Thursday, October 29, 2009
Well, Col. Travis, use your cell phone to call for reinforcements
The results of hiring callow, cheap help are often really funny. The Vicad's Erica Rodriguez writes about the theater in Ganado, "Alvin Svoboda never thought a job as a 15-year-old video projectionist would play out this way." Swoboda is – get this – 71 years old, which is to say he started running movies more than fifty years ago. Poor little Erica doesn't know that a half century ago, movies were on film and running a projector was a skilled job. Read here. An editor should have caught something like this, but …
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4 comments:
Loon--
It's just like lawyers who cannot sustain a private practice--do you every wonder where the bottom of the class is employed?
Bottom of the class, my sweet bippy! These imbiciles likely never even graduated. But how would we know? A point blank question to the editor a while back yielded no answers as to what education his "journalists" held.....
Mr. Loon, you are right about the job of the projectionist once being a skilled, artistic type of occupation. The kids today have no clue, what with everything gone digital. Kind of takes the fun out of movies these days, if you ask me.
One of my best friends during my youth, worked for Louis Ray Madden as the projectionist at the Main Theater in Seadrift. There was an art and a lot of timing to that work, what with the timing involved with changing reels and such. I once had some footage of the movie East Of Eden, that had to be trimmed out when the film snapped or burned, I forget which. I recall a few times when the projector would stop, or the gear would strip the drive holes in the film. The movie would freeze momentarily, then the projector lamp would slowly burn a hole in the stopped frame on the screen. Was a much more meaningful experience on hallucinogens, watching James Dean slowly melt and fade to bright white.....
At age 15, Swoboda was not a "video" projectionist. Video is on tape or digital media. There are few if any people even old enough at the Advocate to even catch that it should have read "film" projectionist......
Ah, yes. Well I remember the junior-high years in AV club, charged with running the school's projectors. Doubled over in laughter as a hole burned through the picture, Bonanza-like, as we doubled over in giggles. Somebody would remember to say, 'Quick. Hit the loop-setter!' Often it was too late, and we had to splice. One wonders what whole scenes were left behind in junior-high cutting rooms...
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