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Author
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Topic: Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers)
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Jon Miller
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 973
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 10-08-2003 12:11 AM
Wallace Theaters Art House at Restaurant Row in Honolulu, Hawai'i...please, oh please, beg, borrow, or, better yet, buy a proper split reel! ![[Mad]](mad.gif) If you run film festivals, a good split reel is an essential accessory.
The way "Kung Phooey" was shipped out after the 2003 Cinema Paradise film festival, sucked! In addition to splices torn at breakdown, the taped-on leaders and tails, the automation cues left on the print, and a misframed splice in the credits, I found this (reels shown in order)...
At first I wondered how the heck this could have happened, then it occurred to me that somebody may have used one of those ![[bs]](graemlins/bs.gif) -y break-apart shipping reels as a "poor man's split reel", recovering the core after each reel was wound and dropping the original core in its place. (Note damage in reel 2...definitely a lapse in flange-binding.)
Films shipped like this are a real pain to bench-inspect and darn near impossible to handle properly if you don't have a horizontal MUT. ![[scream]](graemlins/scream.gif)
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-08-2003 11:34 AM
Jon,
I don't understand why the producers of film festivals don't simply make it MANDITORY that film entries MUST be on plastic reels, with standard countdown leaders/tails and properly made cues. That is the easiest way to insure that you don;t wind up with crap like you did.
I once was running festival jury screenings and I got a call from the floor that a filmmaker had arrived late and could I please, please show his film which had been scheduled for an earlier slot in the program. I was hesitant, but feeling compassion for this poor filmmaker, I said yes, IF the film was on a reel and heads up, ready to project. He assured me that it was. I said OK, send him up. He came up to the booth and I opened up this Macy's cardboard box that he was holding in his hands, only to find a film roll in just about the same condition of those in the picture above. I just handed it back to him and said, "Better luck next year, kid."
If having a print mounted on standard 2000ft plastic reels is an entry requirement, that would put a quick end to such nonsense.
Frank
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-08-2003 04:58 PM
You guys who work in commercial theaters or in college movie houses that don't have a "legitimate" theater PLEASE ship your films out in time!
(I won't mention names becasue both prints were received in otherwise good condition.)
Our playdates are on Wednesdays but we NEED to receive them on Monday. We received our print of Spellbound a day late. You have no idea of the chaos this caused me!
If you work in a non-stage venue you might think, "What's the difference as long as it gets there in time for the show?!" Well, you guys have the luxury of having the house to yourself during "dark times". You can build and screen almost any time you want. My life is different.
Yesterday we had a big concert. It was "Leahy", an Irish folk-rock band out of Canada. The show was great. (If you like that kind of music "Leahy" is worth the ticket!) However, the house is in use the entire day from 7:00 AM until 12:00 Midnite.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to screen a movie in a venue like ours when you have to load-in two trucks full of band gear, sound equipment and lights then load it all out before midnite.
I plan for the film to be built up on Mondays. We have set aside the time from about 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM for print building, screening, troubleshooting and student training. Because of somebody's lack of forethought, I had to let the house sit dark for half a day because the film wasn't here. Tuesday, in the middle of load-in I had to drop what I was doing to go pick up the film. It's delivered to the campus mail room. I (or my designate) must sign for it. Stage light and follow spot operators work in the booth area for concerts. I don't have free use of that space. I have to store the film for a day. So, I've been working my ass off for 18 hours but now I have to come to work at 6:00 AM the next morning to build the stinking movie! It has to be ready for the show at 2:00PM!
I was lucky this time. The film was in excellent condition. I built the film up in under an hour. After taking care of all my OTHER duties for the day, I had the movie on-screen by 9:00 AM. I was done with screening just in time for lunch. First show went off without a hitch but I had to leave a student in charge because I'm sitting in the back row of the balcony with a serious case of "head-bobs"! I went to my office, locked my door and caught a cat nap. My student had strict instructions to ring my office phone if anything went wrong. (Ringer @ top volume!)
This is getting long-winded but I think you get my point: If you are circuiting your prints, PLEASE ship them out on time! I know there are sometimes problems beyond control but if you're shipping out in close proximity to the next playdate, pay the extra $$ for Next Day shipping instead of Three-Day!
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-08-2003 07:00 PM
Randy, I feel your pain. Been there; done that, and then got smart and forced some changes. In the end, you have to impress on penny-pinching management to get off their miserly butts and go do some fundraising and acknowledge that you need at least one other qualified assistant on staff to run the organization correctly -- and I don't mean those free,learn-as-you-go student interns either, who, quite frankly, can be more of a hindrance than a help. I bet the executive director makes sure he doesn't ever have to grab an hours worth of sleep on a couch behind a scrim somewhere!
And I wouldn't lay it in the lap of whoever shipped out the print either. Same day shipping of prints is not uncommon. I have been known to get a print literally an hour before showtime. I deal with it. In the case of a print as new as SPELLBOUND, I would think you could inspect it by hand alone without running the entire film and it wouldn't put you too far out on a limb. After all, it did come directly from another theatre. If there were some major problems that would make it unrunable, then that theatre wouldn't have sent it out to you without at least a note (reel 5 is missing the soundtrack). But then again, really obvious problems like that would be evident on a simple rewind inspection.
FLASH: Get prints OUT of the hands of the college mail room. We put an end to that headache 15 years ago. The college is CLOSED on weekends and after five -- that's the theatre's busiest time. The mailroom runs on college time, not theatre time. You've got an entire staff running shows late at night, on weekends and I'll bet even on holidays when college personnel are long gone. You can't rely on them. Now we have prints delivered directly to the theatre loading dock and I have even fought to give our trucking service a key to our stage door -- he delivers prints to us between 3am and 4am. I ranted and raved until I got head of security to approve that after the time the college mailroom kumquats-for-brains staff locked a print in a cage while they were off for vacation for two days past the playdate, all the while the distrib, the trucker and the theatre staff went bizzerk trying to locate it.
You should also educate management NOT to book the theatre without a reasonable safety buffer of time between events just for unanticipated problems like the one you describe. Don't book an event smack against another with no wiggle room, especially since you know you can't plan on prints coming in days before playdates. When prints do come in at the last minute, I do my best to inspect and test-run them, but if there is just not enough time for that, then hey, they get a rewind onto house reels and then get played as-is, fingers crossed.
We also have a 10 hour recall rule that might be wise to look into (something that certainly didn't come from management but from the crews): no one can be assigned to a work call less than 10 hours from the time they leave the theatre after the previous show. And that is not just for convenience, but for safety. It is dangerous to have any crew member on stage who hasn't gotten a full sleep cycle.
Anyway, I see you are a real trouper as they say -- putting on a topnotch show no matter what....just don't let them expect you to jump through those extraordinary hoops on a regular basis. I know, I know, getting the show on whatever the problems is in your blood, but it can actually work against you over the long term. If you can make it look great to the audience, then management will not take the problems behind the scenes seriously. Sometimes the best, or rather the only way to impress upon them the severity of a problem is NOT to cover their butts and let the thing fail. I know that can take an incredible force of will for a professional who defines himself by the quality of his work, but in the end, that may be his best recourse.
Frank
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Jon Miller
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 973
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 10-08-2003 07:24 PM
quote:
I don't understand why the producers of film festivals don't simply make it MANDITORY that film entries MUST be on plastic reels, with standard countdown leaders/tails and properly made cues.
Frank--In a perfect world, it would be nice to see that happen. More often than not, it's some small-time distributor sending the print, not the filmmaker himself (or herself). Given that the two main festivals I help with get prints from various international sources, most prints are going to arrive in cardboard boxes held together with layers of imprinted packing tape from every known air freight company around the globe.
Cue marks don't matter that much to me as the festivals are held at a platter house. Shipping reels would spare me the extra winding step when breaking the print down (I offload the print from the platter onto big reels, then break down to cores on the bench; I can get a better wind that way and I don't have to jury-rig the MUT to accept a split reel).
If I was running changeovers, I'd be loath to show a print shipped on reels with the filmmaker's assurance it was ready to project, without inspecting first. It's just an invitation for disaster.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-08-2003 07:56 PM
Dirty little secret: I could get a film on-screen 1 or 2 hours before showtime if I "need" to. It is a matter of policy, not because of any technical reasons. In four years of running films here I have only ever had to do it once. That's the way I'm going to keep it. If I ever let on that I could, then I would have to do it all the time.
We all know that's the way it ought to be done and we all know managment wants it done the other way. Way back in the beginning, I started in on the boss... from day one... "We're not Cinemark <or substitute name of large chain here>. We don't want to do things like "they" do. The boss bought in to this from the start. Now he thinks it was HIS idea. ![[Wink]](wink.gif) It is policy that movies are pre-screened the day BEFORE.
Like I said, I know things can't go smoothly all the time. Things happen. However, N.Y. Films, et. al. sends out shipping instructions with the next venue's due date. It's a simple matter to read the paper and act accordingly. In this case, the film was shipped on Thursday via 3-day ground when the arrival date was supposed to be Monday.
Things like this are not the end of the world, especially when I have built a "buffer zone" into the time line just for the purpose. I'm just pointing out that not all "theaters" are exclusively movie houses. Not everybody has the luxury of exclusive use of the facilities like movie houses (almost) always do. Had the print arrived on Monday like it was supposed to, it would have been built up and ready to roll BEFORE the band even took the stage. I could have gone home and slept in. I wouldn't have had to even walk through the door until at least 12:00 noon.
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-09-2003 01:13 AM
No film, house opens, 45 minutes before showtime "The movie is here!" on the 2-way, the cans for a 2 1/2 hour movie start trickling up to the booth & get there about 30 minutes before the movie starts, the print is in AWFUL condition, inspect, patch, patch, patch, the house holds for 10 minutes, get 2 reels ahead, start the movie, start inspecting the next reel, feed relay starts popping out on one lamphouse & have to keep running over to tap it to be sure it's in, leaders to some other movie on some reels WHAT THE HELL? IS THIS THE RIGHT REEL?, cues all wrong, leaders all too short, grab old trailers & cut chunks off for leader, down to 1 reel ahead, all heads out so they must be rewound, switch to rewinding on the hand rewinds because they're faster, crank! crank! crank! at The Flash speed, DING! DING! DING! goes the end of reel alarm on the projector while you're halfway through rewinding the reel that's next, PLEASE let me have a heart attack now so I'll have an excuse to stop!, throw it on, thread it up, change the carbons, change it over, add the old reel to the ones on the rack that must all be rewound, grab the next reel to inspect it, throw it on the hand rewind, OH NO the edges look like a ginsu knife, run over, tap the relay...
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