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I just got an anoying and crazy email. This lady wrote:

"I viewed the American Gangster over the weekend in your establishment and noticed a mike in the top of the screen at least four times - which made me question if this was a copy or of good quality. If so do you think this is fair to your movie goers? "

Just because the film had a flaw see thinks I am showing a bootleg film print. Do people really think the illegal film sharing they hear about is done by theatre owners so they can show the public a movie? I am thinking of telling her how insulting her comment was that we who earn our living like the film makers by showing their art work would think of stealing it from them.

The public is amazing. Oh and by her email address she works for the goverment.

Being as that picture is "Flat", most likely your projector was not in perfect frame.

Any flat format film has quite a bit of "unseen" image top and bottom of the frame. I remember being "high" on my framing once on a picture and could see the arm of the sound guy holding the mic below the actors. Always be sure to get your framing correct and nothing that is not meant to be seen will be seen.

I started in the booth in 1950 as an IA operator. I was never trained to make sure my framing was absolutely centered to cover the production mistakes and I never saw any for 25 years. Is production getting so sloppy that they expect the theatre operators to cover mistakes the director or editor don't catch?

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Bob Allen
The Old Showman

I too was trained by the IA back in the mid 60s and also was not taught about any need to frame up or down other then to keep it in frame. Of course some theatres didn't have their masking set at the proper aspect ratio and didn't show the entire vertical image, and thus one would need to center the frame as not to crop everything only on the top or bottom.

However, with the additional soundtrack information that has been added to the edge of prints over the past decade, it became necessary to slightly shrink the image area of each frame to make room for that additional information. You have noticed that on many flat films that the frame line is very wide while on others it's still the normal thin line. The ones with the wide line have been adjusted to only show the image in the proper aspect ratio. The others with the thin frame line are showing more image then what is meant to be seen, and thus needs to be propering framed vertically.

[This message has been edited by RoxyVaudeville (edited November 08, 2007).]

Thanks for the great comments. I have projectists checking their frame closer on this movie now.