8mm Forum: Viewers comments

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Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on August 10, 2016, 05:02 AM:

Yesterday I put on a show for an over 60's club. The 55 min reel consisted of trailers (all new when purchased so no tramlines) Pathe News, adverts, 'This Modern Age' and ABC cinema daysets. The venue was pitch black and the picture on the 8ft screen was sharp with clear sound from three speakers. At the end of the show the organiser said 'It's amazing how much better the pictures are today and oh, that horrible sound! That lady warbling'. She was referring to the song 'Can't help loving that man of mine' sung by Ava Gardner. Now the organiser is about 50 and never saw these things at the cinema. Her comments really depressed me. Talk about being slapped in the face by reality!!

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on August 10, 2016, 05:58 AM:

I'm finding the older population don't 'get' the joy of real films, whereas the teens/twentysomethings are fascinated by celluloid, you've only got to look at the success of the Prince Charles Cinema when they offer screenings on 35 & 70mm. The place is rammed full of the younger populace.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on August 10, 2016, 06:15 AM:

I thought members may be interested in some "Showboat" trivia, particularly about Ava Gardner's singing.
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/14440/Show-Boat/trivia.html

Posted by William Olson (Member # 2083) on August 10, 2016, 09:01 AM:

I'm 61 and I enjoy film in every format. I've been in love with film since I was 5.

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on August 10, 2016, 09:20 AM:

Apologies William I didn't mean any disrespect, my comments were aimed more at the general public rather than film collectors.

Posted by William Olson (Member # 2083) on August 10, 2016, 09:54 AM:

No apology needed. I was just adding my own 2 cents. Sorry if I came across as being offended. I certainly wasn't.

Posted by David Guest (Member # 2791) on August 10, 2016, 11:00 AM:

I did film shows for years and every time I showed a feature they started to nod of so I use to just show reel 1 and 3 and they never noticed

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 10, 2016, 12:03 PM:

Hey, I'd be the first to acknowledge that modern digital film reproduction is superior in general, to almost any film print (well, probably not 35MM, nothing beats a really good 35MM presentation!), and hey, you have 6 channel sound (are there more channels these days? I haven't kept up) ...

But give me the occasional scratch, the film grain, everything that makes film ... film.

I may only be 50, and I am very thankful that i was part of that age group that grew up with a film projector in the house. Gee, it's hard to imagine the impoverished millions of todays youth that have only grown up with bluray, DVD and VHS (and perhaps laserdisc), that have absolutely no idea of what actual film is.

I know it seems ludicrous to nearly everybody on the forum here, but it's hard to imagine that there is a class of people today that just assume that the images on a bluray or DVD, are largely gathered from something called celluloid.

... but, it is also heartwarming when children will see a reel of actual film, see all the pictures on the film, and be awestruck that the fast presentation of these pictures, presented before they're eyes ... gives the magical illusion of life!

Posted by Stuart Reid (Member # 1460) on August 10, 2016, 12:30 PM:

Dave, that made me proper chortle! Bloody good time saver too!

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on August 10, 2016, 01:10 PM:

Don't let it get you down Dave. There is always someone who will rain on your parade and others.
Do what I used to do give film shows to kids only.
I really miss going out and about doing Sunday School Shows
in a Church Hall and also for children's birthday parties.
They are usually a bit more appreciative of such things especially the film projectors.

[Smile]

Posted by Allan Broadfield (Member # 2298) on August 11, 2016, 03:46 AM:

Re Dave Guest's comments, when I worked as a projectionist in the late fifties, we used to run the ABC minors club for the kids on Saturday mornings.
They often didn't see a full feature as we would sometimes run down a couple of hundred feet of the following reel before changing over to it to save time.
I was a little shocked at this practice being a young and idealistic lad at the time, having not long before been in the audience myself!

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 11, 2016, 04:14 AM:

Dave i agree, i only do film shows for kids parties although not for a year or two now.
Especially these days as they are so inquisitive about the projector, they want to know what it is how it works and they think its cool. [Wink]

(and it is)

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on August 11, 2016, 04:25 AM:

Allan there was a cinema I worked in where they would commit
this terrible practice during normal feature film shows so
they could make up for lost time if a film breakdown had happened.
One reason was due to the rather strict local Film Exhibition
Licencing Laws. The cinema had to open and close at specified
times.
I know of other sites that would run in some film before the reel change over so the projectionists could catch the last bus home.
Oh happy days. Hahahaha !!! [Smile]

Posted by Allan Broadfield (Member # 2298) on August 12, 2016, 01:41 AM:

Presumably this can't happen now with digital cinema, unless perhaps they can skip to the next chapter as we do with our DVD's?
Does anyone on the forum know?

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 3812) on August 12, 2016, 02:55 AM:

Yep, Quite easy to do with Digital Cinema.

On the varied types of control screens from differing servers there are "Buttons" not unlike those on many VCR/DVD players where one can press Pause, Play, Fast Forward etc.
Normally on the Digital gear the Forward button/arrow simply steps to the next "reel" much like reels in the 35mm days approx 20mins.
On the server I had you could press the Forward button & one other (cant recall) & actually set the time point you wish to go to. It can be either Forwards or Backwards (a - amount in time).
Those sorts of functions are great if you are doing a spot check on pix quality & or sound after having assembled a Playlist prior to actually playing to an audience.
Other times it is useful is when a power outage has stopped the show one can have a bit of a guess at how far you wish to go BACK & back up the system and so restart the show repeating a bit of what the audience may have seen & hopefully coming in where the picture went off.
Most sites have the server on a UPS so it keeps going for a while & the sound may or may not fail depending upon whether the sound gear is also powered by the UPS BUT the IMAGE vanishes as the projector lamp is way to heavy a load for almost ALL UPS supplies.
Many may not like the digital for the almost perfect pix all the time but from an operational point of view it was brilliant to work with as it made life so much easier.

But sadly many complexes simply do not use many of the functions that are available possibly due to time constraints with other sessions coming along should a power outage hit the site.

Easy for a small site such as I had but a bit of a headache in a large multiscreen complex.

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on August 12, 2016, 03:02 AM:

Lindsay we too had the same problem at our Digital site if there was a fault and stoppage.

The problem was knowing exactly at which part of the movie in all
9 screens it stopped.
Unlike good old reels of film in which case you could see where the movie stopped. [Big Grin]

Posted by Lindsay Morris (Member # 3812) on August 12, 2016, 05:05 AM:

David,
I can picture people running here & there in a 9 screen plex trying to restart 9 stopped shows due to a power bump & the lamps had all gone out let alone trying to rewind the shows to about where the event may have happened...simply NOT an option.

Posted by Allan Broadfield (Member # 2298) on August 12, 2016, 07:51 AM:

A power failure is a nightmare with either format, but digital seems to be the easiest to manage.
I worked with film even before the 'cakestand' was introduced and it could be quite labour intensive, changing reels every 20 minutes then during the advert and trailer break, when you would often run widescreen trailers among academy ratio commercials, sometimes switching back and forth between projectors in a few minutes.
lots of good memories, not forgetting the cock ups, and I always thought that chief projectionists were frustrated sergeant majors, wanting the brass and floors polished every day!

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