When I lived in Pasadena I used to walk to the Lammle’s wihtout having any movie in mind to see. Pick one that looked interesting and depending when it started, go to Vroman’s to pass the time beforehand.
I date from before commercials.
We had to use trailers to make the movies longer/shorter because we were a 12plex, on the third floor of a mall.
If two or more theatres (spelled that way to differentiate from live plays) got out at once, that many people going down the escalators at once was a BAD THING . Think dominos, when the escalator overloaded and shut down…
THE STAFF Well, you take what you can get, and hope the body temp is above the rooms. Ever try to do a schedule for two dozen hormonaly-challanged teen-agers who all want Saturday night off?
THE BULB Is a $1250.00 device. The inside of it’s envelope darkens with tungstan deposits as the bulb ages. If it is horizontal, the bulb must be rotated 180 degrees at 1000 or so hours. (Think big black spot on the top of the bulb. Think larger dark spot on the bottom of the screen) If vertical, the top of the bulb darkens. After @2000 hours, it’s time for the bulb to go. Running a bulb longer is possible, depending on the bulb size, but they do have a nasty tendency to explode, the longer they stay in. A dim picture could be a old bulb, a incorrectly sized bulb, one that is out of focus in it’s reflector, of the reflector may be very dirty also…
The end of the movie I once worked at a theatre that had 1042 seats. Playing “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Our suits deemed it possible to dump, clean and fill this theatre in 8 minutes. Our projectionest saved us by changeing the projection speed at the start of the credits to 30fps from the normal 24—we had old, expensive projectors that had the capability to do this, the first time it had been used in 30 odd years. Everybody moved faster when the music sped up.
SOUND In the old days, the soundtrack was on the side of the film, everything had to be alligned to within a hairsbreath to work, and all it took was a little inattention, and Murphy worked overtime. Wobbleing sound was a misthread, incorrectly sized loop, or bad bearings in the soundhead. Today, a sensor picks up timeing cues between the sprocket holes in the film, the sound track is on a CD, and the timeing cues speed up/slow down the sound to match the picture. Too loud music, or uniteligble dialogue happens when the stereo system is out of whack. The best thing that ever happened to theatre equipment salespeople was Jurassic Park—T-Rex ate speakers left and right.
I used to see everything—these days, I see maybe a handfull of movies a year–and most of them are IMAX. I can get a much better movie experience from my 27" Panasonic and a cobbeled together stereo system. Without the Cinemuck™ holding me to the floor.
Great post. The above comment made me laugh 
I’ve pretty much stopped going to films. I think I’ve been to five in the past two years-- and two of those were independent films that I couldn’t see anywhere else.
Mostly I abandoned the theatre because it’s too fucking loud. Yeah, I’m a guy who wears earplugs when I go to concerts, but when the sustained volume during a movie is over 85 dB during dialog, it’s too loud.
And would it kill you to adjust the thermostat so it’s a comfortable temperature? If everyone in the theatre is wearing shorts, you don’t really need it to be below 20 degrees!
I must admit guilt to a very similar offense during an Indiana Jones flick… When we were running the “Last Crusade”, I was particularly annoyed that the credits took something like fifteen minutes to run – it’s a long drawn-out scene with men on horseback riding off into the sunset, complete with the traditional Indiana Jones score. Since it was our longest film, it was the last one to finish at the end of the night.
So, if its 12:15 in the morning, everything else is shut down, cleaned up, and the projectors threaded for the next day, and stupid IJ is going to run until 12:30, it’s pretty tempting to take special measures to encourage the lingerers to leave.
My first tactic was to simply increase the sound level until it was unbearable in the auditorium. At the same time, I turned on the house lights. If there was a lingering couple of folks, I hit the bright lights used for cleaning.
My experience with projector bulbs echos what The Vorlon said. Ours were vertical, so we didn’t have to rotate them, but they did get dimmer with age. We did take care to install them properly, making sure to focus them on the screen and check the brightness across the screen. Nevertheless, they did change with age.
We made sure to change them at the recommended intervals – this is a learned behavior since they usually go out with a bang. Once a projectionist has had one go off, he or she learns to change the other bulbs frequently.
The typical xenon bulb is a fairly large device, about a foot and a half long, with a bulge in the middle. The “glass” is really quartz, and it’s as thick as a Coke bottle; the bulb is filled with xenon gas under high pressure. When one explodes, it sounds like a bomb going off, and it is guaranteed to scare the living crap out of anyone nearby when it goes off. Since our machines had vertical bulbs, there was a 45-degree mirror directly above the bulb and reflector that changed the direction of the light beam. When a bulb blew up, the top electrode always smashed the expensive 45-degree mirror, and the remainder of the bulb left little dents in the “salad bowl” reflector.
Every time I changed one of those damned things, I felt like a bomb squad technician, all covered up in protective gear, but working bare-handed (I was taught that way). Once the old bulb was out, the preferred disposal method was to wrap it in several layers of newspaper (say, the Sunday NY Times), and smack it with a hammer, lest a child find it in the garbage and suffer a grave injury.
I always sneak in a small bottle of Bacardi Light to justify the Coke prices. And if the theater crowd is light enough, I’ll light up a smokeless cigarrette.
Please tell us you didn’t pay to watch Blair Witch. Other than that, I agree with most of your points. They do need to clean the theater quickly and if they aren’t actually in your way when you watch the credits, I don’t see a problem with that.
I prefer to watch them on DVD and maybe go to two movies a year. I just wish the theaters didn’t see the need to rape us on concessions, I can see a little markup but some of the prices are outrageous. If they could just give us a choice between Coke and Pepsi that would be so triumphant. I’ve never heard a cell phone go off during a show, maybe I’m just lucky. Never had a problem with talkers either. Maybe we’re just more polite up here.
Sorry, but they are the most godawful ads on the face of this planet. The joke was funny the first time I saw it, now its just a big pile of wank that makes me want to leave the cinema.
I would, no kidding, pay an extra five dollars for a movie ticket if I got in return:
[ul][li]no commercials for cars, soda, cosmetics, clothing, or anything other than movie previews[]a cinema staffer stationed in every auditorium who issues warnings to misbehavers that a second offense will result in ejection[]non-crammed-together seats, either side-to-side or front-to-back*[]a reliable start time: “previews start at 7:15, movie starts at 7:30,” or some such[]a separate soundproofed room to which baby-carriers can retreat, or just permanently stay if they preferAlong the same lines, regardless of rating, a system whereby “This showing <offered for one showtime three nights a week, say> will be child-free: no one under 18 allowed”[/ul]There are more possibilities, but that’s a minimum list. And yes, I’d seriously pay an extra five bucks if I knew those items were guaranteed. I’m a hardcore movie geek, but I’m finding it harder and harder to get motivated to sit down in the cinema when the experience is so frustrating and negative. I still go regularly, but I consign more and more borderline films to the eventually-on-HBO ghetto. And I don’t like that; makes me feel out of touch with my chosen obsession.[/li]
I wonder if there’d be a market for this kind of premium moviegoing option. Whaddaya think?
*Actually, it would be cool if there were a variety of seating configurations in the auditorium. Take two seats out of each row and use the extra space to put gaps between seating groups: sets of two, three, four, or six together, with some rows all singles, and so on. Maybe even a couple of loveseats here and there. This would be extra-cool with some sort of clever optional-reserved-seat ticket addon, say another buck gets you the seat(s) of your choice if someone else hasn’t already reserved them, and a red LED blinks on the seat to warn away non-reserved browsers. Hmmm.
Our method of old bulb disposal was to drop it off the steep side of the theatre, in it’s case. The burnt out bulb never tumbled, but did the lawn dart thing upon meeting the sidewalk. A Wilie Coyote moment, for sure.
For good seating, check out Chunkys Cinema Pubs—the chairs are modified passenger seats from limos, and the food is good too.
I’ve worked in theatres with crying rooms. Big glass window, my biggest issue was the sound delay was wonky, and would have to be adjusted.
Changed the bulb bare-handed? You are brave. I was swaldeled up like the stay-puff marshmellow man, and had woven fibre gloves, face shield, and a balistic jacket on. The booth was evacuated. Hell, I didn’t want to be there!
Only one ever went up on me, it sounded like someone had dropped a 4x8 sheet of steel on edge from a great height. shudder
Ever have to cook a tonne (2200lbs) of popcorn in 5 days?
So they actually provided all of that nice protective gear? We had two things: a face shield (without which I never would have even considered the task) and a rubber apron, just like back in chemistry lab.
When I was taught how to change the bulb, I remember reading the scary warnings printed on the door of the lamphouse, listing precisely the protective equipment you mention. I asked the fellow about that and he said “We don’t have all of that stuff. Besides, it’s easier to change them without gloves on”
I always figured that if one blew, I would sue the theater for millions and then take up hobbies that didn’t require much manual dexterity.
About those movie previews and commercials and whatnot…
When my wife and I went to the Passion of the Christ, we arrived at 3:59pm for a 4:00pm show and strolled in quite calmly, knowing that there would be fifteen minutes of crap before the show.
We walked into the theater and found that the movie was already running. Assuming we had been sent to the wrong theater, I brought this up to an usher. He told me that the movie ran with no previews or ads, and that it started on time. Since I am anal about time, I noted that it was still 3:59pm by my accurate watch, and that the theater clock said 4:05pm, but there wasn’t much to do except go watch the film. Kind of funny being displeased that a film had no previews.
Many theatres did not run previews on Passion of the Christ because they thought it would be tacky.
Commercials before movies used to be a huge problem, as they always started when the movie was slated to start. More recently, however, it seems that previews have been starting at the movie start time (the way it used to be), and theatres are tending to replace their shoddy slides and craptastic music with commericals.
I happen to like this trend, as I’d prefer to watch commercials that cost thousands to produce as opposed to the $1.50 slides that are cycled endlessly. God only knows I’d prefer a slightly annoying Coke commercial to seeing an advert for Bob’s Back Store 20 times.
At the AMC theater here in Tulsa, we get the shoddy slides, the craptastic music, and an assload of commercials. If a movie’s listed start time is 8:00 and you arrive exactly at 8:00, you’ll get about five minutes of slides with music, five to seven minutes of commercials, then about ten minutes or so of trailers (which I like). The actual movie starts around 8:20. I’m going there tonight, in fact, although I haven’t decided what movie to see yet. I’ll time everything with my watch and post again when I get back.
In my last few weeks as projectionist at my theater (early 90s), I had a bit of fun with the pre-show activities: I replaced the Muzak with any damned music I cared to play. I had a CD with lots of funny sound effects which I would interject at random times (a toilet flush, or a bottle of beer being dropped on concrete, for example).
I had a small collection of vintage trailers that I started slipping into circulation – if you came to the theater at that time, you might have watched a trailer for “Rambo: coming to theaters in May, 1985” or something similar.
I’m not sure how many folks actually noticed these irregularities – nobody gave me any grief over it, though.
Cervaise, you need to come to Toronto and check out our Varsity V.I.P. Cinema. It’s a twenty person theatre, you get a GIANT chair, side table, private washroom, coat check, and a waiter to bring you your goodies.
The screen size is obviously smaller, but the sound is sublime. It’s been tweaked to exactly match the room size. Nothing less than perfect.
It’s great because there’s never any children or teens, and you know that whoever’s paying $15.50 to see a movie damn well wants to see the movie!!! Generally, there’s no talking.
Me loves it.
I must share my two most memorable movie going experiences that made me want to burn the theatre down and have the manager drawn and quartered.
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Apollo 13 – Not only was the image dim, about half of it was missing. I spent the whole time watching Tom Hanks’ chest. That, and one guy brought 4 children who literally ran up and down the aisle, screaming, the entire time. There was no manager to be found.
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Fellowship of the Ring – The house lights went to half, previews started. Previews ended. House lights came back up. Cheesy 80s music began to play on the sound system. And on the screen? Why, that looks like a map of Middle Earth? Why are the house lights up? Why are the images of 2nd Age battle accompanied by Cindy Lauper just wanting to have fun? Complained to manager. Said he’d get to it real soon. Condition fixed after the prologue was over. That’s about 8 minutes, folks.
In the days when I managed a theatre, I would not have allowed that shit to happen.