April 3, 1998
After a few conversations with the people at Anthology Film Archives today,
I found out that, contrary to what I'd believed, they too have only one
projector in their 200-seat theater, and splice reels together to avoid
reel change breaks. So there isn't much advantage to moving the screening
away from AMMI. I called a few other screening rooms: Magno has a
room with two projectors, but it holds only 60 or 70 people; Tribeca has
one 16mm projector and stops the film between reels. Without having
enough evidence, I'm starting to get the feeling that the huge-reel method
is a low-end way of getting by with one projector, and that the two-projector
changeover method is classier. If I decide that $400 is too much
to pay for a screening with pauses between reels, then my only options
are renting a much smaller room for more money, or waiting a few months
until I can make a new print with sound pull-ups, and let AMMI put splices
in it. I suspect I'll go ahead with the AMMI screening, but I'm going
to ponder the issue over the weekend.
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