DROP ON "YOUR" HEAD

Question: What does a Christie brand new head looks like, after you (accidentally) drop it 35 feet?
Answer: Like this:

RESTORATION (DATE 26-JAN-08)

Ok. I went for acryllic paint and I am even less satisfied. I might have picked up the wrong paint. I don´t know.


For the time being, I am considering doing the drawing in AutoCAD and having it plotted out.

RESTORATION (DATE 24-JAN-08)

Framing knob: this is how it is supposed to look like.



...and this is one approach to trying to get it to look similar.

But I´m not very convinced with the results.

CUTE LITTLE PROJECTOR

Here are some pictures of a cute little projector that I have been working on. It belongs to an employee of one of the theatres I service. It is Japan made. Unknown year. Silver brand. Regular 8.

I particularly liked the way the designed the drive train, using the shutter blade as the main pulley.

RESTORATION (DATE 20-JAN-2008)

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day working on the projector. It was a beautiful day out, and thankfully not too hot.

Here you´ll see the projector stripped almost all the way. I have yet to remove the axles of the Continuos Drive Sprockets, and also finish the intensive paint removal. My latest guess is that it has, at least, 3 coats of paint applied in different times of its life. The latest one being the sloppiest.


I will try to start shopping around today for a auto body shop that will give it a nice paint job. Who better than the pros, huh? I could of course do it myself, but it would never come out that good.

This is the serial number of the projector, located on the operator side in the bottom.

This will be arbitrarily called the "Main Shaft" due to my (yet) lack of factory manual. Looks extremely complicated if you compare it to the rest of the machine.

Super8 FILM FOR SALE

UP FOR SALE is this Super8 Feature part:

SPECS

NAME: Chinatown
YEAR: 1974
FORMAT: Super8

VERSION: Feature (Part 3 of 3 ONLY)
LENGTH: 400ft/120mts.
RUNNING TIME: 17 min.

BASE: Estar
SOUND: Mono (Mag)
LANGUAGE SPOKEN: Spanish (dubbed)
SUBTITLES: N/A

DISTRIBUTED BY: Marketing Film International

CONDITION OF FILM: Very good.
Little or no scratching. Color fade.

CONDITION OF BOX: Original. Excellent shape.
Little fading of cover (due to exposure to the sun).

(See picture).

Price: USD 25,00+shipping and hadling

*I would be willing to trade it for another title.

**Shipping to the US $12.00

Dragonfly_films is a member of eBay (USA), Todocolección.com (Spain), Mercadolibre.com (Latin America). For transparency´s sake I will publish this film in the buyer´s choice of auction site. Interested parties, email me or leave a comment on this post.

Super8 FILM FOR SALE

UP FOR SALE is this Super8 Condensed Feature:

SPECS

NAME: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
YEAR: 1977
FORMAT: Super8

VERSION: Condensed Feature
LENGTH: 400ft/120mts.
RUNNING TIME: 17 min.

BASE: Estar
SOUND: Stereo (Mag)
LANGUAGE SPOKEN: English
SUBTITLES: N/A

DISTRIBUTED BY: Columbia Pictures Super8 Division
CONDITION OF FILM: Very good. Little or no scratching. Color fade.

CONDITION OF BOX: Brand new. Not Original

but a replica of the original one. (See picture).

Price: USD 25,00+shipping and hadling

*I would be willing to trade it for another title.

**Shipping to the States (USD 12,00)

Dragonfly_films is a member of eBay (USA), Todocolección.com (Spain), Mercadolibre.com (Latin America). For transparency´s sake I will publish this film in the buyer´s choice of auction site. Interested parties, email me or leave a comment on this post.

RESTORATION (DAY 5)

The entire shutter mechanism gave me a lot of grief.

Blade and housing.

Shutter Drive Assembly: the long rod that extends to the lens of the camera is an axle that lets you modify the sync between the shutter blade and the intermittent, even with the machine running! I´ve never seen this before. No contemporary machine (that I know of) has this feature. I´m in awe!


Shutter Drive Assembly (from a different angle).

RESTORATION (DAY 3)

I have finally managed to remove the Aperture Plate from inside of the Trap. (Both seen here from the back). The aperture has an aspect ratio of 1.27:1 and has rounded corners. Also, this aperture plate is not meant to be filed, or interchanged. It is supposed to be factory cut and seldomly removed.
I guess I will have to devise a way to interchange aperture plates...

Seen here from the front. The round hole in the Trap was a first one for me.

The Shutter Drive (still in the projector).

The sticky filth all over the Shutter Blade made it extremely hard to spin.

Super8 FILM SOLD

Sorry, SOLD!

I got this reel -that turned out to be an underwater documentary- inside box 3 of 3 of Marketing Films edition of "The Ten Commandments" (1956). Since the film was sold to me as is, there was not much else I could do.

So I played the film; and I was shocked. It contains extreme graphical violence towards sharks. They are harpooned out of the water onto the deck of a boat and repeteadly hit in the head with a club until they die. All of this is explicitly shown, to the viewers disgust. I could hardly finish watching it. And now I want to get rid of it. I assume it might have some interest for educating conservationists due to the shock value.

Obviously, this documentary is a product of less environmentally friendly decades.

I strongly warn potential buyers about the explicit nature of violence contained in this reel. I would not suggest it being shown to anyone under 18 years of age.

SPECS

NAME: Unknown
YEAR: Unknown
FORMAT: Super8
LENGTH: 400ft/120mts.
RUNNING TIME: 17 min.

BASE: Estar
SOUND: Mono (Mag)
LANGUAGE SPOKEN: N/A
SUBTITLES: N/A

CONDITION OF FILM: Very good. Little or no scratching.

Slight color fade.
CONDITION OF BOX: Brand new and specially designed (see picture).

(Keep in mind that the box is not original, since I have not

succeded in locating any info relating to this film.)

(Also available in English)

Dragonfly_films is a member of eBay (USA), Todocolección.com (Spain), Mercadolibre.com (Latin America). For transparency´s sake I will publish this film in the buyer´s choice of auction site. Interested parties, email me or leave a comment on this post.

WHO´S ON TOP? HUH?

At the time, it seemed like a good turn of events to have the projector (inside the box) sustain my weight for a change!

This pic was taken in Asuncion´s Central Station (Paraguay), before getting on the bus that brought us back to Buenos Aires (Argentina).

To those of you who are wondering, the shrine is to the Virgen de Caacupé.

(Pics courtesy of Rose)

THE MIGHTY BEAST

(Pics courtesy of Rose)

U-HAUL, I-HAUL, WE ALL HAUL

Luck had it that I got my projector a couple of days into my vacation time. Not only I had to haul the heavy bastard around Paraguay, but I also had to struggle with my own anxiety to start working on it.

The projector in different hotel rooms in different cities in Paraguay.

...and myself, trying not to work on it.

(Pics courtesy of Rose)

SALVAGED

These are the images, sad ones as you´ll see, of the once splendid theatre in downtown Asunción (Paraguay) that is soon to face extinction. This theatre shall remain anonymous to protect those who still work there.

Main electrical panel from the booth.

View from the booth of one of the two abandoned balconies of the auditotium.

This mess that so closely resembles a bowl of spaghetti is nothing but a feature, gathering dust in the stairway that leads to the booth.

Allegedly, the theatre receives between 5 to 7 patrons daily.

View of the sides of the screen.

Every transducer in the auditorium: 1 sub and 1 HF Horn.

It was here, on December 29th, 2007, that I acquired my very first 35mm projector.

The pool of dog pee and poo that "carpets" the floor of the booth.

SALVAGED from a pile of junk, the Ernemann III has been neglected until the point of being submerged in a pool of dog crap for, at least, a couple of decades.

Seats, endless piles of seats.

((Almost all) Pics courtesy of Rose)