Imagine if every theatre that got a decoy title called the distributor to complain that they got the wrong print. Bet that practice would stop fast enough."Hello, we are supposed to play ATTACK OF THE BONES, I mean CLONES tomorrow and we didn't get the print.
"Are you sure, the tracking record shows it was delivered yesterday."
"No. It isn't here. I checked every can in the booth and down in the manager's office and it isn't here. You have to send another one right away."
"Do you have a set of cans marked, HEY THERE, GEORGIE GIRL?"
"Wait let me check...." Ten minutes later: "....hello?... nope, we don't have that one."
"Do you have a title, "SOFT FOCUS?"
"Do you have cans marked, I HATE FILM; I HATE MYSELF?
"Nope,don't have that one either." And on and on.
But seriously, what's the point? Do the studios think that the trailers are being stolen by the carrier? In other words, do they think that it's the TES workers that are stealing these preview prints right at the depot? Once the decoy labeled print gets to the theatre, the projectionists and every kid who they send to the booth (not exactly professionals with an outstanding sense professional "keeping your mouth shut" ethics) knows what the dummy name really is....it's not exactly a secret any longer. So where in the chain do they think they are stopping a potential threat of theft by mislabeling prints? And do they think that someone with the savvy to actually steal a print (usually someone connected with the industry or at least has inside information about print movement) wouldn't be able to figure out what decoy titles go with what real titles?
It's a stupid idea from the get-go. Obviously if it has even the slightest hope of working there can't just be a single dummy title per feature -- there have to be lots of them. Can you imagine what chaos this must be for the distributor who has to track which dummy titles go with which features and to which theatres? I rephrase that: it's an IDIOTIC idea from the get-go.
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posted 09-23-2002 02:16 AM
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