Films are almost always delivered to theaters disassembled, in 20 minute reels. The projectionst at the theater is the person to assemble the reels together. So it’s still quite helpful for the projectionist to know when the changeover happens when the film is projected as a whole. Distributors usually will only send replacement reels instead of whole films if there is something wrong with a section of film.
As an example, my first time assembling a film, I put one reel of Black Dog on backwards. Luckily we screened all the films on Thursday nights. Imagine my surprise when all of a sudden the semi is careening upside down on the sceen. But we were able to identify which reel was wrong, yank it out, and turn it around without too much trouble.
This isn’t exactly what the OP was looking for, but other people have been saying similar things, so…
I recently got married and registered for bedding, shopped for furniture, perused catalogs of flatware, etc. Now, I’ll be watching TV and I’m all, “HEY!! That’s the NORESUND bedside table from Ikea!” I recognized our new coffee table in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Come to think of it, I almost bought the comforter featured in the penultimate scene of the movie. (It’s from Bed Bath and Beyond!)
I’m not very materialistic in general, so I never thought I’d pay so much attention to home furnishings and props in films/TV, but it’s pretty much constant now.
Once Fellahbilongzelie explained to me what those funny things nestled in the tracks on the London Underground were i COULD NOT stop seeing trip-cocks <snerk> everywhere i go. I also seem doomed to be on trains that constantly set them off whereas my journeys before this were smooth and swift. (They are a kind of emergency brake).
And i also found out about a nifty invention for blind people. You know how you press the button on the pole at the crossing and wait for the lights to change and then it beeps and flashes so everyone knows when to cross? Well on some of the crossing poles (where they put the buttons) there is a little ring at the bottom of the pole which is there solely to spin roundandroundandroundandroundandround while making a grinding noise. It’s there to alert blind people to the fact that there is a crossing nearby and if they want to press the button the need to aim about 3 feet above the grinding noise. Nifty. But now all i hear around the city is griiiinnding noises
These little tiny lizards that, apparently, are all over Santa Fe. I never really noticed them until I nearly stepped on one last week. I now have not walked across campus without seeing at least one.
Also, as mentioned in one of the linked threads: Look at the default cursor in MS Windows. The point isn’t quite in a straight line with the ‘tail’.
Not to get into a culinary ‘chicken and egg debate’, but calzones were around way before the mid-1980s. The Italians may have stole spaghetti from the far east, but it’s a fairly safe bet they didn’t expropriate calzones from Canada
It was once pointed out to me that there was lots and LOTS of cassette tape all over the sides of roads. Far nore than would be exected from the odd car throw out. I was told to look out for it and that once I did do, I would be surprised at just how much of it there was about! They werent talking about the cassettes themselves you understand, just the tape itself, without case.
Well, having been told about it, I immediately started to notice it all over the place! To such an extent in fact that I can hardly now make a trip anywhere WITHOUT seeing the stuff!
The same person said it was supposed to be tape on which ‘bad chants’ were recorded and that each time you see tape strewn about in such volume, you should pray over it so that nothing bad happens. The story goes that once prayed over it can no longer do harm.
Whilst Im not sure if theres any truth in the origins of the tape, it certainly DOES seem to be most prevalent at major road junctions, alongside notoriously dangerous roads, and wrapped around lamp-posts at junctions where high accident rates are recorded!
Take a look and see for yourself! You may be surprised!
To be fair, I didn’t say that they didn’t exist before I found out about them. I said there was this one restaurant in London where you could get them before anybody else was making them there. I love Italian food and was a patron of most of the Italian restaurants in Hamilton and Toronto. After trying panzerotti in London, I tried to find it elsewhere, to no avail. Then it caught on, and you can get them just about anywhere now.
I could say the same about poutine. I have always been a fan of french fries and gravy. The first time I ever saw it with cheese curds was at a county fair in the early 1980s in a little town in Southern Ontario. That was the only place you could get it, once a year, for three days. Then we learned that it was called poutine, and it came from Quebec. Of course, now, it’s ubiquitous in Ontario and probably most points westward. It’s on the menu at Burger King (and theirs is awful).
Me too. But then as karmic retribution for causing countless people who wouldn’t have noticed otherwise to be disracted by them, now everywhere Chuck Palahunik goes food service people come up and discribe to him the various bodily substances they’ve put in people’s food. I suspect even he did not really want to know how “everywhere” that particular phenomenon is.
Here’s an old thread of mine about those reel-change thingies, from back when nobody I mentioned them to saw them. Yet another time that the SDMB has reassured me that I’m not crazy. (They balance out all the times that it’s reassured me that I am, indeed, crazy.)
I never noticed just how many traffic lights there are at a typical American intersection. Usually, there’s at least one far light and one near light, often on opposite corners. Often times there’s a couple of near and far lights.
I didn’t realize the significance of this until I was driving in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro a few years back: they have one single light either directly over the intersection or directly over the stop line. The result is that the first car in line cannot see when the light changes! You must either a) stop a car length back, b) crane your neck in a funny to see the light, or c) wait for the very polite toot of the horn of the car behind you.
Upon my return, I noticed how lights are carefully positioned so that you usually see one directly over where you should stop, as well as one on the other side of the intersection, to avoid having to twist your neck to see.
I suppose the reason why other places don’t do this is simple economics: it’s cheaper to buy one light for the whole intersection.
About the reel change dots:
I must admit that I didn’t know about them until after I had been a projectionist for over a year. I mentioned my profession to someone and the answer was “So you have to sit and wait for those dots in the upper right corner of the screen, right?” to which I said “Huh?”
In my defense, as stated earlier, they are totally unneeded in a modern multiplex.
Here’s something from natutre. I rarely noticed these untuil I started researching them. Now I see them all the time. And I’m a carrier – I point them out to other people (like my wife, Pepper Mill), and now they se them all the time, too.
Sundogs
They’re more common, by far, than rainbows, and often pretty spectacular. But people don’t look for them unless they know about them.
