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The only ecxeption is that evil RED BAND, those stay on no matter what.

Anyoone and everyone who taught me projection are all dead....long gone to that big projection booth in the sky (where there are only carbon arcs and no platters).

Frank

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I think they are useful to us in the booth in terms of letting us know that "this is a green-band trailer."

As far as checking/matching appropriate content, I use the Scoreboard sheets and some common sense. I am also pretty good about honoring the trailer placement requests, so there's zero chance that a trailer for an R-Rated movie is going to end up showing during previews for a G-Rated movie.

But ratings aren't the only "match-factor" for trailers. I usually program a trailer reel to suit the probable audience for the feature. An action movie will get action trailers and maybe I'll cross-plug with a preview of a chick-flick (for those poor girls who get "dragged kicking and screaming" by their macho boyfriends).

I don't think that audiences particularly want/need to see green-bands and I don't have a want/need to show them. Green-bands make the pre-show long, and I don't like it when the room falls into silence.

As for those few seconds of audio...I used to fret over the impact of their loss, but I can't say that there's ever been any real harm done...and this might be because the trailer editors KNOW that most of us are gonna yank the bands anyway...they'd be idiots to put crucial audio there!

If the studios suddenly got up-in-arms about taking the bands off, then maybe I'd start leaving them on but, until that bright and shining day, they're so outta there!

Also...house lights are at half during trailers...I'm the anti-Christ, right?

Red band stays on always. In fact, those trailers are rare and for me to actually program one of them into a pre-show is even more rare.

Blue band is part of the movie and it is shown always.

One good use for Green-bands: make a loop to do a quick check of shutter timing when you can't use RP-40.

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And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

~Manny.

We release day-and-date with the U.S.A. so the studios send our prints up to a full week in advance to accomodate our ratings system. Ever wondered where Print #0001 goes? I get a lot of them! Quite often, my print # will be a single-digit.

Ratings are assigned by The Bahamas Plays & Films Control Board (aka "The Viewing Board"). The quorum is a mere FIVE voters and they are all Civil Servants (Gov't employees). Unlike the MPAA system, ours is not voluntary; Bahamian cinemas are not self-regulated. We are required under the Films & Plays Act to pre-screen all of our movies for the Viewing Board.

There's a representative from the Royal Bahamas Police Force and one from The Royal Bahamas Fire Dept. While these two often attend ratings screenings, their primary function on the Board is to monitor other areas of legal compliance (building code, hygene, occupancy, booth conditions).

There's also a nun and a priest...The nun (doesn't matter which one) will usually want everything banned! The priests are usually pretty mellow about sex and violence.

And then there are some other general issue people. I've never been sure if there were psychologists or educators. There don't seem to be any specific criteria as to who can/cannot be on the Viewing Board.

All in all, the ratings come out matching those of CARA. The available codes are:

A - All Ages Admitted.
If it comes in with a G Rating, they might automatically apply this one. Sometimes they will only want to see the first reel. Other times, they might elect to watch the whole movie.

B - Viewers Under Age 18 Require Accompanying Parent or Responsible Adult Guardian.
While the "B" Rating was once the one that was most commonly applied, drugs and violence (even in PG/PG-13 movies) are making the "C" Rating more prevalent.

T - All Viewers Must Be Age 15 or Older.
We call this "the kiss of death" because adults think that the "T" means that the movie is "for teenagers" but, of course, a lot of teenagers can't see it.

C - All Viewers Must Be Age 18 or Older.
Movies with an R or NC-17 CARA Rating will usually be expected to get a "C" Rating.

The Viewing Board may also ban movies and plays. Usually this will happen if the movie is full of drug references. There isn't much tolerance of that.

But SOUTH PARK was banned "for crudeness and excessive religious humor" and HALF BAKED was banned "for excessive drug references and also for being a stupid movie." So it isn't always about drugs. I remember hearing (from a friend at the competing chain) that JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK was banned "for being a stupid movie."

Interesting point: Films & Plays Control has no jurisdiction over television and video, so SOUTH PARK, HALF BAKED and others are all freely available here on video. I've argued time and again that a person has to overcome more barriers to see a movie in a theatre and, meanwhile, any child or unsuspecting adult can pop in a tape or switch to something shocking on television.

It's also interesting to see what gets past these people...I thought for sure that THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE would be banned, but they only added a strong warning. Ditto for EYES WIDE SHUT.

Only once have I had to excise selected scenes and that was for SCARY MOVIE. The "explosive orgasm" and the "penis in the ear" had to go. But the rest could pass with a "C" rating.

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And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

~Manny.

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Sorry, I don't know the Steve Guttag reference.

Obviously that's bad, so:
1) It serves as a feedback mechanism because you _know_ you got the changeover imperfect. Without something like this, you don't really get any feedback at all.
2) Because it looks bad, it's inspired us to take some more careful measurements of where countdowns should be wound-down to.

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Just last night I ran SANDSTORM, a 2000 Indian film that cut a change-over at a fade-in. You could see that some guy was threading so short (he left grease pencil X's at his start frame which was a few frames before [3] !) that he would have totally missed the fade-in if he had actually threaded up on that "start" frame. Of course, if he missed it totally, then he wouldn't have even known he was screwing up big-time.

Once you run into one of these fade-outs / fade-ins at a change-over, you will realize how important it is to "back-time" a change-over to see exactly where your start frame should be on each machine. It could even vary from machine to machine, projectionist to projectionist, given varying projector roll-to-speed times and human reaction times.

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