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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Your opinion on the future of exhibition
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Jeremy Fuentes
Mmmm, Dr. Pepper!
Posts: 1168
From: Corpus Christi, TX United States
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 11-16-2005 09:04 AM
Digital shouldnt have too big of an effect on properly run theaters, regardless of size. If a theater is well managed, employees are treated fairly, the booth is run as close to perfect as possible, and the customers are respected, then I dont see the big deal. Like someone stated above, the customers dont care how the movie is presented, just as long as its somewhat better than what they can get at home. Bad movies are still gonna be bad, regardless of how much money was spent on the projector. Digital wont be the reason for alot of theaters closing...greedy distributors, and greedy corporations will. I'm almost certain the reason theaters like Mike's have been open so long, is because of how they treat their employees. They actually care about them, and dont see them as just another idiot working concession. Their employees are happier, the customer sees this, and they choose to go to Mikes theater instead of the multiplex down the street. Unfortunately, their are a few other independent theater owners that dont care about their employees either, and those are the ones that deserve to fail.
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Jeremy Fuentes
Mmmm, Dr. Pepper!
Posts: 1168
From: Corpus Christi, TX United States
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted 11-16-2005 11:42 AM
quote: Matt Fields
Sure, we won't have the latest and greatest
Dont you think that sometime down the road, you're gonna have to buy the "latest and greatest" in order to obtain certain movies? I can picture it now, emails from distributors..."In order to ensure that you will be able to show Star Wars Episode 10, be sure your projectors have been upgraded to the version 9.0, if they are not, you will have no sound to the movie." Its gonna happen, and theaters will be able to afford the upgrades, but they will have to sacrifice in other places, like paid employee training for these new systems.
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Dave Williams
Wet nipple scene
Posts: 1836
From: Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 11-16-2005 06:47 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
Contrary to many opinions, I don't think going to the movies costs enough. Raising the price would filter out the elements that aren't there to enjoy the movie. They'll go to the theater down the road and annoy their customers and staff. I would be more than happy to pay 50% - 100% more for a movie ticket, if I knew that the experience was going to be top-notch from the time I walk in the door to the time I get back in my car. Heck, I'd probably pay more than that if the experience was consistently the best it could possibly be. I have yet to attend a theater which would qualify as anything more than "acceptable."
I pay 360 dollars four times a year to take my wife and daughter to the ballet. Thats 120 a ticket. For two hours of entertainment.
People would pay a premium price for a premium experience.
quote: Monte L Fullmer
Yes, it's fun to dream, but reality wakes us up and we have to live within that world of reality ... so what do you do in the meantime and that is "live with it"
Here is a list of people who were warned against thier dreamer mentality, that what they were doint would never work.
Bill Gates
Steve Jobs
The guy who started Jet Blue
The guy who started Southwest Airlines
Thomas Monahan (dominos founder)
The guy who started chick fil a (that is NEVER open on sunday)
and so on..
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Forget what the industry tells us, make a new industry!
Good business is where you find it. (robocop)
Ciao
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 11-17-2005 11:55 AM
My prediction for the inevitability of digital cinema is based solely on the continuous drive the technology has been on, and the fact that in any industry, when something costs less to produce, distribute, and sell, it will be implemented once the initial costs of doing so have reached a satisfactory level.
From everything I have read, this applies to digital cinema. It should take less time to prepare a movie, less time and resources to distribute it, and (hopefully) less effort to present it. I think they have reached the quality level as well, so now it's just up to the last factor of the initial cost.
I'm definitely not saying that theaters that screw up film projection won't figure out a way to screw up digital projection, since things still need to be monitored, maintained, and updated from time to time. However, I think a fully digital operation will be easier and cheaper to maintain, especially after the growing pains of figuring out the idiosyncrasies of digital projection.
My desire to see digital projection succeed isn't so much because I'm all for everything digital, but I am all for anything that will assist theaters to provide at least a consistently reliable and decent presentation. Customers don't care how it's being projected so long as it's done well.
The marketing surrounding the latest advances (digital sound, stadium seating, digital cinema, THX) has given the customer the impression (correctly or not) that their experience will be better because of these things.
It's amazing to me how many theaters don't get the fact that pleasing the customer and delivering a high quality movie-going experience is their primary mission. I can watch a movie at home on my 100+" wide screen and surround sound, and I can pop my own popcorn and even buy candy in the same type of boxes that theaters serve. But that requires me to do a lot of the work, and sometimes I want someone else to take care of things for me instead. It should be a no-brainer for a professional operation to deliver that.
quote: Monte L Fullmer
I agree, but the bottom line is called money - just not feasable to have a well trained operator for every screen that can garnish a decent career wage to keep then there, or not every circuit can garnish positive attitude towards their employees so that they feel as in doing a good service to ensure this high standard of exhibition when the money isn't along with the positive attitude.
Some circuits are close to this dream and have achieved it very well with tremendous success in their operations. Others..well...you know the rest of the story.
Yes, it's fun to dream, but reality wakes us up and we have to live within that world of reality ... so what do you do in the meantime and that is "live with it"
It's a chicken and egg problem. Theaters who can't serve their customers well will die because customers will not continue to pay high prices and waste their valuable time for substandard service. This is happening now, and it's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the pain the industry will suffer if it can't figure out the basic truths about being in a service-oriented business.
If it's not feasible to have a trained operator for every screen, then something needs to be done to the operation so that it doesn't need as much babysitting. Wouldn't an automated system take care of some of that load? That's my understanding, but I could be wrong.
How much time would it take for a manager or other staff member to float into each screen at least once during each showing to make sure that the presentation was going well, and that there wasn't a bunch of people causing a disturbance?
In one of the first business classes I took, the most salient point the teacher made was that if you are operating on a shoestring budget, you'll never succeed. You'll be so intent on saving and managing money that you won't have time to concentrate on the operations and direction of the business. While this was being applied to entrepreneurships, I think it applies to established businesses as well.
I've seen businesses so worried about every penny, that they forgot to service the customer well, and brought about their own demise as a result. Could this be the case with many theaters?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-17-2005 01:28 PM
The case with a lot of theaters, mainly the large chains, is they're mainly driven to just cut costs more and more to improve the appearances of the next quarterly report. In that mindset, investing in items that actually can improve the bottom line get lost. You have to spend money to improve standards of presentation quality. It takes money to maintain those higher presentation standards. You have to pay more to attract and retain qualified booth personnel. Finally, I think it takes more than a minimum wage paycheck to build a lobby staff that can actually deliver good customer service. You get the good old revolving door of high turnover employees otherwise.
The sad thing is cost cutting game is getting forced onto just about every movie theater circuit all thanks to movie distributors running the same game. The primary motive behind digital projection is about cutting costs, not improving presentation quailty. They'll sell you a lot of lip service about how video is better than film. But they really want to stop spending millions of 35mm film prints.
Movie theater companies are chasing profitability like it is a moving target. With every new stunt distributors pull against them, they have to "adjust" for those changes. That typically means even more cost cutting, which translates into lower paychecks, fewer employees working as few hours as possible and then declining levels of customer service and presentation quality.
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