They then slag an "out of country" festival who once showed MFL, first half in 70mm, second in 35mm but didn't have all of that so ran
a "reel" in VHS video. All this in the first 10 minutes if you have this title. So this is what the home theatre buffs are being told, back it up with a lousy presentation and I suppose this is why they are saying these things.

As for me, the video looked good, but only as good as my TV. I suppose the bonus is that it won't degrade like VHS. I'm sure the surround sound is the real attraction, and I did enjoy when these guys actually talked about the ORIGINAL production (which I liked along with subtitles so I could follow both).

As for theaters, I've been in a couple of supposedly THX houses in
Las Vegas that definitely aren't doing film right. Talk about no
cue marks! One THX house here runs 'scope prints with 1.85 plates
and backup lenses so that the image ends up being extremely cropped
both horizontally and vertically. That way they never have to change
plates, backup lenses, or screen masks--just swing the 'scope adapter
out and press "GO". THX house? Yeah right.

Cheers!

Paul

quote:

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Has anyone actually tried using a portable video projector (LCD, CRT, or otherwise) in a full-size theatre? How did it look? I assume that it would be pretty bad (probably far worse than a 35mm print transferred from video), but I'm not really sure.

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Joe~you spoke about how theater chains and "managers" consider their projectionists to be expendable. I could not agree with you more! I worked for one of the largest and currently strongest chains in the country. Furthermore, the theater where I worked was one of the few in the company that had a small dedicated booth crew. Consequently, we were always in the "limelight" because we consistantly had one of the best presentations~if not the best~in the company (see my old thread about shit-hot presentation). Despite the true dedication of the people in the booth, the "floor staff" considered us "prima-donnas" and did not understand the need for professional projectionists~they were truly jealous! Because of our quality of presentation, we were always inspected by company big-whigs. But they never once came into the booth to inspect or thank the 6 of us that made the quality presentation possible! I have reason to suspect that the G.M. ~ who quit this company to go work for the competition~ took credit for our work; he would go for 3 months without stepping foot inside the booth. Furthermore, this G.M. would constantly tell us "thanks for the great job your doing~but remember that you are expendable"!~YES-he literally told us that on a consistant basis. Speaking for myself, I busted my ass in that booth out of pride and people acknowledging and thanking me for my efforts when they learned that I was a projectionist at this theater. It really does feels great when patrons recognize an excellent presentation! Anyhow, I was paid shit wages for what I did there and they had a very difficult time finding qualified people to work in the booth because of the shit wages and politics! Heaven help the person who mentioned IATSE and quality wages! The sad fact in SO AZ is that a dishwasher or waiter at one of the many posh resorts in this part of the country can~and does earn more than an experienced technician/craftsman such as a tool and die maker!

Bob, about wake up calls! The AZ Historical Society has in its archives much info about the Tucson Fox Theater. Ill reprint an interesting article from the AZ Daily Star printed in 1930 about how television was considered a major threat to cinemas~hence the advent of wide screen (Grandeour ~ probably misspelled) formats, 3-D etc, etc!

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Ok, I know this is a bit off topic but who was disappointed with their
most recent cinema experience? Quite a few judging by the
majority of recent posts concerning LOTR. I unfortunately attended the
cinema yesterday to see why it got such rave reviews in here
and after persevering with the first 15mins of an out of focus image
(I thought surely the projectionist will see it or at least one
out of the 220 patrons packed into the cinema would go and complain -
but never did) I went to the projectionist (who was by this
time serving popcorn and frozen cokes from an overworked ice machine)
and asked him to check his focus. Well the guy's comments were
less than favourable to me but he eventually must have plucked up
enough energy to walk back up the flight of 12 steps to the
projection room and adjusted his out of focus movie.
The day is fast approaching whereby cinemas need to become digital.
Why cinema conglomerates persist with making new modern
complexes that hold over 300 patrons each is a slap in the face for
theatre goers.
It means bigger screens (softer images), most of the time, more
"shoot-off" (that's where the edges of the images - sometimes taking
up to 15% of the image, are projected onto the black maskings) more
people (more interruptions/toilet
breaks/coughing/farting/lollie-chip packets/talking/mobiles etc etc)
and just generally a poor atmosphere that all this creates.
I predict this will one day change to new complexes of more smaller
theatres of say 50 patrons each using the latest in digital
projection equipment. A theatre that is capable of holding 50 patrons
could today successfully (if they were allowed) be using the
current available equipment (admittedly using smaller BUT clearer
screens-this would also improve the sound quality being a smaller
room) without waiting for new expensive HD gear.
Unfortunately, this will not happen due to the "hold" the film
industry must have on cinemas. You only have to look at the cost of
each print of the 3 hour epics like PH, Titanic and now LOTR and
figure how many hundreds of millions of $'s this is worth to the
"film manufacturing industries in the US".
Each print of LOTR would currently cost in excess of $6,000AU. Now
convert that to DVD's and figure the cost would be say $10AU per
disc?
Can you imagine the costs then of running cinemas? The film industry
is in it for themselves and not for the improvement of the
theatre goers or even the theatre owners. You only need to see who the
major shareholders of these film manufacturing companies are,
to see why film is here for a long time yet.

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What's interesting about this post is that the root of the problem is staring him in the face, yet he feels that digital will solve everything. The vast majority agree, with only one respondent having correctly identified poor personnel as being the problem.

I saw Monsters Inc. at the El Capitan in Los Angeles... and when I saw the crisp picture come on the screen -- and the perfect stable lettering for the previews and credits... my heart sank.

I did not see any evidence of splices - I didn't see any reel change marks or a speck of dirt at all... and while I could not see into the projection booth... my heart knew that I was watching a movie for the first time in Digital Projection.

It certainly isn't as romantic and artful as 35mm Projection -- but I tend to be very critical of even the slightest scratch or jump at a splice... and I was watching this whole movie--- PRAYING there would be some flaw... and there wasn't. So unless the projectionists at the El Capitan obsessively clean their print and have their masking set over cue marks and make the most invisible splices on the face of the earth... it saddens me to admit that Digital Projection was flawless... and I could scarceley tell the difference.

If you see something shot on film projected digitally it is a slightly different story, however.

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Yet when I saw The Emperor's New Groove at the same theatre, I had to admit I was impressed. The 1.85 image filled the normal 1.85 screen. The black was solid, the image rock-steady. The animated previews were great, too...EXCEPT for the one live-actionj shot of Tim Allen for Santa Klause (?) II (whatever happened to this?). That one shot of Allen was pretty jittery. The end credits of ENG were also unsmooth (scrolling) with pixalization visible.

So I think the system works MUCH better for animation (especially rendered from computer files) than live-action. Animation will obviously have less color range than the subtleties of photographic live-action. And backgrounds are pretty solid in animation as well, leaving far less information to compress.

I ask again...why do we still need cues on release prints? Those few times that we get prints without cues, the prints flow flawlessly and you can't even tell there's a splice...especially if using filmguard.

Fellowship has huge black cues and it seems almost always there is important information on the RHS of the image when they appear...SPLAT and ruin the entire effect of the scene.

There are over 400 prints of fellowship running in Australia right now. About 95% (+) are on platters or long play units of some sort. Do we really need to ruin it for 95% of prints just for the 5% who may need to perform a reel change? They should be cuing it themselves.

I don't want to see them,I don't need them, prints can be made up and broken down very easily without them. Please get rid of them.

That stupid bit in FIGHT CLUB proved that 99% of the world had NEVER noticed them before.

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