About the editor
Twenty-two years in the booth
My name is Alan Petherick. I live in Adelaide, and for twenty-two years I worked as a relief projectionist on the suburban circuit — the man who ran the machines when the regular projectionist could not. Relief work means no fixed booth: different rooms, different projectors, and the same prints passing through all of them.
In the early 1990s I started a card index of gambling scenes, because those scenes kept arriving in the cans and nobody I asked could say which ones were accurate. Baizelight is that index, typed up and checked. It is a publication, not a business: nothing here is for sale, and nobody pays for placement.
The booth and the lounge
The site began with a distance. On screen I projected rooms cut to the Monte Carlo pattern of 1863 — chandeliers, green baize, evening dress, a croupier's rake working under gaslight or its electric imitation.
At the end of my own street stood the other room: a carpeted pokies lounge behind a bistro, lit for cleaning rather than occasion. The two rooms share one category and almost nothing else — not the games, not the clothes, not the light. I threaded one onto the projector and walked past the other on the way home, and that gap is what the index kept measuring. The cards also filled up with two-up — two pennies, a spinner, bets on odds. In my index the two-up ring now outnumbers the roulette wheel.
What a card records
The discipline came from the booth. A projectionist reports what is on the print — frame damage, splices, a missing reel — not what the poster promised. I kept the same rule for the index. Every card is five lines, written during the reel or straight after it.
- LINE 1
Title and year
taken from the leader or the booking sheet, nothing added
- LINE 2
Timecode
hours, minutes, seconds from the first frame of the feature
- LINE 3
The room
walls, floor, light, and the table surface — baize, felt or laminate
- LINE 4
The game
what is dealt, spun or thrown, and what is actually staked
- LINE 5
Errors
anything on screen that the period or the rules contradict
Only what is on the screen goes down. If the film cuts away before the coins land, the card says the coins were not shown. Where I am guessing, the card says guess. Where two prints of the same film differed, both got a line.
What I am not
Four plain statements, so you can weigh the notes for what they are.
- Not a gambler. I hold no betting account and have no history at any table.
- Not an academic. The index is a filing habit, not a method learnt in a department.
- Not film industry. Projection is exhibition work, paid by the shift; I never held a job in production, distribution or criticism.
- Not funded. No venue, machine maker or wagering firm has paid for a word on this site.
Errors and evidence
Every page here can carry an error, and most of the good corrections arrive by email. If you can name a film I have missed, a date I have wrong, or a printed source that contradicts a card, write to [email protected]. Include the timecode if you have it: hours, minutes, seconds from the first frame.
Corrections run openly on the journal page, with the sender credited unless they ask otherwise. Sources are handled the same way as the cards: named where they can be named, dropped where they cannot.