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Author
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Topic: Columbo In The Projection Room
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Maurice Leakey
Film God
Posts: 5895
From: Bristol. United Kingdom
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted January 08, 2014 04:39 AM
Members who have never worked in a dual changeover projection box may have wondered how the projectionist knows a reel change is imminent, I don't mean the cues which everybody is aware of, but something ahead of that to warn on the impending reel change.
There were glass windows in the top spool box, but an audible warning was more handy if no one was standing alongside the projector. This was usually a bell. In the Kalee projectors the bell ran for a few seconds when the outgoing spool reached a certain pre-determined speed, usually about two minutes ahead. The Westrex also had a bell, but this was connected to a swinging arm which had a little revolving ball which ran on the film. When a certain amount of film was left the arm swung clear and rang a bell.
There has been talk on this Forum about projection boxes in films, but none perhaps better than one which actually featured both projectors in its story.
I refer to the Columbo episode from 1973 called "Double Exposure". In this a murder was committed and a cast-iron alibi was offered. This was that the film was being continually shown from projector to projector. We saw a trick the projectionist used, when he was rewinding a spool he inserted a nickel some 100 feet from the end of the film and then rewound on to the beginning.
When the spools were reaching their end the nickel fell out and caused a clatter on the floor, loud enough to be heard even if the projectionist was not alongside the outgoing projector.
Later on when Columbo was doing his look-around he discovered that there were no coins either on the floor, or in the reel ends. The murderer had been projecting the film but had not been aware of the little nickel trick!
I always thought this was made up for the TV movie, but I later learnt that this was used quite often in cinema projection.
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Maurice
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