Re: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

On 15 May 2024 00:16:41 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:

>
There are two, and "wet spot" as the cause is
incredibly unlikely given the temperature
of the arc.  They're solid carbon (think old
carbon battery electrode) rods coated in copper.

>
When carbons are kept in the damp, they get absorb moisture... and then they
shatter when they get hot.  A competent projectionist can swap it out in
a matter of seconds without even stopping the film.

Not where we were. The story we were told was that they didn't have
that many, so they had to use what they had and do the best they
could.

We did eventually get a new! Base Theater. For its inaugural film it
showed /The Hindenberg/ (judging from IMDb, this as a pre-release
version shown to the troops to see how it went down).

It was anamorphic widescreen. The projectionist forgot to use the
right lens. The Base Commander was in the audience. He was not happy.

Something similar happened with a film I say decades later.

But the /wierdest/ problem I ever saw -- or, rather, didn't see -- was
when the soundtrack played but there was no picture. Of course, since
this was an "art film", it seemed perfectly possible that that was the
intended experience. When caught, we heard the film being rewound and
then it started again.

The more likely cause would be a fault in the
mechanism that maintains a consistent gap
between the electrodes as they burn up (which
the operator needs to adjust to the burn rate
for the particular carbons being used).

>
It doesn't really do that very well (at least on typical lamphouses) so
it always requires the projectionist to spend a little time fiddling with
the rheostat that runs the motor to keep things stable without much
tinkering.  If the gap is getting too wide or too narrow you can tell
pretty easily on screen without even having to look at the sight glass
on the lamphouse.  But you have to be paying attention.
>
My experience with AFEES projectionists is they were all pretty good
and pretty careful (and much better than the Navy guys).  And the selections
at the AFEES theatres were great and included films like Godzilla On
Monster Island, The Devil Bat, and Au Pair Girls.  I spent much of my
childhood hanging out in the booths at AFEES theatres.

On the whole, they generally managed to do the job. But "generally" is
not "always". The selections may have been great (and many were [1])
but they were often pre-release versions with the troops as a test
audience.

One of my DVDs (/The Big Sleep/) has two versions of the film: the
official release and the pre-release version shown to the troops. The
feedback caused those strange "camera-mugging" scenes by Bacall,
dropped some of the actual "detective work" scenes, and had a re-shot
ending because the actress who played the missing wife in the
pre-release version wasn't available for the reshoot to give Bacall
more screen time.

OTOH, /Star Wars/ didn't play in AAFES for a while after it was
released. The reason is the way I saw it: projected by me with a small
projector onto a wall. Lucas (or his attorneys) didn't want any of the
small-size prints (14mm?) to "escape" the AAFES system for a while.

[1] When /M*A*S*H/ played at Fort Ord, the Defense Language Institute
at Monterey got it last. When I left the theater after the last
/scheduled/ perfomance at Ft Ord, there was a long line if people
waiting to get in to an extra showing the people-in-charge had gotten
permission to put on. I knew people who saw it, mostly in various
theaters on Ft Ord itself, all seven of the days it was playing there.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"