Projectionist Profile – Peter J. Knight, the Mad Cornish Projectionist.

 

 

Introduction

 

Many people know me more as The Mad Cornish Projectionist, rather than Peter Knight. The Mad Cornish Projectionist has very much become my trademark, and in fact is now the name of my business. Why the Mad Cornish Projectionist? Well I'm a Cornishman born and breed and very proud of it, I'm a projectionist, and if you can dance stone cold sober in front of an audience of 100 people to the end credits of the Blues Brothers then I think you are pretty mad! For fun I created the name and it kind of stuck. Like many great trademarks, people do tend to remember it.

 

I am always reluctant to write anything about being a projectionist or cinema because there are so many people in the industry who know and have done far more than me. I certainly feel guilty at times for being a 'part-time' projectionist. However, I think that I am probably in quite a lucky position at the moment, doing to jobs that I truly enjoy, but which also compliment each other. During the day I am a Media Manager for the BBC Information & Archives department (think librarian, but with computer systems) and then in the evenings, and some weekends I work as a freelance projectionist. I am probably one of a very small number of current projectionists, under thirty, in this country who has neither worked in a multi screen cinema or used a platter, but yet knows how to do a changeover.

 

 

The Beginning and Student Cinema

 

I learnt to be a projectionist at Flix - Loughborough Student Cinema from November 1997, when I was voted on to the committee as an Assistant Projectionist. I attended the general meeting without any real intention of getting any more involved in the society, other than being a member who came to watch the films. However, when the elections came around and they asked for projectionists I found my hand involuntarily going in the air.

 

I was always interested in the how it, and remember watching Hamlet just before my A-Level English exam, and during the interval talking to the projectionist, who had left the projection room open in the foyer area. Although at that time I couldn't get my head around the fact that the sound was on the film with pictures. That pretty much changed the rest of my life.

 

The projectionist who trained me up, didn't know much about being a projectionist as he had  been thrown in at the deep end when the previous projectionist unexpectedly left the committee and he had to take over. In March 1998 I took over as the 'Projectionist', later renamed to 'Head Projectionist' with assistants being renamed to 'Projectionist' and spent a large amount of time learning as much as I could about cinema and projection. I had at this point got the bug of being a projectionist. I discovered the BKSTS so that and myself and another projectionist went on a projectionist training course which was held at the Odeon training school and I also bought, and read from cover to cover the projectionist manual. Over the course of three years I got to the point where I was in charge of a team of six projectionists who ran the twice weekly shows. I also signed up to a mailing list called 'Cinemationlist' and gained a lot of very valuable information from postings on that.

 

When I first started, there were regular problems with the projection equipment and the very unusual sound system we used in the student cinema (the Dolby processor had be hand built by a previous student, probably in the 1970s). However by the time left it had got to the point where we were actually putting on proper shows again.

 

By this time my brother had started at Warwick University and become one of there projectionists there and so I was able to run a bit of 70mm there.

 

I think it is very important that the cinema industry realises the importance of student cinemas, both now and particularly in the future as digital cinema arrives. I feel very strongly about this subject and have written an entire article on this subject. Just a note to those in the industry – remember student cinemas when you make plans for its future either legalistvely or technologically.

 

 

London 

In September 2000, once I left university I moved to London to start work for the BBC, but desperately still wanted to project films. In fact I had a whole of period of time when I seriously thought about becoming a full time projectionist, rather than a librarian, but in the end for various reasons I didn't. A friend of mine who had been in the student cinema, had moved to London a year earlier and heard of an arts centre who were in need of projectionists. I made contact and spent a happy year working as a casual projectionist at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead. This was the first time that I got paid for being a projectionist. The arts centre is a fantastic venue, which opened in September 2000, and has a Victoria 5 projector. However, they got too successful that they needed more full time technical staff, which meant that they ended up losing their causal staff, and thus I was without a projector again.

 

After a posting to the Cinemationlist, Steve Grimely, taught me how to do changeovers at the Universal Music preview theatre. After that I ended up working at Soho House (2002-2004, a private members club in Old Compton Street, Central London. I spent two very happy years working there showing the members screenings, many of which were previews, two or three evenings a week. Again things changed which meant they required more hours than I could provide. I did some relief work at the Electric Cinema, Portobello Road, which was a interesting, and had great scope for porting on great opening presentation.

 

In September 2004 I was contacted by the Catford Theatre, South East London who had just had cinema equipment installed and need a projectionist. At the same time I ended up doing a lot of work for Firmdale Hotels (Covent Garden Hotel, Charlotte Street Hotel, Soho Hotel) which was interesting. The Covent Garden Hotel Projection box most be one of the smallest boxes which exists, I'm not a very big guy, but I really do have to duck and bend in order to avoid hitting my head on anything when I'm there.

 

More recently I have done a couple of evenings at BAFTA and done some holiday relief work at UIP, which I have really enjoyed and I am always on the look at for any freelance work in the evenings or at weekends.

 

 

Film Making

 

It is not just being a projectionist I'm interested in, it's the whole of the film industry from the movie making end through to the exhibition part. In my spare time I also enjoy making and editing my own short films. While I was at university I had to write a piece of coursework relating to a market sector. I managed to persuade my lecturer to let me write it on the exhibition sector. It was the best piece of coursework I have ever written, and later was published in a Business Studies guide which went out to many schools in the country.

 

 

The Website

 

I have been a projectionist for eight years this November, not very long compared to many in the industry, and have been working on the Mad Cornish Projectionist website for nearly as long, although it didn't start out in the form its in now. When I was first started to be a projectionist in 1997 the Internet was still in its early stages and there weren't many websites, particularly on the subject of Protectionism, and this was part of the reason why I started the site, as a way of recording useful information for me.

 

My website is one of my proudest achievements, receiving over 3000 hits most months and I expect to receive several emails a month. If you have done a search on the Internet for projectionists or projectors of any description, the chances are you have probably come across my website. The website these days is the first site on Google for projectionists. It can get irritating at times when I am doing research for something, when half the results for a search are for my own site. I don't know any more how many pages the site has, but I did know there are over a thousand links to external sites and resources. One of the best things about the website is all the emails I have received from it over the years. Some of these emails are just a pat on the back, some are offering information and some are requests for further information. I use these emails and the web statistics to help create new sections and articles for the site. One example of this was that I have received so many requests for information on how to be a projectionist and the best way of getting a job that I created a how page on this, with advice from experts such as Odeon. Several people who have met me after emailing me via my website have been surprised by my age, as I am only 26!

 

I try and make a point of not repeating material which is available on other sites, but just link to it instead. So for instance, there is very little specific information on the site relating to equipment manuals as Film-Tech and others do this so well, nor is there huge amounts on specific cinemas, because the Cinema Treasures website does such a good job. My aim is more about being a central place for people to come to who are interested in cinema, projectors and protectionism and then can go off and discover the information they want to know from there.

 

However, if the material doesn't exist anywhere else then I will tried to write articles on the topic, or get visitors to the site to do it for me. There are two areas of the site other than the links, where I get lots of external information – the projectionists anthology and projectionist memories section. The projectionist anthology is meant to be a bit fun and looks at all the films, poems, stories and television programmes which has featured a projectionist, or projection box. The projectionist memories section comes from my love of attending events like 'What did you do in the Box Daddy' and listening to the stories and memories of the more senior projectionists in the business. I love hearing these stories, and am always really excited when someone takes the time to write them for the site. In an ideal world I would love to see as many projectionists stories captured forever.

 

I love entertainment, I love cinema, I love being a projectionist, and I love being at the end of the film chain. In fact as a result I spend a fortune each year being a member of societies and organisations such as BKSTS, PPT, CTA, Mercia and subscribing to journals. Old cinemas are beautiful, there is such an atmosphere to these buildings which can rarely be recreated in the same way in modern multiplexes.

 

Do please get in touch, if you have an ideas, comments suggestions, material, freelance work, are a projectionist from Cornwall or anything else for the matter.

 

Peter J. Knight

The Mad Cornish Projectionist

peter.knight@madcornishprojectionist.co.uk

www.madcornishprojectionist.co.uk

07747 193447