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Topic: Screening of Avengers Deleted

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-01-2012 11:18 PM

I don't buy the Pixar story, either. No company would be without daily backups and regular offsite backups of data that important. It may have been faster to recover some of the data from the laptop than to retrieve and restore from tapes, but I just cannot believe that there was no other copy of the files in question.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 05-01-2012 11:46 PM

I would rather deal with a deleted file than a thrown print. Using the live play function, a deleted show can be restarted in very little time. A thrown print can be a simple fix, or it could take a couple hours - I've had both situations.

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-02-2012 01:02 AM

In either case, equipment in good condition, operated by competent people will prevent all but the most random problems. It doesn't matter whether it is a digital file on a server or a film print on a platter.

Almost every thrown print I have ever seen can be traced back to operator error or equipment that wasn't working properly, which could have been fixed before the problem occurred. Outside of that situation I mentioned above, almost every digital malfunction can be traced back to equipment problems that could have been fixed or an operator that didn't do something right.

There will always be times when things "just break" and the source, digital or film, has no bearing on such random chance events.

Restarting a digital show might well be easier than fixing a thrown print but there are also times when fixing a film projector is easier, too. I'd much rather fix a broken splice in a film print than scan through a digital movie file to find the place where the show left off. There's always tit for tat.

We all work hard to make sure our movie presentations are as good as we know how to make them but other people don't understand the work we do yet they have no problem criticizing us when things go wrong.

People have the idea that movies happen as if by magic and digital movies are made by some extra special form of magic that never fails but when things fail we are blamed for being bad magicians.

The most clueless people always seem to be the first to judge.

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 05-02-2012 09:42 AM

quote: Mike Blakesley
It takes what, 25 minutes or less to re-ingest the movie?

According to another source where I read about this incident,
(I'll post it if I can find it) the screening was delayed for
about two hours, which seems about right.

I'll see if I can find the other version of the story & post it.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-02-2012 09:46 AM

I will say that I actually sort of feel sorry for whoever was responsible for this screening (what theatre or screening room was it, anyway?). For some reason, this mistake (which any of us could have made) is getting way too much publicity. Most likely, whoever was responsible was unfamiliar with the (relatively new) equipment and made a stupid mistake.

This incident does say something about the need for improvement in the technology involved, but I have heard enough stories about botched 35mm press screenings that I have a hard time believing that this is really any worse. There are plenty of reasons to prefer film to big-screen TV, but the small risk of accidentally deleting a file is not really one of them.

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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 05-02-2012 10:23 AM

The article quotes Steve Kraus-who used to post regularly on this site-I'm not sure if the incident actually happened at his screening room or if he was simply consulted as an expert, probably the later.

In any event, at least with Cinedign's software package, you can't delete a file that is part of a playlist, the playlist must be deleted first. It doesn't make this sort of thing impossible, but much harder at least.

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Antti Nayha
Master Film Handler

Posts: 268
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Oct 2008

posted 05-02-2012 11:43 AM

Just curious: do you guys always get to keep the shipping hard drive in the house for as long as you’re playing the film?

Where I come from, it’s rather usual that we have to ingest the DCP right away and return the drive to the distributor (or pass it on the the next theater) while the film is still in the programme. Sometimes it has to go already before premiere.

By having cinemas share the drives this way, the distributors can make less copies and save money. And make life just a bit more stressful for operators.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 05-02-2012 01:31 PM

Yep, we keep the HD's until the feature is finished with its presentation run.

Trailer drives do go back the following Monday.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 05-02-2012 01:31 PM

quote: Antti Nayha
Just curious: do you guys always get to keep the shipping hard drive in the house for as long as you’re playing the film?

Absolutely. You are booked to play the film from X to Y date and you have the right to keep that hard drive as a safety backup during that entire period. You just can't keep it any longer than that.

Another way of looking at it, you didn't return your film prints the day after you got them did you?

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

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

posted 05-02-2012 01:35 PM

quote: Dustin Mitchell
at least with Cinedign's software package, you can't delete a file that is part of a playlist, the playlist must be deleted first. It doesn't make this sort of thing impossible, but much harder at least.

GDC will let you delete a file that's in a playlist, but it asks are-you-sure type questions twice. The first one is a confirm-delete, and the second is "this file is used in an existing playlist, are you sure you want to delete it?"

I agree the story is getting more notice than it deserves.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 05-02-2012 02:22 PM

That's one (and only) nice thing with SONY's SPL's: you try to delete any content in a saved playlist, and it plain won't let you.

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Philip Jones
Film Handler

Posts: 90
From: England
Registered: Dec 2011

posted 05-02-2012 02:38 PM

quote:
quote: Antti Nayha
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just curious: do you guys always get to keep the shipping hard drive in the house for as long as you’re playing the film?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Absolutely. You are booked to play the film from X to Y date and you have the right to keep that hard drive as a safety backup during that entire period. You just can't keep it any longer than that.

Another way of looking at it, you didn't return your film prints the day after you got them did you?

In the UK there's usually a letter in the box with the HDD insisting the drive is sent back with the next transport as soon as it has been ingested and it says they keep a record of who is not sending them back promptly.

That said, at my place we usually keep it over the opening weekend and we've had no problems. We have two screens and always copy the film onto the server for each screen which does put my mind at rest a bit more - if anything was wrongly deleted from one server at least we could copy it back from the other one!

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Carsten Kurz
Film God

Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009

posted 05-02-2012 04:18 PM

quote: Randy Stankey
P.S. The RM command is not a command for digital media servers. It is a command for the Linux/Unix operating systems on which those servers are based. As such, I hypothesize that would be possible to set file permissions in a *nix system such that only an administrator of a certain level can delete files. That would not totally eliminate the risk but it would help keep the mutton heads from screwing things up as easily.

This is already the case. Every server has access levels, and some of these levels only allow to start a show, but not add or delete any content. But as we all know, it is often not just the mutton heads causing trouble. It is sometimes just ourselves.

- Carsten

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-02-2012 04:34 PM

In that case, it might have been a case of lack of password security. (e.g. Letting everybody log in under the superuser password.)

I faced that problem at work, once. One person would give the master password to everybody else who would then log in as superuser to do daily work. I warned them not to do that and even made sure that everybody who needed a password had one that let them do the jobs they needed to do. People just wanted to feel powerful regardless of the consequences.

I warned them about it and the problems it could cause but they paid no heed until somebody royally fucked the system while I was on vacation. There was no way it was going to get fixed until I returned.

I imagine that somebody in that theater did the same thing.

Serves them right.

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 05-02-2012 09:58 PM

In my earlier post I made reference to another version I read about this incident. Here it Is:
"Avengers Screening Delayed After Projectionist Deletes Entire Film"

From our experiences in movie theaters, moviegoers don't typically notice the hard work of the projectionist. They remain secluded in a room where they facilitate the steady stream of light and sound which the rest of us enjoy. Of course, if the enigmatic figure behind scenes mistakenly erases an entire digital film while dozens of critics wait for their chance to glimpse it, he or she becomes much more noticeable. That's exactly what happened during a recent press screening of the hotly-anticipated Avenengers flick, and while the emergency was averted within a couple of hours, the incident serves to highlight just how flimsy our digital data really is.

In the gradual migration from traditional film reels to digital projection technology, viewers benefit from sharper images, less distortion, and — usually — better reliability.

Unfortunately for the as-of-yet unnamed projectionist who was poised to give a number of critics and other entertainment press their first glimpse at one of the year's most anticipated films, the Avengers film file went out with the digital trash.

According to multiple tweets by various members of the film press, the problem was corrected after about two hours, thanks to a relatively quick download from a distribution source. Of course, had the film been a more traditional 35mm tape version, there would have been little chance of such an issue occurring. I guess that's the price we pay for living in the future.
< end >

NO! This is the price you pay for having a bozo projectionist.
This is one of the things that makes me scream whenever I hear people whining about the preceived "problems" with 35mm film. Most of them can be traced directly to two sources: 1) PLATTERS; and 2) Poor projectionists. The first problem is apparantly about to go away; the 2nd one will persist into the digital age, and IMO will only get worse since one of the marketing "advantages" pushed by digital equipment manufacturers is that even a mentally challanged chimpanzee can run a digital show. Since laws in most states prohibit chimps from working projectionist's hours, this means that they'll hire minimum wage inexperienced operators who will push a few "show start" buttons inbetween tweeting their friends, and sit back & hope everything runs OK. Oh, sure, all this digital stuff may look & work pretty good now, but a few years down the road, as even more experienced operators are forced out of the business, and the equipment ages, digital cinema presentation will start looking just as bad as 35mm is preceived to be now. IMO, in the long run, the 'digital revoloution" will only result in the closing of even more theaters, as the DCI Nazis push small theater owners into bankruptcy by forcing them to buy even more equipment they
can't afford, and don't need, thus putting even more people out of work. We could have stopped this nonsense when we had the chance, but, it's too late now. We've opened Pandora's box, and the genie is out of the bottle. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors!) So, enjoy your job, while you still have one.

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