legends · 4 min read ·
Splice Log, Reel Six
A cinema projectionist's splice log notes a frame of a woman who is not in the film, and who is walking out of it.
**Lyceum Cinema · Projection Booth · Splice Log · Print: The Long Corridor (1967)**
**Projectionist:** D. Coyle · **Reels:** 6 · **Running time:** 2h 14m
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**Reel 1.** Clean print. Leader intact. Two splices, both clean. Gate steady. No issues.
**Reel 2.** Splice at 14:22, frame 8109. Tape too brittle at the join. Re-spliced. The image wobbled for two frames, and the soundtrack dropped out briefly at the corridor scene. Reported to the manager.
**Reel 3.** No issues. Audience left quietly at the interval. One man in row F stayed seated through the credits, looking at the screen as if he expected something to come on after them.
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**Reel 4.** Splice at 31:07, frame 46122, a join between two shots of the same hallway. In the first shot the door at the end is closed. In the second, after the splice, it's open by an inch. The print was checked before the screening. The frame was not altered by the lab.
Note from D. Coyle: I've looked at the splice a dozen times. The door is closed in the first frame and open in the second, and the join between them is perfect. No light leak, no emulsion damage. Whoever cut this print knew the film better than I do.
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**Condition report (Film Archive, 18 Oct)**
*Reel 4 has an unlisted splice. Frame count between the two sections is off by 14. The missing frames are not present in the print. The shot in the projector gate after the splice is from a different film, lit in the same way, and shows the same hallway with a woman in a grey dress standing just inside the open door.*
*Archive notes that the film was never shot with this actress in it. The character she plays is credited as "Unnamed, woman, door."*
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**Projection log (Lyceum, 19 Oct)**
Screening: 19:30 · Audience: 40 · Reel 4 running. At 31:07, the image in the gate went briefly dark. The soundtrack carried on. A young voice came through the speakers, quietly, saying a word I couldn't make out, then a second voice answered, closer to the microphone, and the audience laughed. Nobody in the room was laughing at the film.
When the lights came up, row F was empty except for a single chair, pulled out a little from the others and turned to face the screen.
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**Manager's memo (Lyceum, 21 Oct)**
Please do not show reel 4 again until the splice has been checked by the archive. Please remind projectionists that the booth door must remain closed during the screening. Please do not let staff enter the auditorium during the final twenty minutes of the film.
Reason: a staff member saw an usher standing at the back of the stalls with his back to the screen. When she walked down to check on him, she found he was facing the door at the rear of the auditorium, and was holding it open with his foot, and had said, "She's not ready to come in yet."
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**Splice log addendum (D. Coyle, 24 Oct, booth)**
I cut a new splice tonight to repair the frame loss at 31:07. Used the archive's spare leader and matched the frame by eye. It ran clean. The projection was perfect.
But when I took the reel off the spindle and held it up to the bulb, the new splice showed a second image under the first, very faint, in negative. It's the same hallway. The door is open. The woman in the grey dress has turned around and is walking away from the camera, toward the end of the corridor, and she's carrying a reel of film under her arm.
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**Final entry, splice log (D. Coyle, 26 Oct)**
Reel 6 running. Audience: 3. Two in row A. One in row F, sitting in the chair that was turned to face the screen.
At the last reel, the projector stopped at 2h 13m. The gate held. The film was still threading. I couldn't reach the switch, and the picture went on in the gate, a single frame, held, the woman in the grey dress standing just inside the door, looking straight out of the screen.
Then she took a step forward, and the frame changed. I saw the next frame, and the one after, and I understood that the film had been cut so that the audience would always be one frame behind her, and that the only way to finish the reel was to let her walk into the room.
I've left the booth door open.