The Guardians of Film

High up in the cramped projection booth that services Upper Perreault Hall in Fuller Labs lives an echo of the movie industry’s past: two vintage Norelco DP70 (AAII) film projectors built in the 1950s and donated to WPI by National Amusement Inc. in 1990. The fully functioning analog film projectors—one of only four sets still operating in the state—are lovingly maintained and run by members of Lens and Lights (LNL), the 60-year-old student-run group best known as the audio/visual experts on campus.

The students view their mission to operate and preserve the projectors—and the craft of the projectionist—with pride. Former Head Projectionist Kyle Mikolajczyk ’22 says he and his compatriots feel a deep responsibility for passing on the specialized knowledge they learned from previous generations of students so the WPI community can continue to experience movies in what they consider the optimal format.

“There is a lot of pride in learning a skill that only a few people still know how to do,” says Mikolajczyk, who joined LNL as a first-year student without any previous knowledge or experience. “We also share an appreciation for what we see as movie-viewing perfection.”

The projectors, which can show both 35mm and higher resolution 70mm films, always come in pairs. Only 40 minutes of film can fit onto one giant reel, so about a third of the way into an average two-hour movie, the projectionist must start the second machine at exactly the right time for the transition to go unnoticed by the viewing audience, a maneuver known as the changeover. Then, in the darkness of the projection booth, the first machine must be reloaded with the next reel to be started 40 minutes later.

“There’s a real art to it, and a little bit of stress, to get it right,” says Mikolajczyk. In club meetings, LNL members often stage practice races to see who can thread the machines the fastest. Since films are transported from distributors in smaller 20-minute reels, members also must master the ability to inspect and splice the celluloid strips together to form the larger reels before showtime, and then deconstruct them after the show so they can be returned to the distributor.

There’s a homemade operator’s manual and some YouTube videos students can reference in a pinch. But often a shoutout to a forum of LNL students, alumni, and other film projector aficionados will solve problems quickly.

Because the equipment is old and obsolete, repairs can be costly and parts difficult to find. LNL keeps a third projector in storage that can be cannibalized for parts, and club members often do their own maintenance and minor repair work. But sometimes the students need professional help, such as when the lamphouses and arc lamps had to be replaced recently—an expensive and dangerous task that requires skilled expertise.

Luckily, the group has a guardian angel of sorts in Chapin Cutler, an original LNL member who went on to found Boston Light & Sound (BL&S), a 40-year-old company known nationally as technical experts for the film industry.

Although LNL will hire technicians from BL&S for major repairs, club members often attend these service calls so they can ask questions and learn more from the masters.

LNL also operates a digital projector, now the industry standard, out of the same projection booth. But purists say film’s contrast and resolution is far superior to modern digital technology. And in a world where most people watch movies in a home theater, it’s also a throwback to the spectacle of the movie theater days.

“When I started in the business in the 1960s, movies were run in palaces, or single screen theaters, and there was a sense of showmanship that went into the way that shows were presented,” says Cutler. “What LNL is doing, in its own way, is keeping that showmanship alive. It’s become one of my passions, and my company’s passion, to pass on those things that we have learned. To me, I’m keeping alive part of what those old Irish guys who came out of the silent film days taught me as an 18-to-20-year-old in those Worcester movie theaters.”