I thought I was pushing the limits when I interlocked all 6 projectors at AMC Rolling Hills 6 in Torrance, California. I guess not. It took two make-up tables to move the film into and out of the three booths.
I worked at an AMC 16 some 13 years ago. It was one of my first jobs and I was 1 month away from being trained as a projectionist when the decision was made to go all digital. Half the booths were pushed to digital the month I was supposed to train, then the other half a month later. The last film projector was the IMAX projectors, which were replaced with digital later that summer. I'm very sad (13 years later) that I never got to work upstairs. Booth jobs were basically ended by the digital projectors. At our AMC, 5 of the 7 people trained in booth were cut to work in box and guest services, and the other 2 were made supervisors who worked guest services and kept an eye on the booth along with the managers. No longer needed people upstairs to run things, to my understanding the whole projector system could more or less run autonomously, they just needed someone to power on audio equipment in the morning and power it off after the last show, everything else was run by computer. Even though I never got to work booth, that is still one of my favorite jobs I had. It was a magical time, so many good movies came out while I worked there, and it was back before reserved seating, big reclining chairs, food service, and all those fancy extras took over the industry. Back when you had to find a red velvet covered auditorium chair and focus on the movie. Back when everybody went to the movies on the weekend and hung out at the mall, back before amazon and streaming took over. I remember feeling like the coolest kid in my friend group bc I got unlimited free tickets for me and friends, got to see every new movie multiple times. Digital destroyed some of the magic imo
This is amazing!! I remember the one time I did an interlock, it was on the fly - for the first Pokemon movie, opening Saturday morning, and the initially planned theater sold out 10 minutes from opening with a long line still waiting. So I interlocked it to the screen right next to the original one and sold that one out too. I was terrified because it was the first (and only) time I'd ever done it, and I had never been shown how to set it up the whole way through. But it worked, no issues, and two theaters full of Pokemon fan kids in 1998 got to see the movie when only one would have been able to if I'd not done that.
I used to live there..And I will forever remember this amazing place,and Still Miss going there with an old friend of mine,and other friends met there.Keep Up The Good Work People..Many Thanks for those memories!♡
From movie palaces to mega plexes. The last time I went to the movies there was a total of 4 people watching the show. Theaters can't compete with TV, computers and the handheld device you are seeing this caustic comment on.
Absolutely gorgeous. I'm wondering what's happening when the film ends. Does the film sags into the room between a projector and the next one? How is it managed?
Interlocking projectors is quite old technology. We used selsyn motors at Elstree Studios when I was there in the late sixties and early seventies to lock the projector to 36 mag track playback heads, and of course, they weren't new when I arrived. In the seventies we had a pair of Phillips DP 35/70s installed that had rock and roll facility, (wow! I thought that was quite an improvement). Now it can all be done with digital via satellite. Who can say what will happen next? It's mind boggling.
Before the use of platters, the interlock could have be done, projecting reel one, rewinding it and bring it to the next cinema hall and so on. So the next cinema hall gets the film start about 40 minutes later.
Now it's all done on a PC in any order at any time. Not a projectionist in site. What's a projectionist anyway? What a risk interlocking all those Christy projectors, not the most reliable machines. I expect they are all in land fill by now.
