Backstage at the Movies

Next month I'm giving a program on historic movie theaters.  Just for fun it will be given in a modern movie theater....with popcorn and a few relevant silent movie offerings.  

Did a recon trip the other day to make sure various media can interact electronically.  I'd never been up in the "working spaces" of a theater before.  All sorts of interesting things.

Posters everywhere.  They had plenty on the walls and racks and racks of old ones.

All the space up top is one long room.  Movie projectors - that large object in the right foreground is one - are aiming to the left and right as you go by.  I learned many things.  For instance, in times past you had to have a projectionist.  It was a pretty high paying union job.  It was needed because film rolls were fairly short and you had to be ready to swap in the next one.  Also because projectors would get stuck, and film melts and/or starts to burn pretty quickly.  At least in the old days.  Now projectionists are no longer needed.

I was curious about this device.  I should have put a hand in the photo to give scale but these things are huge, perhaps three feet across.  These turntables were for gigantic reels that were spliced together into one long feature film length behemoth.  A first step towards eliminating humans up in the projection booth.

Now its all digital.  Satellites high overhead send a stream of Hollywood crafted 1's and 0's down to be formed into images.