughly 20 inches tall and ranging from 6 to 12 inches wide. Inside these cans are the individual reels of film that compose your entire two hour movie. A typical two hour movie will encompass 6 reels, so lets just use that as a baseline reference.
All of the cans (usually two per movie) are taken up into the film room located inside the projection booth. The trailer ring (which encompasses all of the advertisements, movie trailers, and institutional snipes such as "this is our feature presentation" or "silence is golden") is built up first, and then every reel of the film is then added to it in order until you have a big fat roll of film that sits on a platter.
The journey for this film is far from over, however. On Thursday night the movie must be screened by a projectionist to ensure that all splices are made properly and that the image looks good on screen. There's no way around it, the movie must be watched in its entirety from the first advertisement to the end of the credits to ensure that every splice and cue is placed properly and that the public will only be exposed to the perfect show every time.
You've probably never thought of it, but when you're watching that flick you're watching film fly throught the projector at 24 frames per second or 1.5 feet per second for a little bit more perspective. The way a projector works is actually a miracle of synchronous harmony, really. A huge Xenon light bulb (that blasts out light at up to 7000watts, in comparison to your wimpy 75 watt bulbs at home) shoots through a path that leads to the lens. Immediately in front of this lamp is the shutter. The shutter is a finely sync'd wheel that spins and lets light through to the film at a rate of 24 flashes of light per second.
While that shutter is spinning, the motor of the projector is spinning an intermittent sprocket that is doing some of the yanking of the film. The intermittent sprocket is located under the film gate. The film gate is what keeps the film pressed flat and guided in a steady, straight line while it passes in front of the light. The intermittent sprocket is tuned to yank film down at exactly 24 frames per second in sync with the shutter. If the film isn't shoved through in sync with the flash of light that the shutter is letting through it can cause some severe blurring on the screen.
Now, its important to remember that you and your auditorium are not special. While you're sitting there all comfy in you seat there is one paranoid fucker upstairs in the dark running around and tending to 12 projectors. He cleans them between shows, he threads them up for the next show, and he starts up all the shows on a particular side of the theater. It's a very hectic job that probably doesn't get the amount of appreciation that it should. But we're a dedicated bunch of film lovers up there.
So next time you go see a movie and you see it start up turn around and take a peek at the window the projector shines through. You just might see me or my fellow projectionists making hundreds of people happy one movie at a time.