Behind the Projector with Justin Ayd at Willow Creek

My name is Justin Christopher Ayd and I’m the Assistant Head Projectionist /Facebook Manager at the family owned Willow Creek 12 Theater in Plymouth.

I’ve been employed at the Willow for almost 10 years and I absolutely love doing what I do. What I try to bring to the theatre and our Facebook page is personality and a real sense of comfort; a place where our customers and fans can truly feel welcomed.

It was a dream of mine from a very young age to work at Willow Creek as “that guy that makes the movies go” -- my family only lives two minutes from the theatre -- then eventually, as time went on, I started to make films for a living. I’m currently working on my second feature film called "Nicotine," a free-form exploration on a group of four elementary school friends now in their late 20's.

 When I'm not working at the theatre or working on my film, I'm hanging out with my super awesome fiancé, obsessing (still) over the television show LOST or watching movies. 2011 has brought some pretty darn great movies, my favorites (so far) would have to be “The Tree of Life,” “Hanna,” “Meek’s Cutoff,” “The Adjustment Bureau,” “Source Code” and “Bridesmaids.”

 I write a blog for Willow Creek called, "The Retros at Willow Creek, Your Alternative Movie Source" that can be found at: http://willowcreekretros.blogspot.com/

My latest blog was on a recent busy evening of July 14 in anticipation of the midnight showing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.”

As Harry Potter fans flooded the lobby and fun insanity broke loose for the managers and employees, a different kind of insanity was happening upstairs in the projection booth. Master Head Projectionist Dave Hilsgen was prepping to run three 35mm film prints of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II in nine auditoriums.

It's a process known as Interlocking, where you can thread up several projectors by only using one film print. Of course with digital projection taking over many cineplexes, interlocking may end up being a thing of the past. Sure, if we ran the "film" digitally, we'd upload the 200GB of Deathly Hallows Part II movie information onto the server and move it around to the auditoriums we need it in, but that's no fun.

 There are risks when running interlock, but everything always runs smoothly (99% of the time -- that night we had a brief audio hiccup in #8)  here at Willow Creek when it's done. Why? Because of Dave. He used to run this type of set up many years back, even at Willow Creek in the early and mid 90's, before the market became so saturated with the amount of 35mm prints actually produced and before hundreds of movie theaters were popping up everywhere. In fact, that night was the first time since the mid 90's that Dave interlocked projector #1 and #2.

To read more on this exciting venture, visit: http://willowcreekretros.blogspot.com/.