In my opinion, paid trailers, while a great source of revenue for a company, should be kept OFF screen. People, for the most part, are bombarded with the same ads thru other media sources. They simply do not need the theatre industry to push them as well...Or so I think..

If I ever build prints for a theater that has such a policy, all of the "attached" trailers would miraculously come "unplayable", meaning I had to throw them away. I highly doubt that this is Regal's policy anyway. I am betting it is the fault of the projectionist not realizing there is an attached trailer and not wanting to spend the time to move it within the roll once the film is assembled.

1. Rolling Stock ads (commercials)
2. Trailers (including attached ones)
3. Sound promos (THX, DOLBY, DTS etc.)
4. Policy
5. Feature

If there are Regal locations out there not following this...shame, shame

Brad is right, there should be some pride in the presentaion. There seems to be some laziness out there and it is very unfortunate. Evans...ahmen on the masking thing. I cannot stand it when a location does not have it. BTW, was it a Regal build or was it one of the ones we aquired during our Borg years? I have a hard time believing that we built a location without masking. Ahh! The horror, the horror!

Back to the Pepsi girl thing...her contract with Pepsi does expire 03/30/01 and from what I know, it was not picked up again. If we were to continue playing these trailers, Pepsi would be liable to pay that girl, which seems they don't want to. Could be wrong here, but that is what it looks like. Yes, we did get some complaints about the damn thing (mainly staff), but not enough to warrant it being yanked. I have never heard of any theatres being picketed over it. Seems kinda silly to me. We are expecting new Policy trailers in the next few weeks.

About the subject of policy trailers: when a policy trailer is designed, it should be shown many times to a rather large group of people to get reactions. The group should have to see it at least once per day over a period of 7 days to determine if it is something that people will get tired of. It is easy to make such a trailer that people will love and prefer on the first viewing, but that will become despised on the 10th viewing. It is safer to go with something that doesn't get as big of a first response, but that does not become an irritation after several viewings.

Regal's "train" or "roller coaster" (whatever it was) never really impressed me, but I liked it because there was nothing about it to get tired of and it had several characteristics that made it easy for me, as a customer and reviewer, to check the framing on flat films to determine if excessive cropping at the top and bottom of the image was occurring. Sometimes when that thing would play at Hollywood 18, if a group of kids from Grissom High School were in the auditorium, they'd hold their arms up as if they were riding on a roller coaster.

I hope the next policy trailer puts more emphasis on asking people to turn off their cell phones. There is usually at least one cell phone slut in every movie I attend.

Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Also, the volume should be adjusted upward for the sound demo and feature, and most theaters play their trailers very low. I hope they don't play the sound demos and features as low. But the pathetic fact is that they do.

 |  IP: Logged

 |  IP: Logged

Why not just hire everybody who made it to come to your house and act it out for you? That would be far better than Dolby Digital and almost as clear as DVD (but we all know that not even real life is as sharp as DVD!) You could videotape it with your Canon XL1 camera and make your own DVDs with your Apple G4 with built in DVD-R. Sell each DVD on eBay for $1,000! While you have it on the computer you can make desktop pictures (wallpaper), event sounds for when an error pops up and tons of Quicktimes and MPEGs for the internet! I'm sure the people who made it aren't doing anything now.

Our company was in production on a trailer for Regal (actually, it was finished) when they made the decision to let Pepsi and their ad agency come up with a trailer featuring the Pepsi Girl. I would imagine the reasons were $. Our company is currently in litigation with Regal.

Almost all of our custom trailers for major circuits have been digital sound for the last 10 years. Most of our trailers run no longer than 60 seconds, which I think is about tops for a piece of film you're asking an audience to watch over and over again for a period of possibly years. Our trailers are always animated, whether cartoon (Cinemark Front Row Joe) or computer graphics (Carmike). I think live action trailers wear out their welcome fast.

I am always amused by circuit owners that have run the same trailer for 5 years or more that brag about the audience responding in some way (raising their hands during the rollercoaster, clapping along with the trailer, mimicing the dialogue)to their trailer. I think most of these people are just so bored of seeing the same thing everytime they go to a movie they're making fun of the situation.

 |  IP: Logged

I too have the Pike Productions "Welcome to the Show" Trailer. There is one good thing about having the copywrite there so large and for so long....it is just right for getting a movie into perfect focus.

Doug, What happened with the Cinemark Front Row Joe Cartoons? I used to work for them when the first three came out and I notcied the last one with Elton and Clyde going through all the Western scenes and Graveyard scenes was only around for a few months before the New Cinemark The Best Seats in Town ad came out.