Night of the living theatre employees

[Deadkitten]

Here is a AMA type thread to anyone who is curious at all about how movie theatres work. While I can't speak in super detail of every chain, I do have 10+ years in the business and I am very familiar with how things are done.

[Palanan]

I approve of this thread and especially the title.

Your comment about 3D glasses in the other thread was interesting, because I remember the 2009 Avatar had a 3D theatrical release. I never saw the 3D version, not because of wearing the glasses per se, but because I’ve never had a good experience with them—what they showed me was never convincingly three-dimensional. I just find it too distracting for very little added value.

Also, for better or for worse, I’m one of those people who complains about focus and sound. Sometimes my complaints are addressed, sometimes not; but I’ve noticed that with the transition to digital, issues with focus have become vanishingly rare. Unfortunately issues with sound are still much more common. I have a feeling part of this may be because the volume is calibrated for a full theater with many bodies to muffle the sound, whereas I usually sit in near-empty matinee showings.

[Peelee]

Here is a AMA type thread to anyone who is curious at all about how movie theatres work. While I can't speak in super detail of every chain, I do have 10+ years in the business and I am very familiar with how things are done.

What's the most number of screens you've ever interlocked and what movie was it? What was the worst wrap you experienced? What was the worst build you screened?

How many more questions can I ask that someone who's been in it for ten years may know what they mean but likely hasn't experienced?

[Deadkitten]

I approve of this thread and especially the title.

Your comment about 3D glasses in the other thread was interesting, because I remember the 2009 Avatar had a 3D theatrical release. I never saw the 3D version, not because of wearing the glasses per se, but because I’ve never had a good experience with them—what they showed me was never convincingly three-dimensional. I just find it too distracting for very little added value.

Also, for better or for worse, I’m one of those people who complains about focus and sound. Sometimes my complaints are addressed, sometimes not; but I’ve noticed that with the transition to digital, issues with focus have become vanishingly rare. Unfortunately issues with sound are still much more common. I have a feeling part of this may be because the volume is calibrated for a full theater with many bodies to muffle the sound, whereas I usually sit in near-empty matinee showings.

Oh sound can be a **** show even in the nice theatres. They don't spend money unless they ABSOLUTELY have to and if they have a cheaper band aid vs actually solving the issue they will do so.

Here are a couple examples that I have seen first hand:
The old 4 screen theatre I was at before covid had digital projectors, BUT those digital programs were spliced into the old analog sound. I'm not as certain that it's the same here, but we have like 3 different sounds systems for this 12 screen I'm at.

Also, I have repeatedly seen that if the sound goes down in a speaker, that they would rather route the rest of the sound into another one or turn the volume up instead of replacing it. I think I have like 2-3 auditoriums that only work with one speaker. MOST of the time though it's not really noticable but some movies can have a sound mix that makes it waaay more obvious.

As a side note I almost deafened a fellow manager with the Robert Pattinson Batman movie once. We had a issue with the projector that I had to troubleshoot and reset and when I had her down in the auditorium to test I was not aware that the sound got reset from -20db to 0db. I physically FELT the theme music upstairs and made her scream.😬

[Deadkitten]

What's the most number of screens you've ever interlocked and what movie was it? What was the worst wrap you experienced? What was the worst build you screened?

How many more questions can I ask that someone who's been in it for ten years may know what they mean but likely hasn't experienced?

I worked at a 14 screen when I was in college for like a semester and had to quit due to personal issues. But I was just a grunt at the time.
Most of my experience was from a ****ty 4 screen that was too profitable to close but not profitable enough to put money in to fix. Covid conveniently killed that place. But for the past 3 years I have been working at a 12 screen.

I'm not familiar with what you mean by interlocked but I'd guess it's something like how many screens show the same movie. Currently I think we have about 4-5 of our theatres showing just black panther . I don't remember doing more than 6 screens for any movie though. It's hard to do more because movies tend to have contracts to stay at least 3 weeks and there are always new movies.

For worst wrap, hmmmm...... It's hard for me to remember the bad times they all blur together but I remember American sniper was a hit out of nowhere for us. I remember middle aged women bringing towels to watch magic Mike.😬🤮 The big releases are not as bad as you would think sometimes unless we actually have a staffing issue for whatever reason.we can usually plan for those well in advance, but it's the movies they don't expect to do well that end up busy that really get to us.

For worst build I screened. I'm definitely bad at that cause I have the benefit of not paying for movies so I am far more lenient on judging them. But we did accidentally get a French version of Cop Out once and it was weird seeing French out of Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis mouths.😅

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Your comment about 3D glasses in the other thread was interesting, because I remember the 2009 Avatar had a 3D theatrical release. I never saw the 3D version, not because of wearing the glasses per se, but because I’ve never had a good experience with them—what they showed me was never convincingly three-dimensional. I just find it too distracting for very little added value.

I saw Jaws in 3D last summer and the 3D for that was decent. I was also surprised: I’ve previously had issues with headaches seeing movies in 3D and thus generally avoid them. I don’t know if it was the movie or if the tech’s just getting better.

[Deadkitten]

I saw Jaws in 3D last summer and the 3D for that was decent. I was also surprised: I’ve previously had issues with headaches seeing movies in 3D and thus generally avoid them. I don’t know if it was the movie or if the tech’s just getting better.

Id say that's possible, although I haven't seen a single change in 3D hardware my entire career. There could have been changes to how it's programmed though 🤷

[Peelee]

I worked at a 14 screen when I was in college for like a semester and had to quit due to personal issues. But I was just a grunt at the time.
Most of my experience was from a ****ty 4 screen that was too profitable to close but not profitable enough to put money in to fix. Covid conveniently killed that place. But for the past 3 years I have been working at a 12 screen.

I'm not familiar with what you mean by interlocked but I'd guess it's something like how many screens show the same movie. Currently I think we have about 4-5 of our theatres showing just black panther . I don't remember doing more than 6 screens for any movie though. It's hard to do more because movies tend to have contracts to stay at least 3 weeks and there are always new movies.

For worst wrap, hmmmm...... It's hard for me to remember the bad times they all blur together but I remember American sniper was a hit out of nowhere for us. I remember middle aged women bringing towels to watch magic Mike.😬🤮 The big releases are not as bad as you would think sometimes unless we actually have a staffing issue for whatever reason.we can usually plan for those well in advance, but it's the movies they don't expect to do well that end up busy that really get to us.

For worst build I screened. I'm definitely bad at that cause I have the benefit of not paying for movies so I am far more lenient on judging them. But we did accidentally get a French version of Cop Out once and it was weird seeing French out of Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis mouths.😅

I'm using old school 35mm projection terms because I'm old and think I'm funny since with the range you listed I'm like 95% sure you've only worked with digital. Anyway, the way you're using the terms are very different from my intended meaning, so here's a rundown of projection fun times back in the 35mm days! This would be from the mid-to-late aughts (depending on how big a city you were in) going back to I'm guessing at least the 80's, probably the 70s or maybe even late 60s - there were two Columbo episodes that featured projectionist scenes and both had reel-to-reel systems which I'm glad I never had to deal with. Anyway, you might get a kick out of this, how things were done juuuuuuuust before your time.

Spoiler: Spoilered for length

Show

Interlocking was indeed running a movie on multiple screens, but before the days of digital when you could just transfer the file to the appropriate auditorium's system (they've probably got it more centralized now but back when we did the switch to digital there was one mainframe that stored 'em all and we'd transfer to the individual projector' s computers as needed because they had much less storage space), you'd have maybe 1-3 copies of a print, depending on how big the movie was and how big your theater was. We rarely had more than 1, but if it was a blowout we'd cancel some other shows (other peeps, if you ever get told you can't get tickets to a move because there's "technical problems" and it's the weekend night of a major blockbuster, that's bull**** and it's been cancelled to put the blockbuster in a other auditorium. Probably happens much less with online ticket pre-purchase ability, but still) and interlock. Interlocking itself involved a little fancy footwork on the film - during the build, we'd put a leader on it - a stretch of blank film whose sole purpose is to allow us to thread the movie into the projector from any given point in the leader without being super exact, so long as we got the framing placed correctly so you're seeing the whole image and not the top half of one frame and bottom half of a other frame the whole movie. Start the projector, the leader runs through for a few seconds, and it hits the first cue, a piece of silver tape put on the very edge to alert the system to partially lower the lights. Cues were also placed at the end of the trailers and policy to full down the lights and adjust the curtains to flat or scope, third cue at the credits start to half up the lights, and then at the end to full up the lights and reset the curtains to standard position. Anyway, interlocking meant we had to take a larger leader and splice that on so that way we could spool up a much larger amount of film, thread the first projector, run it through alternate directional rollers so instead of going back on the platter we could thread it through rollers on the ceiling to whatever other screen we wanted it on, and then thread it through that projector and then onto the platter. You want more than two projectors, no problem, just have the second one also use the alternate directional rollers and second verse same as the first. That was you can have ony single print going through one brain on one platter and ending on another platter but showing through multiple projectors onto multiple screens simultaneously (well, not quite, but close enough). Ours was set up such that we could potentially have one single print run through every projector we had simultaneously if we wanted. The most I ever did was one of the Harry Potters, can't remember which one, but after management made the call I set it up on five screens. It was pretty neat, I could go to the porthole on the first one and see a scene, then walk to the next one with the film racing along overhead, look through the porthole, and see the same scene, and walk to the next one.... Pretty neat. Interlocking was super fun and we all loved when we got the chance to do it (usually legit and without canceling existing shows, canceling was super rare and only ever done for Star Wars and Harry Potter), but it's also not something you want to rely on because you can't stagger showtimes and also a wrap would be catastrophic.


Wraps, bytheway, are when the film gets stuck on something and gets stuck and can't proceed. The film in front of the bulb usually melts if you can't catch it in time (it's pretty rare you ever would unless you could tell it was going to wrap in advance), which means that showtime is completely shot and you have to take it to the makeup table to splice a couple frames out if you want to have any hope of continuing to run it. Tail wraps weren't too bad but brain wraps were like a stroke - it could technically happen at any time whatsoever and you can't really predict it. You could at least mitigate it, like making sure you thread the film through antistatic brushes, but still. If you want to see what a wrap looks like from the audience's point of view, check out the movie Kiss Koss Bang Bang. A couple times, especially at the beginning, they edit it in such a way that it looks like a wrap, which I guarantee sent every projectionist screening it into a panic. I got lucky, I didn't have to screen that one. I did screen another movie, King Kong, with a friend who built it though. Had a wrap during the credits, we both literally started jumping over the seats to get out of the auditorium and race up to booth. Could see the film melting before we even got out of the auditorium. Fortunately it was pretty deep in the credits by that point.


Anyway, we screened the movies because we built them. Movies came in a can, they were put there by a man in a factory downtown a Hollywood distributors office of something, I dunno. Anyway, big ol' cans, steel hexagons. Heavy suckers. A can held about 3-4 reels so you'd have two cans normally, maybe if you were lucky and it was a big can and a kids movie one. I want to say Gods and Generals was three cans? I can't remember, but that thing barely fit on the platter. Anyway, they come in any given time, whoever was on duty when one came in was in charge of building it. Building a movie was both annoying and fun. You grab a leader first thing, can't do anything without a leader. It's on the rack right by the makeup table, along with various other spools of film. Whole bunch of leaders, plenty to choose from, the extra long ones were marked with masking tape near the beginning so you'd know. The makeup table itself was a table with a little portion, about the size of a laptop's track pad, that was a clearish screen and had a light underneath it. On either side were reel holders. You take your full sized blank reel off the wall opposite the film rack (we had five, looked almost like the Olympic rings), clamp the beginning of the leader into it, and then have it spin until the leader is nearly all wound up on it. Every movie had a list of trailers they wanted on it printed out and put in one of the cans. You can a policy film or so depending on the theater and shove it into the leader (mustn't forget the cue!), look at what trailers they want and in what order, grab those trailers from the film rack, splice 'em together. Then when you're done with that, probably another policy to tack on, and you can start with the movie proper! Out the cue on, splice it in, hook that small reel up on the left, and the table has a nice dial that would automatically wind up the intake reel so the 20 minute reel would get sucked into the large reel in less than a minute. Took a bit to know when to speed up and slow down and how long for each, because at the end of the reel, you gotta do some more cutting. Cutter is also built into the table (fun fact, 35mm had straight cuts for splices while 70mm did jagged cuts. I never asked but pretty much assumed right off the bat out was for maximizing surface area for the splice. 70mm was super fun to work with). You can tell where you need to cut because of the cigarette burns. You remember that from Fight Club? I hope so because I sure as hell can't link it here. Anyway, those are real things (they're round on flat movies and oval on scope movies. Fight Club shows an oval, so even on fullscreen versions, you know that movie was scope, for example). They were originally designed for reel-to-reel systems, where you'd have two projectors per screen, each one with one reel loaded, and that was a timing guide for the protectionist to swap projectors. It's about 6ish seconds between the first any second one, and they're at the end of every film reel. Once the platter system was designed that wasn't as important but they kept the standard and it made builds much easier, as well as screenings (I'll go into that in a bit). Anyway, that helps find the end of the real one you get close to it so you can slow down the system and get to the end without overshooting a little easier. Snip it, load the next reel, snip a bit until the frames match up, tape it up, and keep going to the end of the movie. Cue up your credits and curtain up and you've built your reel! Now you just pop it down on a portable little table we had, take the metal reel skeleton off, clamp it and load it onto a platter, and it's ready to go once you out the brain in! Couldn't be simpler.

Of course, just because you built the movie doesn't mean you built it correctly. Gotta screen that sucker, which means they pay you to watch it to make sure there are no mistakes. Usually if you built it, you watch it, but sometimes it'd come in early in the day or the evening shift couldnt get to it and day shift builds it but isn't around to watch. You need an empty auditorium, after all, and the day is booked out from open to close, you're watching this after the theater has "closed" for the day. Again, watching this is work, it's a quality assurance thing, so the protectionist is paid for it and has to watch it, no matter how bad the movie itself is. Other employees were allowed to see it as well, because why not? They don't get paid but they can see it if they want, it's not like it's not already playing for the screening. My company let the managers and protectionists bring a guest if they wanted. It was on the down-low but a small little perk they offered, we could bring a few so long as nobody really falls about it and we were in good standing. Anyway. It's possible to, if you're working on autopilot during the build, do something silly like put a reel on upside down. Not easy, the sound is coded into one side and should be obvious, but like I said, autopilot. I didn't but I knew someone who did. It was a small comfort but if there were any problems during the build, the cigarette burns at least let us know which reel it was in so we could get to it that much easier to fix it.

Spoiler: Bonus link/video: IMAX process!

Show

This was how we did this in IMAX. Because the sound code isn't on the film and is on a whole separate SPICE server, jogging the film was necessary to make sure video and audio aligned. Also, my location didn't have the theater host give the speech, it was pre-recorded (Also, they don't go into it, but the theater host is also constantly cleaning one of the plates as the movie is showing. They also get paid to watch movies! However, they get paid to watch the same 2-3 45-minute documentaries 8 times a day, every day, for months on end). And because it's a really cool process we also had our booth push to the public - an absolutely massive glass wall ringed entirely half of the booth so kiddos and anyone else could see us seeing up the projector every time. It was really fun to make a big show of it, you can spool (I don't know where that guy got "diddling", we always said, spooling") surprisingly dramatically and once you have the routine down pat can go through the rollers so fast one-handed it looks almost like you're doing a weirdly graceful dance.

Downside was I never got to throw a spool like I could with the leaders in 35mm. That never stopped being fun. Also, 35mm had clamps of we needed to move a print. Just toss three clamps on a print and grab that thing off, hoist it in your shoulder, and move it to the proper platter. IMAX doesn't do that. You move the whole goddamn platter wugh that mini forklift he shows you.

[Deadkitten]

I'm using old school 35mm projection terms because I'm old and think I'm funny since with the range you listed I'm like 95% sure you've only worked with digital. Anyway, the way you're using the terms are very different from my intended meaning, so here's a rundown of projection fun times back in the 35mm days! This would be from the mid-to-late aughts (depending on how big a city you were in) going back to I'm guessing at least the 80's, probably the 70s or maybe even late 60s - there were two Columbo episodes that featured projectionist scenes and both had reel-to-reel systems which I'm glad I never had to deal with. Anyway, you might get a kick out of this, how things were done juuuuuuuust before your time.

Your completely right. I believe my first theatre went to digital about a year before I worked there. Lordy apart from the change to digital basically the whole procedure is the same. We still prescreen movies to make sure they are ok as an example. I don't have much motivation to do that anymore since they use a digital passkey that only works after a certain date , and I don't want to stay up til midnight and watch a 3 hour movie with how long my commute had been the past couple years.

What would get you all nastalgic is we actually still have all the old 35mm equipment table, projectors, and all just sitting up in projection. They are heavy as hell and almost impossible to get down so they never bothered to do anything with them. We just lack 35mm film and the training.😅

We used to have them at my old theatre but it was small and we needed the space so one day I called up the local waste management and they brought a bunch of county jail prisoners and got them down and out of the building in a day. Just told them they could scrap the equipment and they were all for it.
(I know that probably sounds like a tragedy and I'd agree, but the job comes first unfortunately)

I think my current theatre has like 4 of them left, but I never paid them much attention cause they aren't really in the way.🤷

Now and days if there is something wrong with the movie the process isn't has catastrophic but since they are digital your cancelling a showing for sure. It takes like 2 hours to download a movie again. But we usually have them in multiple auditoriums to counteract that if it comes to it.

Also really appreciate the rundown. It was cool to see the old school way.

[Peelee]

Your completely right. I believe my first theatre went to digital about a year before I worked there. Lordy apart from the change to digital basically the whole procedure is the same. We still prescreen movies to make sure they are ok as an example. I don't have much motivation to do that anymore since they use a digital passkey that only works after a certain date , and I don't want to stay up til midnight and watch a 3 hour movie with how long my commute had been the past couple years.

What would get you all nastalgic is we actually still have all the old 35mm equipment table, projectors, and all just sitting up in projection. They are heavy as hell and almost impossible to get down so they never bothered to do anything with them. We just lack 35mm film and the training.😅

We used to have them at my old theatre but it was small and we needed the space so one day I called up the local waste management and they brought a bunch of county jail prisoners and got them down and out of the building in a day. Just told them they could scrap the equipment and they were all for it.
(I know that probably sounds like a tragedy and I'd agree, but the job comes first unfortunately)

I think my current theatre has like 4 of them left, but I never paid them much attention cause they aren't really in the way.🤷

Now and days if there is something wrong with the movie the process isn't has catastrophic but since they are digital your cancelling a showing for sure. It takes like 2 hours to download a movie again. But we usually have them in multiple auditoriums to counteract that if it comes to it.

Also really appreciate the rundown. It was cool to see the old school way.

About a year after our transition to digital, we got a one night movie, a The Who concert from the 70s. It was a private concert, neat little thing. We got concerts every so often, I also remember Bat Out of Hell once night. Anyway, interesting thing I noticed, the key didnt expire. I hid that in a secret file on every projector and in a couple on the main hub. Dollars to doughnuts it's still there if they never changed the system. or at least copied the files over.

Also, film cans sometimes had fake names on them and occasionally had locks. I remember when Transformers came in, thing had a 4-digit padlock. I had time so I tried guessing. Started at 0000, went to 0001, 0002, etc etc. I gave up at 0200. You would not believe how mad I was when two days later they give us the code of 0204. We coulda watched that movie before anyone else they shipped it to, I tells ya! Also also, nice thing about not having film is you can't scratch a reel. That was instant firing for a projectionist. Cause you know how the theater rents the movie? Scratching the film means that theater just bought that reel. Which was about a $10,000 mistake.

And that IMAX clip i linked, when the guy said if you don't clamp the ends, the way to fix it is to start looking for another job? He also wasn't joking. I don't even want to imagine what it'd be like trying to clean up that mess if someone didn't clamp the ends. 35mm was free on the platters save for a tiny puck to keep the tail tucked in, but 70mm is a whole different beast. The weight is off the charts on those things.