Those little circles that flash at the top of movies...

pips · Post by **pips** » 07 Mar 2006 20:00

I was watching Fight Club last night, and when the scene about how Tyler Durden puts porn into movies came up, it reminded me of how much I hate the fact that I notice those stupid circles that flash at movies to let the worker person know to switch films or whatever. Are any of you aware of those since you've watched Fight Club and annoyed by them EVERY SINGLE TIME you're at the movies now? I mean, Fight Club is an awesome movie, but AH! Stupid circles!

Faco · Post by **Faco** » 07 Mar 2006 23:41

Same story. But I thank Fight Club, because I learned something new.

I was allways wondering about those circles...

Outsider · Post by **Outsider** » 08 Mar 2006 06:26

In point of fact, those little circles to indicate an upcoming reel change to the projectionist are largely irrelevant today, and most people who saw Fight Club in a movie theater did not even witness a "reel change" the way it was described in that movie.

See, it takes about two miles of celluloid ribbon to make up one ordinary two hour film. Would up around it self, that reel of ribbon is big, about five feet across. Imagine a five foot wide pancake weighing sixty five pounds... So for several reason, including reasons of transporting such a film, a movie is broken up into several smaller reels of film, usually between five and seven parts. It used to be that there were two separate projectors for each theater, and while Reel 1 of a movie was running on one projector, Reel 2 was loaded up on the other and ready to go. The projectionist would actually have to sit up in the projection booth for most of the film waiting for one reel to get towards the end, wait for the cue, and start the other reel at the right time. There would actually be a few seconds of overlap when both reels are showing the same scene, both projections lining up on the screen so that you don't know its coming from two projectors at once. That way, when reel 1 finishes, there is no gap since reel 2 is already going. The the projectionist would load reel 3 on to the first projector and await his next cue and do that all over again. If you've ever been in an old theater and seen a double image of the film for a couple seconds, this was probably in that overlap portion at the end of one reel and the beginning of the next, and the projectors were not perfectly lined up.

For many years already, though, theaters have had a very simple technology that allows them to assemble all the reels together in advance of showing the movie. Reel 1 is spooled onto a large turntable, then reel 2 is spliced to reel 1 and wound onto the turntable, and so on. Thus you get your five-foot-wide pancake sitting on a large spinning platter. The film is fed through just one projector and as it plays it winds itself back up onto another big turntable stacked right above or below the turntable that its playing on. A few weeks later, when the theater is done showing that movie and has to send it back to the studio or off to another theater, the reels are taken apart and wound back onto their seperate smaller reels for transport.

Nobody needs to sit up in the booth anymore watching for the little circles to cue them to switch on the second projector. There isn't even a second projector anymore (thats probably the biggest practicle upshot - movie theater projectors aren't like those little POS's your middle school teacher used to use in the classroom, they're big expensive pieces of equipment that cost more than some houses, and now theaters need only half as many of them). The circles are an anachronism, only there for the benefit of the smallest oldest crappiest theaters that haven't seen an equipment upgrade since the late 1970's, perhaps like the shithole porn-theater that Tyler Durden might have worked in.

Guest_2 · Post by **Guest_2** » 08 Mar 2006 06:30

You always have well thought out responses

Do you mind if I use your
:What kinds of qualities of a shoe make it good freestyle:
post in a footbag magazine I'm creating for class? We can use two outside articles and that was a great one.
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.ph ... ht=#159359

Will Digges · Post by **Will Digges** » 08 Mar 2006 10:42

I despise those gosh darn circles!! RAWRRR

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 08 Mar 2006 17:56

Jonathan Schneider: the man knows his stuff.
Seriously, your posts are always well-crafted and enlightening. What's up with that?

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Mar 2006 10:58

Outsider wrote: Nobody needs to sit up in the booth anymore watching for the little circles to cue them to switch on the second projector. .

In major theatres, no. But if you watch films at old theatres, or at Universities, somebody is still doing that dirty work. In college I volunteered at the film society, and I had to do the reel changeovers manually. I only screwed up once, but it was UHF, so nobody cared.