Well, verbose crowd you all are!!! Humph!
Movie night #1 is now behind us and what a fun time it was. We had about 30 guests, and there's just nothing like a great crowd and all their responses to make great old entertainment twice as fun. I had forgotten that "This Is the Life" has never been released on home video, so not only is it a decent movie (IMDB rating 7.2), NOBODY had seen it before! I had a number of high schoolers there, some of whom had never seen a projector film before, and a couple of them rated the show as "awesome" - their choice of adjective. My demonstration of vinegar syndrome (all but 5 minutes of the show - 2 trailers, 2 shorts, a 2-reel feature - has VS) included the crumpling of a dying piece of 35mm film. Except instead of crumpling, it shatters - I was surprised when the flying shards of film drew a gasp from several people!
The evening wasn't without technical glitches, though thankfully they were all at the start. First, I hit the wrong audio switch, cutting off the first few words of the first trailer. But then, during trailer #2, the NEWLY SERVICED Bell & Howell 2592 got into a tiff over reverse projection (used for cueing) and wouldn't engage the takeup. Worse, the picture was incredibly dim PLUS we started to get a gear grinding noise. Whew - at trailer's end the gear popped in place and takeup worked again, and later we found the bulb had fouled and had to be changed. Well, 3 minutes later I had a bad changeover to the first short - wasn't quite ready due to the problems - but after that all was smooth. In fact, a couple of people wanted to know when the feature's second reel started because they hadn't seen anything to give it away. WIN!
Add to this the dear wife's hospitality and a potluck dessert selection, and the night was a thorough delight. Wish you all could've joined us!
There's a sense of lunacy - and satisfaction - in keeping all this equipment running, as you know, or I wouldn't write it all up for you! Anyway, here's a very wide angle photo:
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