The Blair Witch movie. It wouldn’t have been scary if I was watching on the couch. But these were special circumstances.
I was the head projectionist at the big flagship theater in town. But there was a theater that was massive and a single screen and had huge balcony. It had about 700 seats and was massive. And it was also haunted. There were tunnels under the theater that went out a few blocks under downtown. The place was creepy.
Since we only got one copy of The Blair Witch Project it was being shown there. Since it was a big deal (there were lines forming for tickets 24 hours early) I was tasked with building the film and screening it to make sure everything worked. Everything did not work.
Our boss let all the employees that wanted to sit in on the screening do so. This was around 2AM. So there were about 60 people in the balcony. For fun I turn off every single light in the theater. Movie starts.. No audio.
Some investigation. Analog audio is totally fucked on the projector and the film didn’t have a digital soundtrack. This was the only film I encountered without digital audio. So I can see how analog not working went unnoticed. I am completely fucked and I have already been working since 10AM getting my theater ready for the now movies released on Friday and now I have to deal with this shit and I have no clue what is wrong.
I toss the audio into “BYPASS” and turn the volume all the way up. It was faint but audible. So haunted theater, no lights, and you could barely hear the audio. I let the movie play so the employees that came to watch could at least watch something. It was actually pretty scary.
After the movie ended shit went down. Bypass would not work with 700 people in the theater since bodies absorb too much sound. This had to be fixed.
While I was trying to fix things the district manager drove 90 miles to wake up the technician that lived in Salem since he wasn’t answering his phone. Which is somewhat understandable since it was around 4AM.
Analog is shot and I have no clue. I rewired all of it and no luck. I ran some digital film to test that the amps and speakers work. No problem there. So Jake and Bob go up to Portland to get a new analog kit at the warehouse.
Then things get ten times worse. This was when analog sound was shifting from a actual light-bulb to LEDs. The projector we were using was the light-bulb kind and the kit they brought back was the LED kind. This was a incredibly time-consuming conversion.
An new power supply had to be installed and wired in and then the soundhead needed to be rebuilt. And then it took about 6 hours with a oscilloscope and RTA to dial it in. The difficulty here was the technician. His name was Bob.
Roger was the projection technician for 20 years before Bob. Bob was a maintenance guy that pretty much only dealt with chair cushions and popcorn poppers. He knew nothing about the booth and somehow got Roger’s job. And I had to deal with him. It became clear that as little as I knew he knew less. But he was super alpha and wouldn’t take advice from a person that had ran a perfect booth for three years.
I get fed up and say this isn’t worth 4.75 a hour and leave around 7am. Jake comes to my apartment at 9AM and drags me back and says if I help I will get a dollar a hour raise. He also tells Bob to get the fuck out of the booth. I manage to get sound. Not good sound, but sound.
And for some reason a few months later I was talked into being Bob’s apprentice. I quit a few months later.
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