To my mind there are two key things that make checking unknown film fun, firstly finding out what's on it, the other is seeing how well the condition has borne up over time. Conversely one of the most frustrating things is when the picture is fine but the perforations have been torn to shreds, usually by some idiot who should never have been allowed within a million miles of film. Luckily the one film I found today that was in the most appalling of conditions was a stray reel that's only fit for ditching anyway but for goodness sake!
The other problem I found today was a reel that had gone a little sticky, this can largely be treated with a healthy dose of film cleaner and lubricant but it's such a pain, particularly when the self same fool mentioned above has snapped the film a good many times and has used ordinary sellotape to 'repair' the join (I use the term repair loosely, from what I could see it looks like he simply taped the two bits together and let the projector punch out the perforations which, by some strange kind of poetic justice, can't have done his projector much good!) The trouble with ordinary sellotape if left over time is it either looses all its stickiness and just flakes off (quite common) or it turns to goo (as happened in this case). This makes cleaning a major pain in the a*se since you turn the handle on the winding bench, hit the goo (or a split perf) and, as happened so frequently today it's unreal, the tissue with the cleaning fluid respectively jolts out of one's hand as it gets stuck on the goo or it gets shredded by the split perf. So a quick cleaning and lube job that should only take a few minutes takes absolutely bloody ages.
Nothing's ever f**king easy!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment