By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
READ MORE: Here are the Most Brutal Reactions to ‘The Hateful Eight’ 70mm Roadshow
Imagine that you are driving your car and have to maintain 55mph on a road with lots of hills. Going down the hills you don’t need to press the gas as much because you can coast, but on the way up a hill, you have to really floor it to maintain that speed. Now imagine that your gas pedal sticks. It’s unresponsive, and you can’t push it down past a certain point. So now as you climb those hills, you gradually slow down, and eventually get to the point where you can’t make it up.
By this point in the movie, half the film is off the platter, and it doesn’t need to spin as fast. The arm was able to handle the tension at this point, and we could allow it to regulate itself under close supervision. The intermission was perhaps five minutes longer than usual while we troubleshooted, but other than that, from the audience’s’ perspective (and more importantly, Tarantino’s), the film went off without a hitch.
Because of this, dozens of tiny mechanical failures are bound to happen, and part of our job (the above story is a prime example) is to make sure small issues don’t propagate into catastrophes. Just today, I’ve had a lamp shift slightly to the right creating a vignette effect at the left of frame, a fuse blow, and a lens slightly scoot forward in its housing, causing me to have to refocus and tighten it down.
Now that the Roadshow has started, we work 15 or 16 hours per day, with no days off for the duration of the run. Sleep deprivation begins to become a legitimate issue as your reflexes begin to slow, particularly for the late evening shows. I leave the booth by 2:30am every night, and I’m back in at 10am the next morning. That said, I’m lucky in that I only have four shows per day. Some projectionists are doing five shows a day, making for 20 hour days without a break.
Tonight the DCP of The Hateful Eight opened at my theater, with 60 tickets sold. Simultaneously, in my house: packed seats, 300 strong. And they got a great show.
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.