Theater Projection

Chris at Work

1. History
2. Job Description
3. Digital Sound
4. Behind the Scenes
5. Photos

History

Whether I'm at school or at home, you can usually find me working at a Hoyts movie theater. When I turned age 16, I began working as a consessionist at a small local theater in the town of Sharon, MA owned by Entertainment Cinemas. I eventually made my way to projectionist around the time the theater was bought by Hoyts Cinemas.

After the changeover I worked under many different managers: Jan Smolinski, Rich Domingos, Chris Bragg, Kelly Glaze, Dustin Covino to name a few. When I graduated high school and went off to college I had the company transfer me to the Hoyts Cinemas in Ithaca, NY where I still work today under the management of Warren Wells (the coolest manager ever).

Instead of returning to my old theater in Sharon during breaks and vacations I opted to work with Dustin Covino at a new Hoyts megaplex in Bellingham, MA. In Bellingham I worked under a whole new staff of managers: Kiley Kirkpatrick, John Derdarian, Glenn Milholm, Dustin Covino, and Ron Pelitier. Running the projection booth at Bellingham was a much better experience because the equipment was brand new and much easier to maintain. Every theater was equipped with digital surround sound of one sort or another. I still work there today whenever I'm home for long breaks and I need a few extra bucks.

Job Description

Basically my job is to clean the projectors and thread the film through the platter system and projector before each show. Then, when the movie is supposed to start, I simply press the start button. Although that sounds really easy, you have to remember that a theater like Bellingham has 14 theaters showing 14 different films at any given point, and I am the only one responsible for making sure they start on time and keep running. When it takes 3-4 minutes to "lace" or "thread" a projector, and the movies are scheduled to start in 5 minute intervals (sometimes two at once) it can be a pretty intense job.

Aside from lacing and starting movies there are other things to do in the booth. I have to constantly clean the booth to avoid dirt and dust from getting on the films. During the winter months when the heat is on and the humidity is low, static electricity causes unbelievable problems in the booth. Its my job to 'baby sit' the films to ensure they stay on the platters and don't end up on the floor. On Thursdays when the new movies come in, we have to splice together trailers (ads and previews) to go on the beginning of the film, then wind them onto a platter followed by all the reels of the film itself. This is what we call film "makeup". Then Thursday night, all the movies that are leaving have to be taken apart and so they can be picked up the next morning. We call this "breakdown."

There are other odd jobs that need to be done on occasion like changing the slides in the slide projectors so movie patrons get a wider variety of movie trivia. On Wednesdays all the previews for movies coming out on the next Friday have to be removed in a process we call "trailer pulls" because no one wants to see a PRE-view of a movie currently showing in a different theater. Trailer pulls are also done on ads when their paid advertisement block has expired.

There is a great deal of responsibility put on the lone projectionist in the building. This job is only given to the most reliable of people because calling in sick or showing up late can cause a huge damper on the theater business. Most of the time the projectionist is the only person in the theater that knows how to run the booth. Showing up late means the movies start late, and calling in sick is just plain unacceptable because it is very hard to find a replacement projectionist in a short amount of time. Also, a single mistake made by the projectionist usually results in patrons getting their money back or receiving free passes, and often, when something goes wrong, they never return to the theater again. People come to the theater with the purpose of seeing a movie, not so they can buy a ticket, play video games, or eat popcorn or candy. That makes the job of the projectionist the most important job in the movie theater business (IMO).

Digital sound

Digital Surround Sound is the latest technology in theater and home audio. The introduction of surround sound in the 70s gave movie directors a new tool to grasp the viewer's attention and put them into the movie. George Lucas was one of the first directors to take advantage of this when he allowed his new movie "Star Wars" to only be played in theaters that were equipped with Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound decoders.

Dolby Pro Logic

Dolby Pro-Logic uses the standard stereo analog soundtrack found on 35mm film and time delay circuitry between left and right channels to encode hidden surround sound effects. A Pro-Logic decoder would take any frequency that was recorded in the left and right channel at exactly the same time and send it to a center speaker that would be located behind the screen. (Today there are actually 3 sets of speakers behind the screen: left, center, and right. When Pro-Logic was introduced there was either one speaker behind the screen in a mono house or a speaker on either side of the screen in a stereo house). The decoder would then take any frequency that was recorded in the left channel and repeated in the right channel a fraction of a second later and send it to multiple speakers located in the rear of the theater. A theater not equipped with Pro-Logic could play the movie in normal stereo or mono and still hear the sounds, except they would all come from the front of the theater. This was the only type of surround sound up until 1992 when Dolby introduced the first digital surround sound format, Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital is a newer format that uses the Front Left / Center / Right channels from a Dolby Pro-Logic decoder combined with Subwoofer and Rear Left / Right channels to create a 6-channel surround sound effect. the last 3 channels are derived from a digital code placed next to the standard stereo channels on the film. To the human eye, the code looks like a series of blue squares in between the perforations in the film, however, each square contains several thousand small blocks of dark and light shades of blue. A laser reads the blocks and converts them into 1s and 0s and then a decoder translates that data into sound. Because the surround sound is derived digitally, there is no loss in sound quality when the film gets dirty from being run over and over again. The digital sound also offers a wider sound range because it is difficult to record low frequencies onto a standard analog soundtrack.

Digital Theater Systems

Another popular format in movie theaters is DTS - Digital Theater Systems. DTS uses supplied CDs with 6 channels of sound that corresponds to the movie: Front Left / Center / Right / Sub and Rear Left / Right. A laser reads a time code from the film (located between the standard stereo tracks and the Dolby Digital Code) which lines up the sound from the CDs to the picture on the screen. Because DTS is 100% digital in all channels, it produces a crisper, cleaner sound. The only downside is that each movie must be supplied with CDs for the digital sound to work. This means previews and commercials before a movie cannot be run in DTS.

Sony Dynamic Digital Sound

The third format is SDDS - Sony Dynamic Digital Sound. Sony's format works exactly like Dolby Digital except it uses two lines of code located on the edges of the film to create 8 channels of surround sound: Front Left / Left center / Center / Right center / Right / Sub and Rear Left/Right. It does not use the standard analog soundtrack. SDDS allows more precise definition of sound coming from the screen and has better sound quality than Dolby Digital because it doesn't use the standard stereo tracks, but does not meet the sound quality of DTS. The only short coming with SDDS is that most theaters do not supply the extra speakers in the front of the theater so many SDDS houses are only getting the usual 6 channel surround sound instead of the superior 8 channel surround sound.

Each of these formats is good for different reasons and many new theaters uses different formats for different theaters. Since most movies are coded in all three formats, there isn't a preference for an particular one at this time. They are all great. Both DTS and Dolby Digital have recently come out with 6.1 surround sound technology which will be hitting theaters soon. 6.1 offers greater surround sound effects with an added rear center channel.

Behind the Scenes

Many people don't really know what goes on upstairs in a movie theater. Most people think they know, and others just never thought about it. If you fall into one of these categories you may want to read on.

Back in the 30s and 40s Projectionists used to run what we call reel-to-reel projectors. These projectors were similar to those 8mm projectors your grandparents used to show old movies. They were capable of showing one reel of film at a time, where a full reel would be loaded on a spindle above the projector and as the movie played, the film would wind back up on a spindle below the projector. This required a second projector for movies longer than 23 minutes (the length of one reel) so that when the first reel ended, the second projector with the second reel could start with no break between reels (The viewer may see a black "cigarette burn" in the upper right hand corner of the screen which signals to the projectionist that he must change the reel). The only down side to this was that after each reel was played it had to be rewound to be played again. On top of that, it required a projectionist to be there every 23 minutes to change over the reels since most movies are about 5-7 reels long.

The solution to this is what we call the platter system. Instead of running the film off of reels, all the reels are loaded onto a round platter that would be similar to a very large reel layed flat with one side open (see photos). The first reel is wound on with the head attached to a ring in the center. The tail of the first reel is then spliced directly to the head of the second reel. The second reel is then wound onto the platter and so forth. When it comes time to lace the movie, the projectionist simply takes the ring out of the center to access the head of the first reel, laces it through a brain and a series of rollers that take the film to the projector. He laces it through the projector then through another series of rollers that take the film to another platter where it can be wound onto while the movie plays. The advantage is that the film is rewinding while it is playing and the projectionist only has to lace the film once and then he can move on to do something else.

To further simplify the process, a cue detector is added beneath the projector. This allows the projectionist to put cues (usually shiny foil with a sticky backing) on the film for specific events such as dimming the lights at the start and end of the feature, changing sound formats (mono,stereo,surround,digital), open and closing curtains, and stopping the projector when the film has finished. This automation means once a movie is started, it can be left alone until it has to start again.

Hopefully this clarifies any confusion about what happens behind the scenes at a movie theater. There is no VCR upstairs that plays movies like your TV (I get that alot). There is no "rewind" or "fast forward" button either, once the movie is started, it has to finish before it can be started again. So don't go asking if someone can fast forward through the previews when you're the only one in the theater. It doesn't work that way. Please note: some older theaters still use reel-to-reel projectors, but the majority of them have converted to this new system.

Photos

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