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I've seen many users come in, look at a badly misaligned image, noticeably out of frame image, an image with very nonuniform brightness, shutter ghosting, poor focus, etc, or hear that the sound was poor quality and not playing in digital as it should be, and go straight to the exit door, make sure it's closed, and walk out. Training the ushers to notice projection problems and getting them to carefully check the image and sound when checking auditoriums, and have them report anything they find to the booth staff, seems to be a very cheap way of implementing some quality checking that would work very well, provided that the problems found are actually corrected in a timely fashion. This method required no more extra time from anyone than normal, except in the cases when a problem is noticed.

You are bringing back too many memories of how it used to be done. Of course at that time the projectionist knew what the *$%^ he was doing, and checking the screen and sound was superfluous. Time for me to fly up to Bob Maar's place and beg for a martini.

quote:

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a second usher (a mythical creature from the 1970s)

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One showing at Regal Hollywood 18 stands out in my memory simply because two ushers entered the auditorium at exactly the same time via the left and right doors and each walked down their side of the auditorium in a perfectly symmetrical fashion. They went to the front, then came back and exited in the same manner, which looked really neat. This was in a 49-foot-wide auditorium. I don't recall seeing them do that again.

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Anyone see anything wrong with that statement?

I'm not picking on you Ken, that's just kinda funny. I do fully agree how ridiculous this is. First off, if the patrons see the usher, then by definition it is a distraction. Unfortunately I can vouch for the "mystery reviewer" HAVING to notice the ushers do at least one check (some chains I think it is two) during the movie or they get points taken off of their score. I'm against any staff being seen (unless there is a problem they need to take care of), but this is the way it seems the pencil pushers want it done.

By the way Evans, I made a "what not to do" reel of film a couple of years ago for employee training. It was nothing more than some trailers spliced out of frame, backwards, parts scratched and such to show employees what the various projection problems were. Of course some of this had to be done "on the fly" like an aperture shifted out of place and sound problems (of which a business card intermittently blocking the leds for digital and constantly tapping the optical guide rollers to simulate warble in analog worked nicely). Did it work? Of course not. First, the floor staff was completely turned over within a matter of a few months and second these underpaid kids couldn't care less. It's a GREAT idea, but it doesn't seem to work in too many places. Hats off to the manager of the theater that does this in your area with success though.

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As far as making sure the audience sees the usher, think of it this way: The purpose of an auditorium check is to locate and identify any presentation or environmental problems and to report such problems to the management so that they can be corrected, right? (In theory; I know most ushers don't pick up on most presentation problems in reality.) The Company doesn't want its patrons to have to sit through an entire presentation with any such problems, so it requires it's ushers to perform such checks. Thus it requires the "blind checkers" who evaluate the theater to make sure the ushers do that, otherwise the theater looses points. And since you never know when a blind checker is coming or where they are sitting, you must make sure the entire audience sees you every time.

If there were no blind checks I would want the ushers to stay in the back. Also, when I go into an auditorium to check for a specific problem, I stay in the back because I know the ushers have already checked it.

I once worked at a theatre where the manager wanted you to monitor the theatre in this fashion:

Go in and sit in that back for a couple scenes.
Then sit in the middle for a couple scenes.
Then sit near the front for a couple scenes.

This way you could hear if anyone is talking anywhere in the theatre.

I always thought this would be distracting aside from being a rediculous way of doing things and I never did it.

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