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I once visited the projection room of a movie theater that showed second run films, in 35mm film, only. I didn’t see a film arrive, but I know they came on reels in big metal boxes (“cans”). They were just left on the projectors when in use, not on reels, they were unreeled onto “platters”, big flat turntables such that the film would unwind from the center of one, through the projector, onto another… and then when done they’d just reverse which was which for the next showing. This means no rewinding is required and the film is handled a bit less.

The room was just an ordinary room with an ordinary lock on the ordinary door, although I suppose the fact of the movies being on platters made them inconvenient to steal.

Interestingly, I was visiting a friend who is a projectionist, who had been called in to do some emergency work. You see, sometimes a film gets moved from one projector to another. The correct way is to either just route it across the room directly into the new projector, or to wind it onto a reel and the unwind it onto the platter of the other projector. Sometimes that isn’t feasible, and you put big clips on the film to hold it together and several people move it from one platter to another, carefully. Some idiot had done this on his own, and dropped the film, which went SPROING all over the room. The whole room was about a foot deep in coils of tangled film. And, a showing was about to start.

The solution blew my mind. My friend simply cut the film into about a dozen pieces, which made it much easier to untangle. He found the start and put it into the projector and got the movie going, and then while it played he just kept locating the next piece and splicing it into place. The people in the theater had no idea that the film they were watching had been cut into pieces and was being glued and taped back together even while they were watching it.

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Reddit user themcp on why projectionists are awesome