Projector Flicker

[Michael Collier]

I saw the good shepard this christmas and was driven mad by a projector problem that made the whole movie flicker. I was very confused as to what could cause this. It was a theater in west texas, small, so the projector is probably out of repair/miss-aligned, but this drove me mad the whole film.

 

It wasn't a frame to frame flicker, the image would go progressivly darker over several frames and then lighten up. It looked like they hooked the projector up to a fire flicker box. The odd thing was it wasn't over the whole frame, just the upper left or the lower right, never both. I started to suspect the shutter was off, but is that right? It drove me nuts for 3 hours, now I am just curious. Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, but theres no 'projector flicker' forum.

[Hal Smith]

I saw the good shepard this christmas and was driven mad by a projector problem that made the whole movie flicker. I was very confused as to what could cause this. It was a theater in west texas, small, so the projector is probably out of repair/miss-aligned, but this drove me mad the whole film.

It wasn't a frame to frame flicker, the image would go progressivly darker over several frames and then lighten up.

It sounds to me like the theatre is still using an arc projector. Arc's will flicker like mad if the projector isn't set up right. Alternately it could be a Xenon lamp projector with either a very old bulb or a flaky power supply. If it's an old bulb I wouldn't want to be in the booth when they finally change it, Xenon bulbs can explode like a hand grenade if mishandled or run too long. The safety gear one is supposed to wear when changing out a Xenon bulb looks like something a bomb squad member would wear.