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I understand mistakes can be made, especially when a distributor tells you that you're going to get a quad format film with DTS discs and then it arrives only in SR --but that's after you've placed your ad and all that good stuff. As bad as some distributors can be, you may not get a certain print until late Thursday night or even Friday morning mere hours before the first show. Forget about being able to double check a proof then. However, those occurences are rare. And I think the film release info so many contribute to this site well in advance of a release certainly helps cure any potential mistakes.

I've seen Miramax's New York stack ads. They suck. Plain and simple. Not only are they leaving out the DTS and SDDS notation in their ads --their theater listing art quality IS TERRIBLE!!! I should drop a note to Roger Dressler at Dolby and have him take a look at the funkafied knock-off attempts Miramax uses on trying to reproduce a Dolby Digital logo. Horrible! Good Lord, Dressler even has an Adobe PDF file providing exact dimensions for all the elements and type in the Dolby Digital logo. There is no excuse to have that logo reproduce in less than perfect condition.

Overall, some places have good stack ads and other places have stack ads that suck. Generally, I like the ads produced in New York and Los Angeles, but there is bad work going on even in those markets.

There's two reasons for this. Disorganization between the ad agency, film distributor and theaters. And low paid amateurs at work schlocking the art together at the last minute. You can identify a well assembled ad when you see it. And the slapped together stuff looks like crap.

In many cases, technical notation has been dropped from most stack ads around the country. Dallas used to be great at listing sound formats. I have some old clippings from the Dallas Morning News Guide showing as such. But now, most of that stuff is gone. With that kind of practice happening, I can only visit theaters where I know exactly what kind of hardware they are using and am able to give the manager a call to see what digital format the show is using.

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Companies like Wagner/Zip Change and Gemini have marquee icons for all three digital sound formats as well as the Dolby symbol and THX logo. And then fellows like me can design larger customized icons to fit any kind or size of marquee. Anyway, the resources are there in terms of sign supply if a theater manager wants to use the tool correctly.

Is a "stack ad" the circuit's ad? I mean if Regal runs a display ad for 1 or more Regal locations, is that referred to as a stack ad?

In a small city, a movie may play at only one theater. It can't really be called a stack ad. A lot of managers call them "co-op ads". Obviously, the stack ad in a large city newspaper would be paid for primarily by the film distributor and perhaps with a smaller percentage coming from theaters listed in the ad.

A theater circuit ad, such as Regal, which lists only their theaters and what is playing at those locations is very obviously called a theater directory ad. I think it is funny how a lot of stack ads will not feature technical notes on sound/projection format and then just say "check theater directories for showtimes and stereo sound". Many of the theater directories don't even list the tech info either!

Regal's circuit ads say "Digital Sound in all auditoriums" at the top, and "DIG" next to the name of each feature. Oddly, a legend at the bottom explains "DIG" = Digital Sound, and "STR" = Stereo Sound, but they haven't annotated a film as "STR" for a very long time. (They also claim "Largest screen and auditorium in Eugene/Springfield" which is only half-true. They don't have the largest screen.)

Cinemark 17's ads say "Digital Sound in all auditoriums" and that's all. But Cinemark's Movies 12 $1.50 theater uses the DTS logo on the movies playing there in DTS (3 screens are DTS-capable). And it says "Stereo Surround Sound in all auditoriums" (happens to be pathetically bad Ultra Stereo).

I was the one that made the statement about that it was completely legal to say a film is in dolby, and not even present it in such, and still be able to advertise as such.

You did clarify my point, as you stated, you cannot say that it is "Presented" in dolby, dts, whatever, and then it is not. My point was that you can say that a film is "IN" dolby, dts, whatever, and not ever say that it actually "IS NOT" presented in such.

An example would be like this...

YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDANTLY THEATER PRESENTS

1. STAR WARS #1 - Attack of the menace (DTS)
2. Rat Wars - Jar Jar gets shot to death (DOLBY)

and so on.

However if the header reads...

YOUR LOCAL THEATER PRESENTS DTS SOUND

or

YOUR LOCAL THEATER IS RUN BY CORPORATE BUTNICKERS...

AND PRESENTS ALL FEATURES IN DOLBY...

then you must...

The clarification is purely a legal one. The moral thing is of course its wrong to imply, even if you dont atually state. Its like saying you have a ton of money, only to reveal later that it is all confederacy money, or pennies.

So it is completely legal to put that a film has DTS or Dolby, but NOT legal to say you are presenting it in such.

Another trick used is to say "DTS AVAILABLE" in the header, only to discover one of eight has it, and the rest are mono. Also common practice used to "unintentionally" distract the consumer from the truth.

And truth be told, sometimes, I prefer an analog presentation. Sometimes the DTS mix is horrible. And always way to sterile.

sometimes the website may say "Digital Sound" but who knows which.
they never play the trailers before the movie either, except one cinema that has closed now used the play the DTS flying disc before every movie.

Universal adopted a similar approach for its arthouse titles beginning with Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Most ads in the Dallas Morning News newspaper use a similar motif. You'll see a movie stack ad, several rows of theater listings under the poster artwork and then perhaps a DTS or SDDS logo --with no indication of which theaters are showing what format (or even if a number of theaters are not showing the film with digital sound).

Those logos are not all-encompassing. That's something many theater customers do not understand. They automatically believe any theater they visit is going to be showing the film in the best format available. So many customers will commonly wind up in a theater with no digital sound equipment and not realize it until the show starts --and this is assuming any of these people actually care at all about things like digital surround sound. The ad people out there must be assuming most don't care if the audio is coming out of a ham radio.

USA Films and Universal share the same ad agency for their NYC-area ads. With that format on upmarket/arthouse titles those 2 studios don't pull a Miramax on the public.

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