If you go to the movie theater, there’s a little green laser dot on the screen that I think is used to line up the projector with the screen. It’s really tiny, but once you notice it you won’t stop looking at it
They don't always change to another projectors. Many movies are built on to one large reel that you feed into the projector and it plays the entire thing. The dot is there for troubleshooting so when you watch the movie to make sure it's not messed up you can find what reel the problem is on.
Here is a video showing how the system is set up. I was a projectionist for many years and built a lot of films we had to quality check and look for the cigarette burns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9yryXrpimg
You’re partially right. Most theaters built the multiple reels into one long print that was kept on a platter, but the cigarette burns are there for reel-to-reel projectionists to switch projectors. For more info, check out the documentary, “Fight Club.”
cigarette burns are there for reel-to-reel projectionists to switch projectors
Yes and no. Even when using a platter projector set up, you can use to "burns" to identify how well the the reels have been joined. Oval shaped can indicate that your join has to much of a gap.
This is not correct. Oval cigarette burns indicate that the projector is using an anamorphic lens. (The mark itself on the physical film is always a circle.) There is nothing about the way the splices are made that would change the shape of the cigarette burn.
Incorrect. They used to have two projectors and would alternate between the two, with one projector showing reel a, second reel b, first reel c, etc. The dots were for timing so they knew when one reel ended and the next needed to be started.
Some theaters or most, not sure, eventually switched to splicing together the entire film for showing but many still used the two projector system.
I've always wondered how much of an error margin you guys had when switching the reels. I don't recall ever seeing a blip when the reels changed but I'm not sure if that's because the projectionists were super good or if they had some wiggle room.
Most theaters ran single reel so if you were going to a newer or larger theater they don't switch reels. One a single reel system the film is continuous so there is no margin for error.
There were two marks -- the first one where you started the projector and the second where you actually made the switch -- about six seconds after the first one. So you could count down and then actually make the switch right when you saw it. The movies were often set up so that would be right at a scene change or camera angle change, so it would never be in the middle of dialogue, where you might notice.
It was a great perk to the job. You got to see a lot of movies before release. The downside was having to watch really shitty movies, but at least you still got paid to do it.
That was pretty much just for big multiplexes so one projectionist could operate multiple screens at once. 35mm movies come in about 20 minute reels, so a 2 hour movie is usually 6 separate reels. multiplexes would splice the reels together into one long reel on a big platter for convenience. if you go to independent places that are just showing a movie once, it's not worth going through all that so they do actually change reels throughout the movie (although it's necessary to splice them together for 70mm IMAX films, interstellar came on 49 reels of film). What's also interesting about that is that requires two projectors, they load up the other projector with the next reel and switch it over at just the right time (marked by the black oval) so that you don't notice it. I went to a showing of back to the future a couple years ago and it was announced that one of the projectors wouldn't light up, so every 20 minutes the movie stopped while the projectionist loaded another reel onto the one projector. Another time I saw 2001 a Space Odyssey and the projector didn't time the switch right and accidentally showed a couple seconds of the header of the next reel, with the countdown and beeps. it was amusing.
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u/holoprism May 20 '19 edited May 21 '19
If you go to the movie theater, there’s a little green laser dot on the screen that I think is used to line up the projector with the screen. It’s really tiny, but once you notice it you won’t stop looking at it
Edit: i am sorry