CWRU Film Society Film Crypt Clean-Out

By Dr. Rich Drushel, Faculty Advisor

About the Film Crypt

The hollow area under the projection booth in Strosacker has been used to store all kinds of stuff since the 1970s. After 30+ years, however, so much junk had accumulated that film cans and other useful supplies could no longer be located without crawling caver-style over heaps of "stuff", flashlight in hand. In addition, poor ventillation and temperature control meant that some of the films were starting to decompose (releasing acetic acid into the air).

Ever since I came on board as Faculty Advisor in April 2002, various Film Society staffers have been telling me grand tales about the wondrous lost films and artifacts which were "somewhere under the booth". I decided that it was time to clean it out and inventory the contents once and for all.

One problem was that only one small 2 ft x 2 ft entrance existed, on the right side of the booth, whereas the storage area was 19 ft deep. Stuff packed up against the far left wall was buried by stuff in front of it, and no access aisle had been allowed. I figured that, if a second doorway were created on the left wall, then

it would be easier to empty out for cleaning purposes;
it would be easier to get at stuff (only have to crawl in halfway max); and
some fans could be added to improve air circulation through the crypt.

Making a New Film Crypt Access Opening, Saturday, 20 July 2002

At 11:00 AM, Director Dave Kwartowitz let me into the booth to start cutting a new access door into the film crypt on the left side of the projection booth.

I first crawled into the crypt through the existing right-side door, over all of the junk, to reach the inside of the left wall. I wanted to make sure that nothing valuable was up against the wall, so I wouldn't damage anything while cutting. Fortunately, nothing was in the way.

I used a 1/2-inch masonary drill bit and my handy Sears Craftsman variable-speed electric drill to outline a 2 ft x 2 ft opening with closely-spaced holes in the cement-block wall. Like the existing hole, this followed the mortar seams, except where it had to cross blocks due to the layers being staggered. (Mortar is easier to cut through than the cement blocks.) This made a fair amount of dust, but I drilled at low speed so it all fell down (not dispersed into the air), so it wasn't a threat to the projection equipment. Lots of Shop-Vac work, though.

Once the pilot holes were drilled, it was time to chisel out the opening. I used a 6-inch bricklayer's chisel and hammer to complete the outlining (to a max depth of 3 inches), then a regular cold chisel to break completely through the 6-inch-thick cement blocks. I then carefully pried out the top edge of the cutout and allowed it to fall outward onto the floor. This broke it into small fragments which Dave and I carried to a dumpster outside of Millis. I did some minor finishing of rough edges around the opening with the bricklayer's chisel.

Final vacuuming and cleanup, and the new opening was complete! Total time, about 3 hours.

Building the Film Crypt Doors, Friday, 2 August 2002

Friday afternoon, in the LEGO robot lab (Olin 803), I cut all the lumber I would need for the doors and door frames. The electric fans I'd ordered hadn't come in yet, but I made the necessary cut-outs in the door plywood for the fans and electrical switch boxes. This makes it easier to install and wire the fans later, after the doors are hung. I also pre-drilled all the door frames for the concrete anchor screws, and mounted the hinges and latches. I figured that this would save time at installation...and it was a good thing I did this prep work ahead of time.

Installing the Film Crypt Doors, Saturday, 3 August 2002

Beginning at 11:00 AM, Dave Kwartowitz, Tim Damon and I brought my pre-fab crypt door stuff over to Strosacker from the robot lab in Olin 803. By this time, Stephen Trier had arrived and he, Tim, and Dave started the difficult task of pulling everything out through the pre-existing crypt opening (see below), while I installed the fame and door on the new one I cut on 20 July (see above). I used a 3/16-inch masonary drill to make the holes for the concrete anchor screws used to attach everything to the wall, then screwed it all in. I started with the bottom board, using a spirit level to get it properly aligned, then worked up. The door lintel is extra-long to be sure to hold the top row of cement blocks in place.

The first door was installed by 12:30 PM.


Left film crypt door, closed.	Left film crypt door, open.	Always sign and date your handiwork!

When I was done installing the first door, I switched to the other opening, and the guys switched to emptying from the new doorway. The second door was installed by about 2:00 PM.


Right film crypt door, closed. Note the bottles of fruit juice, which, because of having been stored in the hot, hot crypt, had fermented...they were discarded.	Right film crypt door, open.	If anyone knows the year that the first hole in the wall was made...

Booth Film Crypt Clean-Out, Saturday, 3 August 2002

Doors installed, I joined Stephen, Tim, and Dave in clean-out activities. With me was my youngest daughter Gretchen, age 6, and she played with a lot of toys she brought and drew pictures on scrap paper pulled from the crypt.


Gretchen, instant color photo by Tim Damon, scanned by Rich Drushel.	Gretchen, self-portrait.

By about 2:30 PM everyone was ready for food. Stephen had to leave, and Dave left to grab some McDonalds food for us, returning about 3:00 PM. I was working on vacuuming up all the dust on the new-opening side of the crypt. As each layer of junk was removed, the floor was swept to make a somewhat clean place to work for extracting the next layer. My little canister vacuum got filled up quickly, and had to be dumped more often than I liked. (This was a messy process that required Gretchen to come downstairs to prop the Strosacker front door open for me so I could get back in, while I dumped out the dust into a garbage can and shook out the filter cloth, ick.) The rest of the afternoon was spent in carrying trash out to a dumpster behind A.W. Smith, vacuuming, pulling out more film cans, repeat cycle, etc. This was hard, sweaty, grimy work, and we all looked like miners.

What kind of stuff did we pull out of the crypt?

a baby stroller
empty electrical conduit of all sizes and shapes, rigid and flexible
many tangles of wire of all lengths and gauges
odd-cut pieces of board and plywood
broken cardboard boxes of miscellaneous screws and nails
miscellaneous metal and wooden rods
perhaps 5 assorted broken box speakers (holes punched in fabric)
boxes of unopened, unused membership cards from various years
a U.S. Navy 16 mm projector
2 totally-disassembled 35 mm projectors
empty film reels, boxes, canisters, and cores
a box of 3-D glasses
various T-shirts, including Sci-Fi Marathon and Tarzan
an unused, rolled-up black tablecloth
a yellow rain poncho
tea bags and sugar packets
cigarette butts (what moron would smoke in a film storage area?)
a box containing the new sound system which nobody has gotten around to installing yet
a suitcase containing an 8 mm movie camera and assorted film-making hardware
a 5-CD player/changer, brand new in original box
lots of spare parts, most for equipment we no longer have
what looks like the original control panel for the Strosacker booth
many, many, many film boxes containing film on reels
film on open reels
the broken cement blocks from the original crypt opening in 19xx (!!!)

We were pretty ruthless about throwing stuff out. Just about anything that wasn't film on reels or spare parts for equipment we had was tossed. Whenever membership cards came out, I picked one nice example to save for posterity, but the rest were junked. Screws and hardware that obviously came from the disassembled projectors were saved, but the seemingly unending supply of new nails and nuts and bolts and screws that were scattered everywhere because all their boxes had disintegrated, was discarded. Squashed film cans and bent reels were thrown away. All in all, I would estimate that at least 50 man-trips to the dumpster were necessary to remove all the trash.

Tim finally had to leave about 5:30 PM. Dave (with Gretchen's help) was starting to match up film boxes for those films which were shipped in multiple boxes. I kept working on getting the last of the stuff out of the crypt, pulling things out, vacuuming up the dust, going back for the next layer. From time to time, I shifted to carrying out trash, just to use some different muscles. Thank goodness for the carpenter's knee guards I was wearing; they saved my knees.

By about 8:00 PM the end of the clean-out was in sight. I had pulled out everything from both sides up to 2 pieces of electrical conduit which divide the crypt transversely into two unequal halves. (With everything piled up around it, there was no way to tell originally that this conduit was even there.) One last corner containing the disassembled projectors needed to be cleaned out and swept, but otherwise, we were close to starting to put stuff back in. I gave Dave my ID card to get into the robot lab to send an "emergency" E-mail to the staff list, asking for some last-minute help, now that the worst was done. (Nobody else was able to come, though, sob...)

At 9:30 PM, I had to take Gretchen home; we hadn't eaten supper, she needed a bath, and had to get to bed. Before I left, the crypt was completely clean, and a central aisle of grey indoor/outdoor carpeting had been put down. I took these photos around 10:30 PM, after I had returned (with the digital camera from my office, I had forgotten it):


Empty film crypt, through right door. Note the electrical conduit and the grey aisle carpeting. This is the "short" side.	Empty film crypt, through left door. The far left corner has already been loaded with the disassembled projectors. This is the "long" side.

Here is the state of the 2nd-floor lobby at 10:30 PM, prior to the start of crypt reloading. Only a little bit of "trash" stuff remains; just about everything else you see here goes back into the crypt.


Stuff, left to right. Dave has the the film boxes sorted by title and ready to go.	Stuff, right to left. That's Dave Kwartowitz in the back. Note my knee pads, the pile of membership cards, and an unopened box of Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS (on 5.25-inch floppies!) in the foreground.

Over the next 3.5 hours, Dave and I put everything back into the crypt. Dave brought me stuff and I sat in the crypt and put things in their final places. We decided to use the "short" side as dead storage (i.e., stuff we didn't expect to ever have to dig out again). About a third of the films we took from the crypt actually belong to other people who've been associated with the Film Society in the past, so we decided to store these films in the "short" side as well, to make it easier for the owners to reclaim them in future :-) The rest of the films were placed in the "long" side, along with the supply of empty film reels, canisters, boxes, and cores. All the films were arranged in a U along the walls and the central conduit, leaving the carpeted center aisle open for easy access. Dave made a written log of which films went in which side, so now we know what we actually have!


The "short" side of the crypt, final state.	The "long" side of the crypt, final state.	Diagonal view from "long" to "short" sides.

This was backbreaking, arm-wrenching work, especially since we'd been at it for 12 hours already...but by 2:00 AM on Sunday, 4 August 2002, we got the last of the stuff into the crypt. It took 30 minutes to clean up and vacuum the lobby carpet. Dave and I went home at 2:30 AM. Total time: 15.5 hours.

When I got home, I took a shower, ate some late supper, and went to bed...for about 8 hours. I am still beat 2 days later...

In Closing

We expended a lot of effort to combat 30 years of entropy. All kinds of rubbish were discarded. No films were discarded. The crypt is now a useful storage area with plenty of room for new stuff. Please help keep it clean!

Last updated on Tuesday, 6 August 2002, 4:15 P.M., by Richard F. Drushel, Ph.D.