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Author Topic: Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers) Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 11-24-2002 09:44 AM                    Back to the topic, I am citing Loews Cineplex Entertainment's "Streets of Woodfield" multiplex in Schaumburg, IL. The charge: Writing on the green band part of trailers. On every green band that went by there was handwriting flashing by at the start, presumably ID info written with a Sharpie. Very unprofessional. One presumes the DLP screen would be the sole exception!  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 11-24-2002 11:13 AM                        Steve Kraus wrote: "One presumes the DLP screen would be the sole exception!" If that's their bad practice, maybe they would even find a way to paste the metadata into the image data on their server, so it would show on the screen.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-16-2002 02:30 PM                    Ebert & Roeper's review of "The Hot Chick" over the weekend mentioned how the film broke and caught fire on screen. Yes, there is a God! Roger is quoted as saying. Lest anyone think this mishap befell me I just want the record to show that that show took place at a regular theatre as that particular distributor tends to prefer theatres for most but not all of their press previews. At their own peril I might add. I also just ran a print that appears to have come straight from that same theatre where in addition to the usual masking taped-on leader BS they also overshot the breakdown of R3 and ended up with a couple hundred feet of R4 on the end of it. Not that they couldn't see the ugly yellow opaque splice tape. Just laziness. The reason I'm not naming the venue is because I have no way to out the particular operator(s) involved and there is no point in condemning a whole theatre or chain. This is not a case of the candy girl working the booth. That theatre is run by IATSE people.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 12-16-2002 03:23 PM                        Sound like that theatre had a sticky splice or masking tape that hung up as it fed from the platter, causing a jam and the burned film frame. As you say, likely just due to sloppy operation or laziness.  |  IP: Logged Bill Gabel Film God Posts: 3873 From: Technicolor / Postworks NY, USA Registered: Jan 2002 posted 12-16-2002 04:40 PM                     Just got a print of "Signs" to be used for Academy Screenings from TES. Touchstone requested Rewash and Cell Treat service from TES. On my inspection of the print, I found that some operator had edge marked the print. So with TES doing a Rewash & Cell Treat, some of the edge marking ran onto the SDDS and SRD soundtrack. The shortest of the damaged sound reels was 40 feet going all the way up to 74 feet of edge marking. The SRD / DTS / SR tracks will run, but the SDDS track is screwed. When I had to edge mark a reel on build-up it was about a foot. And that was fine and still got out without having to spend the night in the theatres. So for the operators that edge mark, Becareful about the run off. Because if TES is doing this to prints. Because the next person maybe you with a digital soundtrack because of edge markings.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 12-16-2002 04:48 PM                     Steve, were the opaque splices poorly made? If so I'll bet that a bad theater splice stuck 2 layers of film together and jammed on them.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-16-2002 06:12 PM                    Oh, the print I ran this afternoon wasn't The Hot Chick, just another film that they had screened based on the ETS label and the publicist. In addition to the aformentioned defects there were a couple of mid-reel splices, also made with opaque tape. Perhaps they were removing lab splice but that supposes a level of dilligence that seems doubtful given the rest. And why remove a lab splice if all you have is opaque tape? One was right at the end when the image fades to full white (clear) before the credits. No problem with how they were made. And the bogus cut a few hundred feet into R4 was on the frameline.  |  IP: Logged Evans A Criswell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1579 From: Huntsville, AL, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 12-19-2002 10:47 PM                        These comments were originally posted in my review of "Treasure Planet", but since they were so lengthy, I decided to move them to a more appropriate thread: here. Attendance: 2002/12/19 19:15, Carmike Century Cinema 8, Decatur, AL, Auditorium 5 The presentation was rather lacking. The projector started 2 perfs out of frame and the operator immediately framed the image to where the top of the 1.37 area was at the top of the screen, making the image center 2 to 3 feet low on the screen. Fortunately, the projector stopped within a minute of being started, after which I heard someone shout "Dad Gummit!" in the booth, after which the machine was restarted (out of frame), then framed properly. The masking was set to scope for a flat film, making the left and right edges look jagged and ugly. The top edge was jagged and ugly as well across the entire image. The screen had a rather large (3 foot by 2 foot) bad spot 4 feet left and 2 feet below the screen center that was more highly reflective than the rest of the screen, as if there had been an improper attempt at cleaning something off it there. A stray beam of light from the booth was illuminating the top right corner of the screen and the ceiling. Several seats in this auditorium were in a state of disrepair. Way to go, Carmike 8 in Decatur! I've posted about this theatre's bad projection before, and after a period of improvement, I'm finding that many old presentation problems are coming back due to a lack of care, quality control, and maintenance. For all my movie presentation data for all movies I've attended at local theatres, visit the "Presentation Quality Reviews" subpages of my site: http://hsvmovies.com/  |  IP: Logged James R. Hammonds, Jr Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 931 From: Houston, TX, USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 01-15-2003 12:00 AM                     We got our print of THE HOURS three whole days early on Monday. Print number 63. Oh, boy was I happy! I was not going to be able to build it up until Tuesday, but at least it was one less print to build on Thursday. Well, I inspected the print today and found horizontal base scratches on the picture side of every reel, heads and tails reattached (poorly) with masking tape which cause s sprocket damage and bent frames at the eands of almost every reel, and zebra tape left on from the last build. Reel 1 would be completely physically unplayable without chopping off the last 2 to 3 feet. Reel 4 was the worst. The physical components of the reel were not secured properly, so there were sections of the reel where the edges of the film stuck out and were damaged by the flanges. They were sticking out so far in fact that I did not have to open the reel to see that there was a Dolby Digital track and no SDDS track. It didnt stick out far enough for me to see the DTS timecode. I didn't even build the print, E-mailed our booker to report the damages, and requested a new print. Unless the print went to a different theatre than indicated on the stickers before soming to us, then the blame goes to Cinemark Tinseltown Westchase in Houston, Texas. If anyone from Westchase is lurking, thanks for wasting my time.  |  IP: Logged Tom Doyle Expert Film Handler Posts: 176 From: Bristol, CT, USA Registered: Nov 2002 posted 01-31-2003 01:25 PM                     This is a few weeks old, but I thought I'd share it anyway. The Hartford (CT) Advocate, in their January 2 issue, ran a year in review film article. It was written by their film critic, John Boonstra, and entitled "Another Year Bites The Dust". Here is a small snippet from it: . . . Among other Worsts, special mention to Loew's Theaters in Plainville, which ran its opening day print of Star Trek: Nemesis with a faulty, flickering projection bulb that made the screen blink like a pinball machine. When complaints were registered, an audience member was informed that "The bulb will burn out eventually. Until then, there's nothing to be done." At the end of this headache-inducing matinee, patrons were offered chits for a complimentary beverage. Inquiries were made as to why those who had paid to suffer through this showing were not entitled to free passes. Catch-22 company policy: If a customer stays through an entire movie, he or she is not entitled to a refund, regardless of admitted difficulties. It's been my longstanding policy to discuss the movie, not the venue, but in an instance this egregious, I'll make an exception.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 01-31-2003 01:37 PM                        Sad but true -- here's the link to the full article: http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/gbase/Film/content?oid=oid:1019  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-31-2003 05:31 PM                        Sounds more like a diode problem ("flickering like a pinball machine").  |  IP: Logged Michael Brown Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1522 From: Bradford, England Registered: May 2001 posted 01-31-2003 05:52 PM                     quote: Steve K Wrote: Ebert & Roeper's review of "The Hot Chick" over the weekend mentioned how the film broke and caught fire on screen. Yes, there is a God! Roger is quoted as saying. Lest anyone think this mishap befell me I just want the record to show that that show took place at a regular theatre as that particular distributor tends to prefer theatres for most but not all of their press previews. At their own peril I might add. http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertandroeper/021216.html  |  IP: Logged Scott Balko Expert Film Handler Posts: 136 From: Redwood Falls, Minnesota, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 01-31-2003 07:49 PM                     O.K. I'm going to throw my experience in. I just circuited a print of "A Guy Thing" from a nieghboring town. I kind of thought I was in trouble when the manager was bragging what a quick tear-down they could do because they use white shoe polish to mark the splices. Well, my fears were soon founded as I unrolled the first reel to see the masking tape splice, the two reference frames, and best of all, the big gobs of white shoe polish across the sound track, dts timecode, and well into half the frame in no less than 6, count 'em, six places on every reel. Not to mention the drawn in seven frame lines and handwriting identifying the head and tail of each reel all done with a grease pencil. Isn't that what the reference frame is supposed to accomplish in the first place? All in all, it took me about an extra half hour to build this print just because some %#@&*% hole saved himself at the most 2-3 minutes on teardown.  |  IP: Logged Darryl Spicer Film God Posts: 3250 From: Lexington, KY, USA Registered: Dec 2000 posted 02-01-2003 01:12 AM                    Ok, I don't know if some of this has been mentioned in this thread or not. I am not going to single anyone out as far as theaters since really I can't, but here are some things I have experienced over the years. 1, receiving a print where midway thru the reel someone has a film break. They proceed to, for some reason, splice a section in backwards as in tails first instead of heads first. 2, you think using masking tape is bad. How about someone using a stapler to join the leaders. 3, Someone deciding to use a hole punch to make the cue marks. 4, Who ever said that using shoe polish to mark the reel changes was a good thing well, shoe polish is for shoes. 5, ok 1 ID frame is fine but 8. 6, connecting the wrong end of the leader to the film or for that matter connecting the tail to the head and vice versa all ads up to another and the list goes on...............................  |  IP: Logged

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