[Frameworks] More advice on film loopers

[Marco Poloni]

Hi Sarah,
I built my own looper and it was quite some work to get it right. In
my small experience, there are a few things to consider. One, it's
really tricky. If a looper is not built properly, it will get stuck
and tear your film. So always use exhibition prints in loopers. The
second thing is film duration. Under say 5mins of 16mm footage you can
use plate loopers, i.e. the film is continuously extracted from, and
spooled back into a large, horizontal plate. Above 5mins of footage
this system does not work well. Friction forces will play against you.
You should use instead these loopers with many pulleys. Don't know how
they are called. 5mins is an indicative value. These loopers are more
reliable, but more complex to build.
The good thing is that building one or seven devices is not seven
times more work. If you are really serious about it, built one
prototype, and if it works serialize the production of the other six.
But again, I don't want to be too encouraging... The parts have to be
tooled with much precision for it to work smoothly.
Best,
Marco

On 22 July 2011 18:24, Sarah Buccheri <helloandthankyou at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I have an installation project that requires (ideally) 7 16mm projectors
> with 100' loopers.  The price of loopers begins to add up and I can't afford
> to buy 7!  Anyone have experience with building their own?
> I've also got a mixed bag of Bell and Howell and Pageant projectors for the
> installation.  Do you think it would be easier to use one model of
> projector, or is there a type of looper that can be used with any projector?
> The films will not be running continuously, probably for 15 minutes at a
> time, once an hour for 5 days, 5 days a week.
> Thanks for any advice!
> best,
> Sarah Buccheri
> Milwaukee
>
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marco poloni
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