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Author
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Topic: Stupidity in re-opening a theatre
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Rachel Craven
Madam Moderator
Posts: 2190
From: Pensacola, FL
Registered: Dec 2000
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posted 07-10-2003 09:55 AM
I'm posting this for a friend who asked me to get opinions on Film-Tech for them. It is being posted word-for-word the way they asked me to post it.
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A local 8-plex which was previously owned by a Big Theatre Chain closed and was recently re-opened by an independent operator which also owns a couple of other theatres in the area. The theatre opened on Friday with a refurbished lobby and all new employees. They are in a noncompetitive booking zone and are showing standard first-run product.
The real bonehead move was that they opened WITHOUT A PROJECTIONIST and without doing any significant work on the booth (which was left more or less intact by the previous operator). They have one manager who has booth experience (and is actually quite good), but had no one else on staff at the time of the opening who was anywhere near competent to run an older booth with a mix of equipment (including 5-deck Xetron platters, automations that mostly don't work right, lamps that were poorly aligned, one beat to hell "economy" splicer, and other fun stuff).
Fortunately for them, they have since found several experienced operators who are willing to help them out until they can hire permanent employees, but the first week's worth of presentations have still suffered as the equipment is dodgy and the projectionists haven't yet had a chance to become familiar with its quirks. Oh, and they're scheduling the shows such that all eight films start within a twenty-minute time period.
Has anyone else seen a theatre open in such a boneheaded way? In fairness, the employees are all trying very hard and the manager with experience is great, but that doesn't excuse the corporate types for spending time and money on refurbishing the lobby while completely ignoring the booth. It's a nice little small-town theatre and hopefully it will eventually do well,
but this sort of corporate thinking isn't likely to help.
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Andrew Duggan
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 127
From: Albany, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 07-10-2003 10:40 AM
The thing is, the theater I'm currently working at was in a very similar situation when I got there. They had just re-opened with a very inexperienced staff, and a crew of projectionists who were completely clueless on how to run a booth, and were only good at catching naps on the couch. And while the booth was a complete nightmare, going through it, reparing and replacing and learning the ups and down of equipment that was on it's last leg was one of the best jobs I can remember. It was really satisfying and I learned a truckload of new things (and got more than one head scratching shock, such as finding somebodys house keys in the gear train of a Simplex XL...). Now, a few months later, we've got the best presentation in the city. There's no reason that, with a little TLC, this guy couldn't pull this theater through to great things. And if you're not a corporate Godzilla, with near infinite funding for your theater, I think sometimes it's worth the risk to just bite the bullet and open shorthanded and see firsthand where your problems lie. So to make a long post short, it might not have been the most strategically thought out move, opening a theater under those conditions, but it's hardly the end of the world.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-10-2003 11:30 AM
The way I figure, a theater that size needs to have three "guys" on staff to work the booth. If they want to have one or two of those guys be a "manager" they STILL need one "good" guy to be in charge of things.
Figure that a theater is open, roughly, from noon to midnite seven days a week. That's 84 hours per week. If your average business wants its people to work about 30 hours, that's two and a fraction people. (Round up to 3.) This doesn't account for the fact that people will need some time off for holidays and personal time. Add a couple of "part timers" or "backup guys" for good measure.
That puts us up to five or six booth workers... Two or three full timers, two or three part timers and one "Chief". You don't have to work all of these people all of the time but you had better have the "depth" available to you.
So, you've got some shoddy booth equipment? Yeah, they should have spent some $$ to fix things up but, what the hell, not everybody can be as smart as we are, can they?
If you ever want to get all that stuff working right, you'll need time and expertise: People. If you have enough competent people and pay them well enough to do the work there's no reason the booth can't be whipped into shape in a reasonable amount of time.
Okay, so it was a bonehead way to do things but some good, well-motivated employees can help them get things working well. Besides, having people do (some of) the work can build a little "ownership" in the booth. THAT will benefit the operation much more than spending a shipload of $$ and then having boneheads run the place!
Do you think the new owners can be trusted to run the operation like this?
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