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Topic: Regal Shows Wrong Guardians Movie... Mutlple Times

Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 08-01-2014 10:04 PM

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/guardians-galaxy-theater-repeatedly-shows-722926

quote:
Well, at least they got the Guardians part right.

Expletives flew at a Guardians of the Galaxy screening Thursday, when a Regal Cinemas in Virginia repeatedly showed the opening segment of 2012's Rise of the Guardians instead of the Marvel Studios tentpole.

Dean Browell, who was sitting in the audience with his 10-year-old daughter, says they sat through 15 minutes of previews, followed by five minutes of the animated movie before an employee popped in to say they were trying to fix the situation.

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The audience then withstood the same 15 minutes of previews again … only for Rise of the Guardians to start playing once more. At this point, the theater offered to give people tickets to a later 3D Imax showing, and about half the people at the 2D screening took them up on the offer.

But the other screening was too late for the Browells, so they persevered.

"There was a 10 minute wait, then the lights went down again and the third go of previews started, this time with the new Interstellar one, which gave us hope," Browell tells The Hollywood Reporter.

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No luck. Rise started playing a third time — to major expletives from the agitated crowd.

"It was now 9:15 p.m., from an 8 p.m. movie," says Browell. "Those left in the theater stormed out and then joined a line 50-people long trying to get their money back, anything. We were so disappointed."

Don't worry, true believers. This story has a happy ending. The theater refunded their tickets and gave them a poster as well as tickets to a Friday show.

Why do they need to run through the trailers each and every time? Can't they build a temporary playlist without them? Surely the technology exists to skip the damned trailers, does it not? Even Blu-ray lets you do that. Also why do they have a shitty movie from 2012 along with working keys on their server?

I bet the file names of the files are to blame, honestly. I mean how can they not be when they're so convoluted when they need to be plain Engrish. So the staff probably confused 6343527_GUARDIANS_SC_9689587_51_483594395 when they should have been running 56985476_GUARDIANS_567846_51_348975 instead! Hell, are the file names even THAT descriptive?

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Harold Hallikainen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 906
From: Denver, CO, USA
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 08-01-2014 10:50 PM

The naming convention is at http://isdcf.com/papers/ISDCF-Doc1-Digital-Cinema-Naming-Convention.pdf .

I understand the other movie was from 2012. It's interesting that the keys were still valid.

Harold

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Randy Pryde
Film Handler

Posts: 32
From: Casper, WY, USA
Registered: Feb 2013

posted 08-01-2014 11:14 PM

I believe that "Rise of the Guardians" is part of Regal's Summer Movie Express kid show series. That may explain why validated copies were on servers in so many locations.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 08-01-2014 11:27 PM

The fact that they need a 24-page document just to explain the naming conventions is... sad.

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James Westbrook
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1133
From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa
Registered: Mar 2006

posted 08-01-2014 11:58 PM

On the Doremi server, one just opens the playlist, delete the trailers and hit play. However, if the wrong Guardians is on the SMS, and the right one isn't...it may take too long to migrate the right one over.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 08-02-2014 12:06 AM

quote: James Westbrook
On the Doremi server, one just opens the playlist, delete the trailers and hit play.

Why would you even need to do that? Just pause the movie, hit FF until the feature is cued up and hit play again.

They've probably got some setup where no humans can get within a mile of the projector controls without a special key or something like that.

I can see the problem with the SMS though. I'll bet the old Guardians movie just had Guardians as the first word of the filename, just like this new one does.

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James Westbrook
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1133
From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa
Registered: Mar 2006

posted 08-02-2014 12:16 AM

Fast forwarding works too.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 08-02-2014 01:09 AM

I have the same FOX package that "Rise/Guardians" content comes from and FOX did send down two week keys for this feature.

Some locations with REGAL are now getting their content directly by satellite instead of local HD ingesting along with the automatic deliver of the keys.

Thus, all content is assembled via the office terminal and the scheduling comes off of the main terminal. Shows that a keyword "Guardian" was used and the other feature was included by mistake.

But still ... total human error on why it wasn't caught the first time and the POS terminal wasn't changed to reflect the error.

Shows how bad the industry is going where "Suits" don't have a clue on how to operate their location.

-Monte

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Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010

posted 08-02-2014 01:10 AM

This is absolutely hysterical. And yes, it's even easier than fast forwarding to skip the trailers. Just look at the time cue for where the trailers end, type that in, hit play. Skip directly to feature.

I am EXTREMELY amused, I have to say.

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Marcel Birgelen
Film God

Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 08-02-2014 02:31 AM

Still I don't get it...

Did they have an "illegally" ripped version on there somewhere? Where they showing Rise of the Guardians as a re-run? (Which also could explain the fact that the movie was still in there, I doubt they have unlimited storage and can afford to keep every movie that passes by for two years or longer.)

Or how else do they explain that the KDM was still valid?

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 08-02-2014 02:49 AM

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Did they have an "illegally" ripped version on there somewhere?

A review:

REGAL issued out a drive (and even though I'm not REGAL but got the same drive for our kid show series this summer...) for their "Summer Movie Express" kid show program, and this drive, from Deluxe and FOX, has 6 features containers and one of these containers contains the feature, "Rise of the Guardians."

This one feature probably played the two days before "Guardians/Galaxy" was released and FOX issued out a key that lasted 7 days.

This one theatre probably played "Rise" on a Wed and Thurs, with the key becoming active on the Tuesday before making it ends on Monday of the next week.

Thus "Rise" played the same week that "Galaxy" opens up and "Rise" was still active to be played normally.

Sad thing is that REGAL forbids pre-screens of any kind, thus it leaves one open for massive errors on opening day.

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Allan Riddelll
Film Handler

Posts: 33
From: msida , malta, europe
Registered: Jan 2009

posted 08-02-2014 04:11 AM

We always have two versions on our show playlist.

eg. Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy only

This is done in the event that we might have had a technical fault on the previous show or we're just running late so we dont have to skip the previews or mess about with fast forward / pause buttons etc.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 08-02-2014 04:17 AM

CPL for Guardians of the Galaxy 2D: GuardiansGalax_FTR-2_S_EN-EN...

CPL for Rise of the Guardians 2D: GUARDIANS-2D_FTR_F_EN-XX...

The two are similar enough that it would be pretty easy for someone to mix them up. Even someone competent in the booth could easily make a mistake if they weren't paying close attention.

I partially blame Paramount for this one. When they allowed Rise of the Guardians for summer kids shows, they should have had the foresight to see this might be a problem and renamed the CPL RiseGuardians.... And someone high up in Regal should have been monitoring tech issues close enough to see this possibility and created a company wide memo. It also could have been avoided by ensuring play dates were far enough apart there would be no overlap in the valid dates of the keys.

Lastly, I blame the management at this location for not doing a QC check prior to opening the movie. This wasn't a case where you can blame a narrow key window as they keys were good at 00:01 7/30 - or Tuesday night at midnight. But it is a good warning for the studios which provide very narrow key windows that make it difficult to do a proper QC check prior to the first public performance.

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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"

Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 08-02-2014 10:58 AM

Before anyone blames this on "digital" I'm going to point out that this sort of thing happened back in the film days too.

A typical scenario would involve two movies sharing a screen, and a careless projectionist threading the wrong one. That's how I got to see "Clueless" for free. We were there to see "Indian in the Cupboard."

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Buck Wilson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 894
From: St. Joseph MO, USA
Registered: Sep 2010

posted 08-02-2014 11:22 AM

Justin, As Monte mentioned, Regal locations have everything monitored and are not allowed to preform prescreenings. Yes, seriously.

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