He makes sure the academy gets the picture.

THERE are no two days that are alike, and that makes the job interesting but also makes it nerve-wracking. Today I got up at 7, and went to Starbucks and got my double-cappuccino--high caffeine, no decaf for me--and hit the Ventura Freeway. I drive from Calabasas to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, which is 25.5 miles. Today was a good day--it was like 75 miles an hour to the 405. I had a nosebleed this morning; it was phenomenal. That's how fast I was going.

As chief of projection for the Academy, I fire up everything. It's just like turning on the lights in the house when you've been away on vacation: light switches, projectors, sound systems, amplifiers, the power to the curtain, the monitors, you name it. There are about 42 switches to put on, and it's like firing up Grand Central.

Then we check and see what the material is going to be for the day, and we get it out of the "cage." That's where we lock up the film we run, or the digital media, so nobody messes with it, or takes it for pirating.

We check the detail sheets in our e-mail or fax to see what's on the menu for the day. When we had a 16, 35, or 70 millimeter film running, there were limited sound choices.

But now there's a whole array of things; there's films, digital, servers, DVD, high-definition, 5.1 sound, SRD tracks, DTS tracks--you name it. So we get the program ready, and we inspect the film to make sure it's seamless.

We run the film for a couple of minutes and go down and listen to it. We follow Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers standards, and one of them is a light level standard of 16-foot lamberts. That term comes from the day when there were footlights in theaters, and so many of the footlights would equal one lambert. So 16 is the ideal when the light is not too bright to burn your eyes out, but not too dim to look like you're in a tunnel.

We also run a target loop of film on the screen, so you can focus with it and adjust the film, and set it up properly so the image is properly set on the screen.

Sometimes the pictures and track are not married yet, so someone will run the soundtrack and I'll run the picture to interlock it.

We're doing things here that are part-live performance and part-show. So we're mixing all these different media together.

Today, we had the history of animation, called "Animation Invades Live Action, Part 2." It was kind of like a lecture. I was the technical advisor, so being the projectionist I made sure all clip files are on digital files.

It's a very demanding job; it's like Air Force One for a pilot, this gig.

You get treated that way too, because it's the best projectionist job in the country and I know it.

But it's hard, because there's a lot of expectation that everything is going to be just perfect. Maybe there are minor glitches, but I'm batting around .995--that's still a pretty good average.

Job Posting

Carl Belfor Chief of Projection Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Another Gig: Paints oil landscapes for a gallery in South Carolina. His wife is also a painter; she specializes in Impressionist landscapes.

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Best Cooking Tip: Barbecue that turkey instead. This way, you'll get it done in about an hour and 45 minutes.

Favorite Vacation: Travels to Tuscany