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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Teething problems on first showings
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 02-10-2019 12:30 PM
Also makes a big difference wether you want to screen the full show or only the main feature. Main feature is for checking it's intactness and e.g. audio levels, credit offset, etc, but, if there's a tendency for mistakes in the SPL cues, you need to sit through the full preshow to make sure everything ends up properly at the main feature.
Some locations program shows fully manual, some use a TMS, some receive preset program blocks from a central office. Each of these methods has it's own potential issues. Oh yes, and then there may be unreliable equipment.
Some screens may not get the minimum time slot to actually do a test screening. The big chains are all excited about staff reduction and automation, so, who should do these tests?
- Carsten
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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God
Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004
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posted 02-10-2019 08:25 PM
quote: Frank Cox
When I got film, I could see the film and know if it was in good shape. Are all of the reels there? Is the film itself in good shape? It didn't happen too often that I got a film in such poor condition that I had to pre-screen it to fix it but I did have to do that on more than one occasion, too.
With digital cinema you don't know what you've got until you watch it. Is it correct? Is it complete? Does it play all the way through in the right order? Any other issues with the picture or the sound? There's simply no way to know any of those things without actually sitting down and watching it all the way through.
^^^^ This.
Even when time constraints prevented me from building a print at the bench (Or when I built up the 70mm print of Branaugh's "Hamlet" at the Laemmle Royal) I could still hold the edges of the film coming off the MUT to try and catch problems. (And it paid off with "Hamlet", I found two random splices in the film, done with staples!)
Now it's ingest the hard drive and pray.
While I can agree with the overall presentation at least maintaining a consistent, higher quality over the length of the run, you STILL have the possibility of breakdowns that, unlike film, may not be recoverable for that show.
In the film days I have dealt with stripped gears (changeover booth so we kept going on one machine while I worked on the other during each running reel, we only had two pauses during the show to rethread), platter failures (used the MUT or a spare staff kid to turn the platters), one bulb explosion (restarted after a very quick bulb swap) and so on. Film breaks (as long as it wasn't due to a brain wrap) could be fixed in well under a minute.
And due to digital's quarks, it has happened where you run a test showing and everything works, but a future show has problems due to some sort of server or projector glitch.
Thankfully the KDM issues have been pretty well sorted out, but the idea of keeping the film locked until too close to first scheduled show is still a problem.
And there's THIS to consider.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 02-11-2019 05:42 PM
I've had lot of crap happening around many of the shows I recently attended...
I went to a Dolby Cinema show of Aquaman: The show started, the lights did not dim, it took about 15 minutes to make somebody aware about that fact. It's pretty frustrating that you pay premium fees to get a botched presentation. Nobody even cared to give the visitors any form of compensation for this kind of butchery.
When I went to see The Avengers, Infinity War, somewhere in the last months on some "PLF" screen, the movie initially started without a picture. After fiddling around, they managed to start the 2D version. (We paid for the 3D version.) At first, nobody seemed to notice or care, but then some people went out to complain. Resulting in another 10 minutes of botched attempts to restart the movie, but now with the second projector operating. Eventually, they managed to start the movie in 3D, but the Atmos in the room was clearly not working.
When I first tried to watch Glass in a proper cinema, they couldn't figure how to dim all the lights in the room. Some irritating, white-blue LED strip, mounted vertically alongside our row apparently didn't want to dim, even after 10 minutes of random button pushing. We left, since we didn't want to see the movie with a bright light shining in our face from the left.
While trying the laser-shark upgraded IMAX theater in Amsterdam, the whole thing broke down midway the movie. Fortunately, we could finish the movie in another room, using an old-school Christie Xeon machine... The irony: the picture looked better in that smaller theater and the 7.1 surround in that theater beats the rock-concert arrangement of modern IMAX hands down...
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 02-12-2019 05:46 AM
quote: Carsten Kurz
They simply need to get more IT and remote monitoring in to overcome these issues. That will allow them to get rid of the human factor that causes all these glitches.
It's hard to judge whether you're sarcastic or not. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I was under the impression that each Dolby Cinema setup was already meticulously remotely monitored. I mean, it was an almost sold-out Saturday evening show... the kind of show every self-respecting projectionist would check every minute, to ensure everything runs smoothly...
I can understand that stuff breaks down, although given my recent experiences, it feels like stuff is breaking more than it used to do and there is generally nobody around that has any clue how to fix it. Still, it shouldn't be me, arguing with the concessions sales guy that stuff is broken. But yeah, it also shouldn't be me, reminding the guy at the door to the theater, that RealD glasses won't cut it in a Dolby Cinema 3D show... (they sent most people before me back to the concessions counter to buy a pair of glasses, which they then couldn't use...)
If something breaks, the theater should know it roughly at the same time I notice it. You should send somebody out to politely excuse for the mishap, while trying to fix the issue. If you can't fix the issue, then try to give your patrons a worthwhile compensation for their screwed evening. A simple free pass, that often doesn't even cover for upcharges for 3D or "premium" presentations and unfinished concessions, simply doesn't cut it.
In this case kudos for the Pathe Amsterdam Arena, where they, at least did go all the way and look for a possibility for us to finish the movie. Sorry that your upgraded IMAX theater still sucks balls though.
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