COOKED
The core of this job was already gutted before AI arrived: digital cinema servers ingest DCPs, validate KDM keys, and run automated playlists that trigger lights, curtains, and sound cues without a human in the booth. What remains is hands-on — lamp and laser module swaps, lens and port glass cleaning, projector alignment, and troubleshooting a dead show mid-feature — which is why this isn't a zero, plus a small repertory/70mm niche where film handling is a genuine craft. At 1,480 US jobs nationally, the occupation is already the residue of a much larger one.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. An 8 reflects the split day: ingesting a DCP, applying the KDM, building the playlist, and hitting show start are already scripted or scheduled by the TMS across every screen in the building, but nobody has automated pulling a spent xenon bulb, re-dousing and aligning a lamphouse, swapping a laser light engine, or diagnosing why a server dropped audio sync three reels into a sold-out show — roughly half the week resists, which is why this sits above the fully-automatable band but nowhere near 14.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. The booth is indoor and climate-controlled, which caps this below the true field trades, but you are on ladders and catwalks, handling a pressurized xenon lamp that can shatter, reaching into a hot lamphouse, cleaning port glass and lenses at height, threading 70mm on platters, and crawling behind screens for speaker work — physical work in a space that was never designed for safe access, hence 13 rather than a desk-bound 4.
No licence, no signature requirement. There is no projectionist licence in almost any US jurisdiction anymore — the old municipal operator permits that once required a written exam died with nitrate film, and the theatre's general manager, not you, signs for occupancy and fire code, so a 1 rather than a 0 only acknowledges that some venues still ask for basic electrical or high-voltage safety training.
Anonymous artifact production. The audience never learns your name and would not know if a different person started the show; the only relationship that carries any weight is the repertory or archival circuit, where a specific programmer asks for you by name to handle a rare print, which is a real but tiny slice of 1,480 jobs and worth 3, not 0.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs. Almost everything is a documented procedure — lamp hours logged and replaced on schedule, KDM windows checked against the booking, fault codes traced through the manufacturer's manual — and the one genuinely discretionary call, stopping a show versus limping through a flicker, gets escalated to the house manager who owns the refund decision, keeping this at 3.
Has AI actually changed your work?