**I like every post to be accompanied by a picture, but in this case it’s been a right pain. I couldn’t seem to get it right, and though I’m still not wholly satisfied, after twenty iterations it’ll just have to do! Anyway, on to the post, which will much briefer as a result (yay!).**

So, I had the pleasure of visiting the projector room of our college run cinema the other day. This was a serious event for me, because I love the cinema.

My head was full of ideas of what it’d be like. They were like all wildly extravagent, coloured by years of idle thought. It was about time I saw it for real.

Firstly I’d like to explain that student run cinemas are completely different to their commercial brethren. All of the staff are volunteers, and as such are passionate about what they do. This was apparent as soon as I stepped in to the projector room, where I was greated warmly, even though it transpired that a film was due any minute.

My preconceptions were shattered immediately. I was amazed by the amount of film these people dealt with. I expected a reel of film to be the size of the feed mechanism for a tommy gun, or perhaps to be as large as a bicycle wheel. It was the size of a cart wheel! Not only that, but it was mounted on the wall and was whizzing away, as it rewound the film back to the start. When this was done, a tag on the end of the reel was fed into the projector. Just on cue, the film winged its away around the room through numerous tensioning devices, and finally into the hungry lips of the projector, which made a resounding click, click, clicking sound.

The room was very energetic, both with frantic humans, and electronic gadgetry flashing away. However the room was quite cold. The projectionist explained that this was the air conditioning unit that was strapped to the projector to prevent the mega bulb inside from frying. Errant light bleeding out of the sides of the projector casing gave a good indication of just how powerful the bulb was. The light was pure white. Whiter than white. The whitest thing I’d ever seen.

The adverts started. Little figures could be seen through the viewing pane in the cinema beyond. The soundtrack blared to life.

I had the best seat in the house.