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Author Topic: Bollywood question John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-23-2008 08:37 AM                     Well, I don't think you should "ask." I would say it's a non-negotiable fee. A cost you must incur. Just charge him, or eat it out of your profits. Looking over at Christy's Editorial, a 4" core is $1.05. Let's say the average Bollywood film is 10 reels, can you really not afford $10.50 per title? It should be in the noise, and you should be able to cover it with whatever you end up paying for shipping, etc. (And you should be able to find them cheaper used.) Knocking out cores is simply Film Done Wrong. There is no excuse for it. Ideally every booth should have some spare cores on hand "just in case," but we don't live an ideal world, I understand that, and some people don't have an extra 8 cores. But anyone who runs Bollywood on a regular basis doesn't have that excuse. Expect the films to come without cores, and keep a supply. BTW, Jon, we have that metal box for Vanaja lying around (along with Vanaja). It has degraded some, and has a bunch of sharp corners. Maybe I should extend my advice to Bill and replace it with two ICC cases. Unfortunately those are about $100 each, and they do present their own shipping difficulties with the regular carriers anyhow... --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 03-23-2008 10:57 AM                        It's always a fine line for those of us who play old titles -- how much work hours do you spend on a print that you are paying good money to play against the desire to present the best show possible. There is the level of work needed to make the damn thing run thru the projector, but then how far beyone that do you go -- do you clean a filthy print? Do you hand ink out bad scratches? Do you add SMPTE heads and/or tails when none are present (more of an issue for change-over houses)? Do you send a print back with hubs when it came with none or do you work on broken reels (glueing them together when they won't stay attached to the hubs). Do you send them back in new cardboard boxes when they've arrived in boxes that except for shipping tape, would fall apart? Most times we have to make those decisions based on how what the picture is taking in. I mean in the rep house business we have all seen prints that could take hours of repair work. Unfortunately, economics trounces most considerations, just as the distributor looks at what a print can earn and decides he won't even supply $1.50 hubs, the exhibitor has to make those same decisions about what goes on up in the booth.  |  IP: Logged Danial Simmonds Expert Film Handler Posts: 107 From: Kota Damansara, Selangor, Malaysia Registered: Jan 2008 posted 03-23-2008 11:09 AM                        Oh Talking abouy bollywood prints, I got one simple question do they purposely make the prints 3 to 4 hours long? We got to use 2 decks of the platter its too much film i guess... hahahaha Bollywood films should be a bit more expensive than any other movie expecially if it is a bollywood blockbuster than it cost more like here it is RM10.00 per normal movie after 2 weeks it goes down to RM 8.00 but a bollywood movie sometimes cost RM 12.00 not that much of a difference here.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-23-2008 03:19 PM                     Not all of them are super-long. We ran "black and white" which actually seemed quite short and AFIK didn't even have an intermission. And now we have "Race" which isn't even a very long movie but they put an intermission about 1:15 into it (and it's only like 2:30 in total).  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 03-23-2008 04:41 PM                        Intermissions are part of the cinema culture in that part of the world. The audience expects and from what I have been told, demands it and get super pissed if one isn't there. This is so ingrained that when the studios here are selling their product to that oversease market, they happily put an intermission title in an appropriate place on exports. And that begs the question, why can't they put intermissions in the super-long epic over here, like TITANIC, LORD OF THE RINGS, etc. If the studio can put an intermission in TITANIC when they ship it overseas and they don't seem to be concerned that it will "degrade the integrity of the director's vision," (blah, blah, blah), for the millons of Indians who are watching it, how come they can't be considerate enough about the American audiences who have to sit holding themselves so they don't have an accident sitting thru three hours of a film? And we say....directors and studio execs are full of themselves?  |  IP: Logged Richard May Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1057 From: Floral Park, NY USA Registered: Aug 2004 posted 03-23-2008 05:13 PM                     I do a lot of service work for these types of theaters. The movies are very long and VERY LOUD. There is always an intermission. There is also a buffet style table setup in the lobby with food. One of the guy has at least 100 prints in his garage. All in burlap bags. It's hysterical. Even funnier is during the movie, people and kids are walking around in the theater talking.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-23-2008 07:38 PM                     Frank, You're right that the distributors are being hypocritical about thus, but how is that an example of "begging the question"?  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 03-23-2008 11:04 PM                     If the guy who owns the print and the one who rents it don't care, why should I? From the look of it, if I replaced the cores, the next dump will just throw them out anyway, I learned this a couple years ago the hard way when I did replace 2 missing cores in a film that nearly filled the theatre, the film was brought back 2 weeks later and all the cores were missing. Intermissions are expected by the older Indian customers, the younger ones (under 30) don't seem to care. Last summer we ran a film that was 87 minutes and didn't have an intermission and the customers screamed at us and the presenter for not having one. Now he says to put one in anything over 45 minutes. [ 03-24-2008, 09:35 AM: Message edited by: Bill Enos ]  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 03-24-2008 12:48 PM                     quote: Frank Angel Intermissions are part of the cinema culture in that part of the world. I had an interesting cultural revelation during a Bollywood feature we played about 3 weeks ago. ("Jodhaa Akbar" - A stunningly beautiful, pristine print, I might add. Best print quality and color I've seen on ANY feature for a loooong time. 213minutes + intermission) One afternoon, we lost all electrical power right in the middle of the matinee show. The entire neighborhood for as far as I could see was down. It was obvious power was going to be out for awhile. After about 5minutes, almost everyone in the 2nd auditorium ("Be Kind Rewind") got their money back and left the theater. But the mostly Indian-American audience watching 'Akbar' seemed content to sit in the semi-dark auditorium lit only by the emergency lights. I went went in and explained to everyone that this power outage was widespread and it might be a long time before power was restored. But nobody moved. I thought for a moment that maybe there was a language barrier and they didn't understand what I'd said. Sensing my confusiion, one guy sitting on the aisle leaned over to me and said with a smile: "It's OK. We're all from India. The power goes off all the time there. This is no big deal for us. It's alomst like being back home! Don't worry about it!" So I opened the side exit doors to throw more light in the auditorium, and for the next hour until the power came back on the folks there all socialized and got to know each other and even I got involved in some of the converstions. Power was out for a little over an hour, and all-in-all I think the power-outage experience actually added to everyone's enjoyement of the afternoon. Including mine!  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-24-2008 01:06 PM                     quote: Jim Cassedy ("Jodhaa Akbar" - A stunningly beautiful, pristine print, I might add. Best print quality and color I've seen on ANY feature for a loooong time. 213minutes + intermission) Lucky bastard. The second half of the print I got was scratched every which way and quite dirty as well.  |  IP: Logged Fred Tucker Film Handler Posts: 90 From: Sugar Land, TX Registered: Sep 2007 posted 03-24-2008 04:01 PM                     Chris, Did you have fun finding the intermission on Race? I missed it for the first print only to find it on the second.  |  IP: Logged Tim Asten Film Handler Posts: 98 From: Brighton, United Kingdom Registered: Nov 2006 posted 03-24-2008 08:47 PM                     Almost all of our Bollys are brand new and quite a few of the prints are of superb quality. A recent one we had (Jodhaa Akbar I think it was) was stunning. At almost 3.5 hours long, It was tack sharp, bright, rock steady, had vivid colour and the DD tracks had very low error rates. The print was from Adlabs in Bombay I think. However they do come in these horrible Hessian cardboard boxes and half of them never get picked up, as some here have reported. It just goes to show that we may blame the equipment when half the time its the prints that are sh*t (Stand up Deluxe). If Bollywood can churn out quality prints why cant the rest of the world? Or at least Europe. (Apart from Narnia, which was excellent ). Tim  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 03-24-2008 09:02 PM                     I for one haven't complained about the printing quality. It's the physical prints that have made the rounds to a few thousand playdates prior to my receiving it that makes me detest Bollywood shit.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 03-24-2008 11:59 PM                     I didn't build up Race so no I never dealt with finding the intermission. But it is on screen for a very short time so I could see why you'd miss it. And when I was waiting for the intermission to come up to thread the second half I noticed a typo in the subtitles. Instead of saying "[something] is a big amount of money" it says "bog amount of money." That it unless my dyslexia was hitting me big-time, which is also possible.  |  IP: Logged Dwayne Benallie Film Handler Posts: 19 From: tempe, Arizona / USA Registered: Aug 2007 posted 03-25-2008 02:09 AM                        At my old theatre we used to get a lot of Bollywood screenings, actually it was every Sunday and Wednesday I believe. Well at one point we had four prints sitting at our location and I became frustrated and contacted the screening rep and told him to pick them up. He sent his assistant over and pick up three out of four and then later that night he came back for the fourth one, after i called again. This time the rep came out and pick it up and wasn't really happy about it, I explain we're no storage facility, etc. He takes his print and while walking back to his car he just stops and places this huge metal box with foreign writing all over it and runs to his car. I have to point this out too, this was Saturday night in the middle of downtown Tempe, with a lot of foot traffic. It didn't help that the screening rep had Middle Eastern facial features, sure enough the bomb squad come out and local news, helicopters the whole deal. We had to stop all of our movies and escort all the customers through the back doors per police orders, it was a messy ordeal. I wanted them to blow up the Bollywood print, but I knew that all the managers would get in trouble with didn't say anything. We told the police what it was and gave the contact info of the screening rep guy and yeah a Bollywood print was saved that night. At the end, we all laughed about it and no one got into trouble. The End.  |  IP: Logged

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