Introduction

Projecting is easy! Don't be put off by equipment that, at first glance, can look a little old and scary. It's identical to equipment used throughout the independent cinema sector. In fact, projecting is not much more difficult than using a video recorder to show a film in front of 350 people. The difficult bit is to ensure that the performance appears professional to the audience. You can have problems, or make the odd mistake, and it will not matter, so long as the audience does not find out.

This is why projection, and in fact, slides and any other sort of presentation, is usually done from a closed room separated from the audience. You can make mistakes, curse and swear all you like, and the audience will not find out (so long as you do not curse too loudly!). All you need is some confidence and a little experience gained by training sessions, observing other projectionists, and your first few films.

To help new projectionists, and to remind older projectionists, I have prepared this projectionists' handbook, with tips and guidelines for projecting. Together with some supervised training from a qualified projectionist, this should provide you with all the skills needed to give a professional performance.

This guide is separated into several sections, each detailing a different aspect of projecting. More experienced readers may want to skip ahead to later sections. First an overview of the projector system is given, with instructions for using each part of the system.
There follows a step by step guide to projecting a film, and finally, there are some hints and tips for becoming a good projectionist.