|
|
This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Carmike's DCinema Installs stopped?
|
Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 05-12-2007 05:38 PM
quote: Tony L. Hernandez
Well, Mike, I do not appreciate you're criticizing my age or knowledge. I don't know how things are done up in Montana, but we try out best to be considerate of other's in our business practices down here in Colorado. We realize that money is important...very important but also don't go around screwing others to get that buck. And money ISNT everything, I'd much rather sleep at night than know I got where I was financially by immoral practices. I have these beliefs, my parents have these beliefs and my grandparents and great-grandparents had them and we are all relatively well off, thank you.
Tony, there's no point in getting into a fight over this. You're obviously a smart guy who knows what he likes and doesn't like, but at age 20 you are just naive about the world of big business and understandably so.
First of all, I didn't say anything about screwing people to make a buck, immoral practices or anything of the sort. I don't agree with that any more than you do. My comment about everything being about money was not about individual guys like you and me...it was about corporations like the big theatre chains. If you think for a minute that any large company does anything because "it's just the right thing to do," then you're delusional.
Big companies have to answer to stockholders, who get itchy if the company doesn't make a profit and show growth from year to year. To maximize profits, you have to do what's going to bring in the most money. Any "feel-good" thing they do is done with an attitude of "this will help the bottom line" at its core, whether you want to believe it or not. This does not necessarily entail anyone getting screwed. It's just business.
When I got in the movie business nearly 30 years ago, I used to think that if my li'l movie theatre had excellent sound, new seats and a great presentation, and paid its bills on time, the film companies would line up to give us movies faster than the less-nice theatre down the road. WRONG...it's all about gross potential. They are a bigger town, so they get first preference every time. But no hard feelings from me....that's just the way it is.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
|
posted 05-12-2007 06:31 PM
quote:
Why would [dlp] "need" multichannel sound any more than film does? Just because they're doing other upgrades (which is a good thing) along with the [dlp] installation doesn't mean that those upgrades aren't available for 35mm, too. (Though, admittedly, sound quality will be better from an uncompressed digital source vs. the lossy compression used in all the 35mm digital formats.)
You can run a stereo optical print on an old mono system and get reasonable mono sound. Probably better to install one of the old Dolby mono noise reduction units and equalisers, but you can get away without even doing that. Put in a digital system and you're going to have four AES ditital pairs; ok, probably only three of them in use, for six channels, but how are you going to feed them into your old mono amplifier? You're going to have to convert to analogue, but then what do you do with the six, or eight, discrete analogue clannels? You'd then have to create a reasonable mono mix from these, and install some sort of mixer to do it. With a 35mm analogue matrix-encoded track all you have to do is not put it through a decoder, and not upgrade your projectors to stereo cells; in other words you don't have to do anything.
While I suppose you could, in theory, install the equipment to mix digital down to mono, it would be better to upgrade to a stereo sound system. We're running digital with only a single surround channel at the moment, but It's due to be upgraded soon. I'm not sure exactly how it's been set up; I'll have to look next time I'm there.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 05-14-2007 10:33 AM
Well I saw my first digital presentation at a Carmike cinema Saturday night. What follows are my observations about the experience. This is NOT meant to be a general Carmike bash, but an objective account of what I experienced. (I'm not reviewing the movie we saw, so that's why I didn't put this in the reviews section.)
I fail to understand why Carmike is really good in some areas of the country and bad in others, to the point of being a national joke. I can only assume that the bad areas must outweigh the good, from the comments on here. You'd think they'd have a quality control guy who made surprise visits to their facilities.
At any rate, we were at the Carmike 7 in Billings, MT, a 25+ year old facility. The digital install is less than two months old. We were in screen 5, one of the mid-sized auditoriums.
I was surprised at the total lack of anything promoting "digital cinema" in the theatre. No signs outside, not even the letters "DLP" on the marquee. Nothing whatsoever inside, not even in the boxoffice windows. The only indication that this was a digital presentation was the clips that played on screen when the movie started.
We were about 30 minutes early for our movie so we sat in the lobby for awhile, watching the appetizing sight of a concession kid cleaning out a popcorn machine with a large broom.
The atmosphere at the theatre was, for lack of a better word, kind of creepy. There was no music of any kind playing in the lobby or the auditorium before the show. Despite a wide variety of movies being shown, the entire place seemed to be populated by nothing but teenagers. The auditorium was downright weird...every surface in there was red. Carpet, seatcovers, floor, curtains, ceiling. The only non-red items were the black surround speakers.
The pre-show slides (non-digital) were from Coca Cola, so they were mostly red too. They were in focus, but off centered on the screen. The seats were uncomfortable -- sunken cushions, and no cupholders. The overflowing trash can next to our screen's entrance was still overflowing at the end of the show.
The picture looked fine, but the surrounds didn't work, and there was a distinct "hum" in the sound. This hum was only noticable during the silent bits like the "green bands" on the trailers, so once the feature started it wasn't a bother. Since we were watching a mostly dialogue movie ("Georgia Rule") I didn't feel it was worth griping about the surrounds either, although I did mention both problems to a concession kid on the way out and he said he'd inform the manager. And since Spider-Man 3 was playing next door, it sounded like there was thunder in the background throughout our movie.
It wasn't all bad though. The audience was well-behaved -- I didn't spot one cellphone interruption during the whole movie. The staff didn't walk through every 3 minutes looking for contraband drink cups. There was an acceptable amount of pre-feature stuff (4 ads, 1 Carmike snipe, and 4 trailers). The picture was beautiful.
So, everything considered, Carmike lived up to its bad reputation in Montana. How the same guy (Donald Bristor) has kept his job as district manager in this state all these years will be an eternal mystery to me. He must be really good at getting his paperwork in on time, or something.
One question for you d-cinema operators: Is it possible to separate the "attached" trailer from the feature, so you can put your "welcome to the movies" clip in right before the feature begins? At our show, the Carmike "welcome to the movies" clip played, followed by the "attached" trailer.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[sleep]](graemlins/sleep.gif)
![[scream]](graemlins/scream.gif)
![[rofl]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic