A Family That Stays Focused

From the earliest days of Hollywood, there has always been an Aidikoff in the projection room.

As D.W. Griffith churned out his silent epics, Max Aidikoff loaded the nitrate film onto empty reels, keeping a pail of sand nearby in case the film burst into flame while rolling over the blazing light. When sound came along, son Charles kept one eye on the spinning reels and another on the record playing the movie’s voice track. By the time color and stereo were added, the job was simple enough for grandson Gregg to work the projectors at the age of 10, even while standing on his tiptoes to reach the top spindle.

But now, as 19-year-old great-grandson Josh steps up to the projector, technology threatens to break this family’s unusual cinematic dynasty.

Digital projectors and distribution systems are poised to eradicate film from the movie house. The technology promises to rid movies of visual problems, including scratches and other on-screen flaws caused by mechanical projectors and the general wear that affects celluloid prints with the passage of time.

The real driver, though, is money. The major studios expect to save as much as $1 billion a year by eliminating film from the big screen: No more bills for making thousands of prints of each movie, no more bills for distributing them to theaters around the world, and no more bills for destroying mountains of celluloid when they have finally worn out.

And gone, too, will be projectionists, a class of blue-collar craftsmen who were once the highest-paid industrial workers in California.

The Aidikoffs are making the difficult transition from film to digital inside their tiny screening theater on Rodeo Drive. Behind the discreet front door is a hallway that, like a New York deli, is papered with snapshots of family members grinning cheekily with Hollywood stars.

Upstairs in the projection booth, the family’s past and future fight for space. The air conditioner sends a breeze through the darkened booth, cooling mountains of reels resting on a fix-it table. Small drawers sport labels of what the Aidikoffs need to keep the film machines running. There’s one for “fuses” and another for “spindle pins.”

A pair of traditional film projectors, each 8 feet tall, dominate the room. These Simplex 35 machines are among the best in their field. Sturdy. Solid. Dependable as tanks, they are so colossal that panels in the ceiling had to be cut away to make room for the top spindles.

Perched between them on a plywood slab sits the future: a small black digital projector, about the size of a large purse.

To date, fewer than 1% of all first-run cinema screens worldwide use digital projectors. But as the technology grows more powerful, less expensive and highly standardized, the number of exhibitors projecting electronic shows will inevitably grow. Economists predict that 5% of all screens in the U.S. will be digital by 2006, according to a 2002 report by Credit Suisse First Boston.

The Aidikoffs’ struggles, as they make the transition to digital, will eventually be shared by the entire theatrical industry as their world shifts from one that demands a human touch to an automated landscape that needs only the press of a button.

“Do I like it? No,” Josh said. “Is it necessary for me to do this? Yes. It’s our legacy.”

Someday soon, Josh expects he won’t be handling film at all, just digital tapes and computer servers. Leaning against a stack of film canisters, the blond-haired teenager -- who favors surfer shirts and baggy shorts while manning the machines -- flips through the day’s screening log. Two of the five screenings will run on the family’s new $20,000-digital projection system -- the same set-up manufacturer JVC recently installed in producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s private screening room in Santa Monica.

Suddenly, a giggle emerges from behind the machinery as Josh’s 2-year-old half-brother, Zev, toddles into the projection room. He lifts one tiny hand to touch the metallic trunks and blackened gears of the enormous Simplex 35 machines.

When Zev is Josh’s age, will he become a film projectionist?

“No way,” Josh said. “He may own our family theater, but he’ll never touch film. All he’ll think is, ‘What’s a projectionist?’ ”

The Aidikoff family has spent a lifetime keeping up with evolving machinery. Max Aidikoff broke into the business back in the early 1920s after realizing he could make far more money handling film than tooling belts at a New York leather factory.

Every afternoon, Max donned a jacket and tie at home in Brooklyn and headed to the dingy lobby of a small theater downtown.

At the top of the rickety staircase, Max entered the musty room and placed his dinner on top of the Simplex projector. Created in 1909, the original Simplex required Max to load a film reel on the top spindle, crank open the projector’s door to feed the film through the sprockets and line the lens up with the screen.

Back then, a projectionist was part engineer, part fireman. Silent movies were recorded on highly combustible cellulose nitrate, and the reels were pulled forcefully along the projector’s rollers while two carbon filaments created an intense, sparking arc of light. During the muggy heat of an Eastern summer, the projector’s lighthouse grew hot enough to cook Max’s dinner.

As the running times for films grew, so did the number of reels needed to show them. By the time Charles joined the profession, two projectors were needed, each manned by a union projectionist.

Inside the booth, Charles would press his forehead against the edge of the projection room porthole and focus his deep brown eyes on the top corners of the screen, looking for tiny black circles. It’s the universal cue still used today, a silent alert telling when to stop one machine and start the other.

When the time came, his partner would push the motor switch on his projector and yank open the light dowser. Warm light would flood the lens, casting the movie up on the screen. With a slap down on his dowser, Charles would cut off his light. It was a fluid dance between two technicians who rarely said a single word to one another.

The technical training needed to run such massive and complex equipment gave the projectionist unions considerable power. Nearly every theater needed two union workers in a booth.

When Charles moved his young family to Los Angeles in 1955, he joined the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employee’s Local 150. At the time, the guild covered theaters across Los Angeles County and claimed more than 800 members.

“If we went on strike, a movie died,” said Lee Sanders, secretary-treasurer for Local 150.

In 1966, Charles got a $7,500 small-business loan and opened his own private theater down Sunset Boulevard from the Cinerama Dome. The Charles Aidikoff Screening Room had 26 gold-cloth seats and a side cabinet full of lollipops and coffee.

Where others saw only the glitz of Hollywood, the Aidikoff family watched many dreams die on the screen. Studio executives arrived to watch potential hits play on the screen, only to walk out before the first reel ran empty.

“You couldn’t watch some of them, they were so bad,” said Gregg, now 46. “But our steady business, at least 50%, was in dailies.”

The time-honored ritual of viewing “dailies” required filmmakers to send the footage shot each day out to a processing lab. After it was developed, it was sent to a theater like the Aidikoffs’, where the director and often the crew would gather.

Frequently, what they thought they had shot and what the camera actually captured weren’t the same. Perhaps the spotlights burned too brightly and washed out the image. Maybe the director didn’t spot the catering truck parked in the background. If someone loaded the film into the camera incorrectly, the entire reel might be blank.

The screening of dailies is an expensive process. One minute of footage requires $58 worth of 35-millimeter film. That same minute can be recorded on inexpensive digital videotape that costs 68 cents. As a result, many of the major studios encourage or demand that the dailies be watched on tape, DVD or some other electronic format.

The dailies business began to deteriorate in 1992, just as the Aidikoffs opened a larger theater in Beverly Hills. At the same time, the job inside the projection booth was fading. After non-flammable safety film replaced nitrate in the 1950s, the licensing of projectionists was no longer a matter of public safety. Projection technology evolved to accommodate greater automation. Instead of being divided into short reels, an entire movie sits wound like a single roll of tape that lies on a 4-foot-wide steel plate called the platter. With the press of a button, the movie rolls.

As the years passed, many theater chains laid off their projectionists. System maintenance was contracted out. Today, IATSE Local 150 has only 91 members spread among three counties.

Gregg Aidikoff, a broad-shouldered scuba instructor who co-owns the screening room with his father, responded by focusing on the future. He made a habit of listening quietly as filmmakers discussed the increased presence of digital cameras on the set and digital projectors that played their daily footage while on location. Even a Simplex repairman mentioned digital projectors while tinkering inside the Aidikoff booth.

Instead of using celluloid reels, these projectors play movies that are stored on computer disks or digital videotape, or receive digital files directly via high-speed data lines or satellite transmissions. Some projectors tap a central server, which stores the movies and uploads them to the appropriate screens.

There are so many choices, and so many conflicting technologies, that theater owners are hesitant to sink money into them. Exhibitors insist that because the studios will reap the greatest benefit from the conversion to digital distribution, they should pay the $150,000 that industry sources say each high-end digital projector would cost. The cost for the computer that stores and feeds the movies works out to another $20,000 per screen.

Studios, however, insist that economic and antitrust concerns prevent them from paying the estimated $5.5 billion it would take to retrofit all of the nation’s 37,000 screens.

A few theater chains are moving ahead. AMC Entertainment Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., has bought a handful of high-end digital projectors and seeded some of its top-market theaters with the machines. Regal Entertainment Group, the nation’s largest movie theater chain, plans to retrofit nearly 80% of its locations with digital projectors, high-speed data networking equipment and satellite links by the end of the year. Centennial, Colo.-based Regal, which owns United Artists Theatre Co. and Edwards Theatres Inc., said it is spending an initial $70 million on the effort. Even Landmark Theaters Inc., which screens mostly foreign and independent films, has committed to installing lower-cost digital projection systems in its 53 theaters.

Some of the studios are quietly embracing the shift, much to the chagrin of many directors and cinematographers who insist the technology falls short of the richness and depth of film.

The seven major movie studios created the Digital Cinema Initiatives last year to establish technical standards and find a business model that will make it profitable to distribute digital movies to the estimated 135,000 theaters around the world. A team of engineers and projection experts at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center are hammering out the standard for end-to-end delivery, including final mastering, distribution and exhibition.

For the Aidikoffs, the issue is far more immediate. Waiting for digital to arrive is impossible -- and the bill unthinkable.

Spend nearly $200,000 on a system that could be out-of-date in six months? Not a chance. That kind of money would pay for overhauling the entire sound system, or cover the rent through 2004, or fund the salaries of the theater’s entire staff for more than a year.

There had to be a solution. Gregg began researching digital projectors with the help of his friend Michael Leader, a sound engineer. Leader knew someone at the consumer electronics manufacturer JVC, and the company ultimately sold the Aidikoffs a high-definition digital projector. It wasn’t the absolute top of its line, but it was close enough, and it carried a price tag the Aidikoffs could afford.

As word of the purchase spread among the filmmaking community, the Aidikoffs’ phone began to ring.

Young filmmakers were seeking a place to screen their digitally created movies and talent scouts were looking for an inexpensive way to wade through a potential client’s work. Hollywood agents and studio executives also came by to sample the new technology, lured by reports that some theater chains are charging higher ticket prices for digital shows -- and selling out the seats.

A team of German filmmakers called, looking for a place to screen their movie for studio executives. On a recent weekday, Josh chatted with them about their movie, which was shot with high-definition digital cameras, edited on a computer, and stored on both digital tape and a computerized hard drive.

For several minutes, the young projectionist and equally youthful moviemakers discussed the pros and cons of the latest digital servers. Then they debated the best compression rate for movie previews.

Gregg stared at his son, bemused. Charles simply threw up his hands. “I have no idea what they’re talking about,” the octogenarian said.

Finally, Josh took a digital tape from the director, walked into the booth, slid the cassette inside the player and pushed a button. The curtains slid open and the movie began.

Then he stepped away from the porthole and headed over to the fix-it table. The Simplex needed babying.

“I can’t wait for everything to go digital,” Josh whispered. “Then, I won’t have to actually watch the movies.”