I Was A Professional Movie Theater Projectionist For Six Years. Here Is Why Movie Presentation Is A Dying Art

From 2015 until 2021, I worked as one of the projectionists at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. The New Beverly Cinema is a repertory cinema that is owned by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, and he has a large hand in constructing the theater's calendar of films. For the most part, the NewBev (as we called it) runs a different double bill every 48 hours, but it will sometimes have singularly long features running on their own. In addition, the NewBev shows one of Tarantino's own movies every Friday at midnight.

Now, there's a reason Mr. Tarantino is known as a purist, and not just in regard to gambles like filming "The Hateful Eight" in harsh Colorado weather conditions. When it comes to film presentation, every single movie at the NewBev is presented on either 35mm or 16mm film. There is no digital projector in the booth. This means that a skilled cadre of projectionists must be carefully trained on the fineries of film projection. 

Film projection is a very complex affair. There are a hundred details to remember with every single presentation. Films must be threaded through a projector in a very specific fashion. Each print requires a specific lens. There is a lot of focus, lens shifting, and framing involved, and you need to have a basic understanding of the evolution of film stock types, as well as how a print's age can affect its color and shrinkage. Memorizing these details of film projection ensures that the audience gets an impeccable presentation with every single show. Sadly, with modern automated digital equipment, so much knowledge of physical projection is falling into oblivion, and the truth is, it's hard to present a film well when you don't work with the projector closely regularly.

Projecting 35mm film prints is vastly more complicated than operating a standard 2K digital projector, and I'll explain why. At the New Beverly, all films are run reel-to-reel, which means that a projectionist has to seamlessly change over from one projector to the next every 20 minutes or so. 35mm prints are typically shipped in large metal cases on a series of 20-minute reels. Multiplexes build the prints up onto giant singular reels and then load them onto a projector on vast horizontal platters. The NewBev, because it deals with older prints and sometimes even archive prints, keeps the films on the 20-minute reels.

Why go through all this hassle? Well, it's all about the fine details, and when you deal with such a wide variety of prints as a projectionist, you come to truly appreciate them. We know what lens is required for a film that's meant to be in a 1.35:1 aspect ratio or the 1953-era 2.39:1 Cinemascope aspect ratio. We also know how a print is supposed to sound. Truly skilled projectionists can eyeball a sound format just by looking at a print. 

Frankly, even though I could fill a book with what I know about film projection, I'm not nearly as much of an expert as those old-world projectionists. But I have enough skill to notice immediately when a film presentation is going wrong ... which happens a lot in modern cinemas. Because digital projectors are automated, there isn't someone standing by to fix problems. And if there's no one in the projection booth to adjust focus or alter volume levels, fixing those things often requires long conversations with theater employees. That's why presentation has sauntered vaguely downward for years.

The shift to digital projection came with the 21st century. George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels were deeply steeped in digital filmmaking ahead of their time, with Lucas insisting that digital projection was the correct way to see his films as intended.  By 2013, though, 88% of cinemas had switched to digital projection. These days, only specialized theaters still have actual film projectors on site.

Digital projectors have been incredibly streamlined since 2011, becoming brighter, crisper, and capable of the same level of detail as 35mm film. Some digital projectors are so small now that they're mounted on a theater's wall. These projectors are activated with iPads by theater employees who have never seen the inside of a projection booth. The biggest disadvantage of this system, though, is the inability to troubleshoot. If there's an issue, there's no way to provide a quick fix on the fly like there would be with a 35mm presentation. I recently saw the film "Mercy" (a movie so awful, it's bad for society), and the 3-D lenses were accidentally reversed on the projector. No one stopped the film to fix the lenses, so I had to watch the whole movie with my 3-D glasses upside-down. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a digital presentation where the focus was off, and remained off, because no one at the theater could make the proper adjustments.

35mm isn't perfect either, of course, and it comes with a host of its own unique issues. But it's nice to have a hard-working, likely over-caffeinated movie warrior in the booth to oversee issues when they arise. With newer projection formats, that former staple of the cinematic experience has, sadly, fallen by the wayside.