REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : Projectionists Pan the Use of Youth in Booth : Local union chapter says too many theaters are using semiskilled workers.

Remember Toto, the little boy so enraptured by movies that he crossed himself before entering the projection booth at the Cinema Paradiso?

His tireless effort to learn the mysteries of celluloid made for an Oscar-winning film, but the local chapter of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators takes issue with youth in the booth.

Members of the local, which includes projectionists, complain that too many first-run movie houses put young, semiskilled employees at the lever. As a result, the number of union projectionists in Ventura County has declined 75% in 15 years. There are now only 16.

“About half of first-runs in the county employ semiskilled labor,” Simi Valley projectionist William Clark said. “They use tag teams of kids who they pay $6 an hour.”

Although the projection booth has become more automated, Clark said many little things still go wrong--soft focus, low light and fuzzy sound, to name a few.

“It’s amazing what audiences will sit through,” Clark said. “We’re lucky the result is as good as high school (audiovisual) services.”

If that isn’t dispiriting for an old lamplighter, Clark said the next leap in automation will be receiving movies over cable and processing the signal through a “light valve” projector, a device with few moving parts that could run virtually unattended.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

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An unusually large feature film production is camped out in Ventura. “The Baby Sitter” is unusual not for its budget, a trifling $2 million, but because the entire film is being shot here over the course of 24 days, publicist David Linck said.

“We’ll be using a couple of houses on Foothill (Road) for the interior shots,” Linck said. “We’re also going to be shooting at the Busy Bee Cafe and an alley next to the Ventura Theater.”

“The Baby Sitter” is an adaptation of a short story by Robert Coover. It stars Alicia Silverstone (“The Crush”) as a very attractive but otherwise ordinary young woman who becomes the object of fantasy for three men in the town--her boyfriend, his rival and the man for whom she is baby-sitting.

Linck would disclose no more about the plot, but if you’re really that interested, the Ventura County Library has a collection of Coover’s short stories titled “Pricksongs and Descants,” which includes “The Baby Sitter.”

The film, produced by Steve Perry (“Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard”) and Kevin Messick, has yet to find a distributor, but they hope to have it ready for next year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Linck estimates that the picture will contribute $1 million to the area’s economy. Filming should wrap in mid-March.

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Due to an overflow crowd at last week’s Ojai Film Society screening of “Farewell My Concubine,” the film will be shown again 4 p.m. Saturday at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave.