CINEMA SYSTEMS Projection Series-XXIX In the third and concluding part of Unit VII, we delved into various aspects of health and safety at projection workplace and elsewhere in the cinema premises involving the projectionist role. We discussed some of the vital points where the projectionist could add value to the safety aspect of the cinema as a whole.
Advanced Maintenance
With new technologies and sophisticated equipment coming to impact cinema projection, the projection personnel are required to be abreast with those processes and maintain the advanced systems properly so that the experience continues. In this part one of new, UnitVIII, we move forward to learn the techniques of advanced maintenance of the equipment in a projection booth.
As the technology in cinemas becomes more and more advanced, the need for specialist servicing becomes a necessity. Specialist engineers, however, rely heavily on the man on the spot - in other words, the projectionist. This makes it doubly important that the
projectionist should not only be competent to do the job he should also own periodic servicing to minimise failures. It also means that the projectionist needs to understand fully the basics of the technologies being used. A good engineer will always encourage a projectionist who is keen to learn, since it often helps him to converse over telephone to a knowledgeable person in case of an emergency, and engineer could no way reach the spot on time. Having said that, the projectionist should never attempt to do anything that he is not qualified to do; he must ask or research anything that he is not familiar with. In the long run, it will only help the projectionist to further their career as very often engineers are recruited from within the projection room.
get out to a cinema the following day at best - some times more than than - often having travelled several hundred miles. The advancements in the projection operations meant that the chief projectionist and his staff have an increased responsibility to look after the equipment through routine inspection, to reduce the number of equipment failures, to cope with many of the more common failures by themselves, and to build maintenance in to the normal operations of the cinema by means of scheduling.
Why advanced maintenance? In recent times, the way maintenance is carried out in cinema's projection room has changed dramatically. Companies providing standby engineers on duty every night within about one hour's travel of every cinema have now disappeared due to the enforced economies. Today, it is normal for a service engineer to
A typical modern projectorconsole
July-September 2010
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