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» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Operations   » Film Handlers' Forum   » Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers) Part 2 (Page 41)

 
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Author Topic: Hey you, you suck! (AKA: Outing bad film handlers) Part 2
Jonathan Smith
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 201
From: Youngstown, OH
Registered: Jan 2010

- posted 03-19-2010 11:28 AM      Profile for Jonathan Smith   Email Jonathan Smith   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Yeah, it's the big F.U. to film projectionists! Why bother doing a $2,000 print in such a manner that it can actually *look better* than a $25 BluRay of the same "film."

Let's dump that same shitty 2K file onto the IP, then DUPE IT TWO MORE TIMES, to give everyone the worst possible artifacts of both film and digital acquisition.

Congratulations, that's what your $9.50 goes towards these days, the worst possible quality in both film and digital imaging.

And they're using it to make more money and dumb down the quality even more! 1.2K DLP preview projectors, 2K projectors with 4K on the horizon for almost 20 years now? Automated booths?

What a great bang for your consumer buck! Way better than "hey, I thought you had DVD players up here now," I got from the fire marshall the other day.

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Deborah Longoria
Film Handler

Posts: 6
From: olney, il usa
Registered: Aug 2007

- posted 03-22-2010 10:59 PM      Profile for Deborah Longoria   Email Deborah Longoria   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I spent nearly 2 1/2 hours on Blind Side when we got it, I had to build it up and tear it down, stopping at each splice and then put it back together again. None of the reference frames matched--all on the wrong reels, and it was spliced all over the place.

Luckly I was building up and not one of my employees. That could have been a worse mess and I would have ended up there anyway.

Let's just say that I hope there is a special place in He** for whoever had it before us.

Isn't if funny how you can't remember the movie you had last week, but you'll never forget the movies that were difficult to put together?

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-23-2010 10:37 AM      Profile for Mike Blakesley   Author's Homepage   Email Mike Blakesley   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Jonathan Smith
hey, I thought you had DVD players up here
You can't fault members of the public for not knowing what "film" and "projectors" are. Most people these days grow up never seeing movie film, whereas many of us grew up watching crappy 16mm presentations in school.

I think every movie theatre website should have a page called "Inside our projection booth" with pictures and an explanation of what goes on in there. It would help educate the public a little, at least. That's even more important now that film is declining.

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-23-2010 10:48 AM      Profile for Martin McCaffery   Author's Homepage   Email Martin McCaffery   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Yup, I get the DVD Upthere line all the time.

The public doesn't want to be educated and doesn't care how bad projection is until they see really good projection (which nowadays they then assume is digital).

Movie theatres are like brothels to the general public. Give them a couple of hours entertainment and they can pretend what's for sale looks good;>

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-24-2010 10:19 AM      Profile for Martin McCaffery   Author's Homepage   Email Martin McCaffery   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
From and email I received this morning. Used with permission:
quote:
Yesterday and today, Carmike at Eastdale [Montgomery, AL] is showing open-captioned "It's Complicated," a 2009 film starring Meryl Streep. I went last night.

Two things surprised me:

1. The film was distorted. Everyone weighed 300 pounds, with elephant legs. The cars looked like tanks. Did the projectionist use the wrong lens? The film was shown in wide-screen format, but I don't think it was filmed that way. Are different lenses used for different types of films?

2. Throughout the movie, the sound booms and occasionally the studio lights were clearly visible. How could that happen? Was this a next-to-final cut that was shown?
Clearly Carmike still has operable 35mm projectors they still don't know how to operate. They showed the whole movie with the wrong lens and out of frame.

They get half a star for trying to attract the hearing impaired audience with open-captioned films. Too bad they treat them like [bs]

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Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

- posted 03-24-2010 10:40 AM      Profile for Darryl Spicer     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
it was probably in frame but since they were playing it with the wrong lens it was showing everything that would have been masked off if played correctly. It's called thread it, push the button and run away quickly.

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-24-2010 11:14 AM      Profile for Martin McCaffery   Author's Homepage   Email Martin McCaffery   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I had a projectionist who started working at Carmike. I had to totally retrain him. The first thing I discovered is they never told them how to thread in frame. Just turn the framing handle until it don't turn no more, then start over.

I refuse to give them any benefit of the doubt [evil]

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Jake Spell
Master Film Handler

Posts: 294
From: Johns Island SC
Registered: May 2009

- posted 03-24-2010 12:05 PM      Profile for Jake Spell   Email Jake Spell   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Anyone who has even been unfortunate to have been in a Carmike booth knows the bright orange posters warning about trying to turn the framing knob past its stop. Apparently their solution is, if it don't move, try harder.

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Jonathan Smith
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 201
From: Youngstown, OH
Registered: Jan 2010

- posted 03-29-2010 08:27 AM      Profile for Jonathan Smith   Email Jonathan Smith   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Unfortunately, mis-lensing is around with digital as well. I've never done it so I don't know what it looks like, but I assume that you'd get roughly the same effect as with playing a film with the wrong lens or improperly stretching your HDTV SD signals.

Of course, I doubt the digital file was open aperture, so maybe it was film.

Wasn't that film out before Carmike officially scrapped all 35mm (after the end-run of Inglorious Basterds, maybe at their second-runs).

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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler

Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007

- posted 03-29-2010 11:39 AM      Profile for Galen Murphy-Fahlgren   Email Galen Murphy-Fahlgren   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Well, the lens issue is obviously completely their fault, and they are morons, but any studio that produces a print with visible mikes and lights is completely worthless. I have here in my drawer of movie theater hilarity a fax I received from Warner Brothers regarding mikes being visible on the top and bottom of the picture area of their crappy prints of Sex and the City. Now, I never personally saw these mikes, because I know how to thread in frame, but this fax is dated 6/3/2008, at 15:44, halfway through the fifth day of its run. So not only did WB not care enough to produce a good print that would prevent mediocre theaters from mucking up the presentation of their film with boom mikes, but they didn't bother to send out a fax on the subject until too late. Then, the fax makes it sound like it is perfectly normal to have boom mikes visible on a release print, and it is entirely the theater's fault they're visible (it is only partly the theaters fault).

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 03-29-2010 12:03 PM      Profile for Martin McCaffery   Author's Homepage   Email Martin McCaffery   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Do DCI prints actually show mics and lights? Of all the things digital can do quick and easy, matting to proper ratio seems to be a no brainer.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

- posted 03-29-2010 07:28 PM      Profile for Chris Slycord   Email Chris Slycord   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Then, the fax makes it sound like it is perfectly normal to have boom mikes visible on a release print, and it is entirely the theater's fault they're visible (it is only partly the theaters fault).
I disagree. If the people matted the parts that shouldn't have been visible the image would still look craptastic in that theater. If you hire people who can't frame to save their life, don't blame someone else for your shitty on-screen image.

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Carl Martin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1424
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

- posted 03-30-2010 04:18 AM      Profile for Carl Martin   Author's Homepage   Email Carl Martin   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
here's a shitty picture of the tail of reel 2 of hot tub time machine as it came off the reel.
-
it's a fairly short reel and my first thought was that it was incomplete. but no, that is the end of the reel, with not quite 2 frames of black after the last frame. the tape (applied before processing) and the crease where the end was shoved into the reel hub go through the last frame, which i obviously had to sacrifice. aside from that there was base-side scuffing the last foot or so, not too noticeable on-screen, and shifted srd blocks (visible to the right in pic) resulting in dropout.

so, good work, lab!

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Jonathan Smith
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 201
From: Youngstown, OH
Registered: Jan 2010

- posted 03-30-2010 08:09 AM      Profile for Jonathan Smith   Email Jonathan Smith   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Carl: That's proof positive that labs will ship out ANYTHING. Is there anything, short of completely-fogged film, that they don't "PASS"?

I've seen some attrocious color shifts on the cool side, looks like the color timer didn't show up to work that day or they used the "faith based" film processing system instead of running control strips first.

BTW, the print of "Hot Tub" that I assembled had fog all down the side of the SDDS/Dolby sound track. Fortunately we don't use SDDS and it didn't make it into the analog track area any that I could see.

IDK how digital sound would even handle fog in the pixel area. Analog sound would have the effect of a drop-out.

Galen: Haven't you ever heard of shooting "open aperture"? They don't always leave booms in, but this style of shooting allowed for operators to see booms without having to take their eyes off the viewfinder. They're in frame, but they can keep them out of the part of the frame that is going to be (make that *should* be) projected.

"Extract," "The Goods," "It's Complicated," the last "Sex and the City," "Hot Tub," and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" are just a few examples of films I've seen shot open aperture (which they may or may not have protected from boom mikes, don't know I keep my shows in-frame .

Of course, unless some of these films were optically-printed (maybe Extract), there is really no reason with the DI process not to just hard-matte it when making the film-out for the IP or INs.

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Matt Gress
Film Handler

Posts: 15
From: Boston, MA USA
Registered: Jul 2009

- posted 05-01-2010 12:17 PM      Profile for Matt Gress   Email Matt Gress   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang print 01001: The person who broke down this film should be pistol-whipped. Or made to watch the friggin thing like I'm going to have to to check the reel sequence. Sweet. Three hours of TURN IT OFF!!!

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