Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Preshow Advertisements (Trailers & Commercials) Are Too Long

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Topic: Preshow Advertisements (Trailers & Commercials) Are Too Long

Christopher Crouch
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 128
From: Holywood, ca, usa
Registered: May 2006

posted 01-23-2012 01:16 AM

I regularly experience the flip side to this issue. The theatre I manage doesn't have excessive preshow marketing. One would expect this to work in our favor. However, far too often, I encounter people who have purposely shown up later, to avoid the expected advertisements, only to discover they've missed the start of their movie. They've become conditioned to 15+ minutes of commercials/previews at other theatres and are angry with us for not having them. For us, it's almost a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-23-2012 04:14 AM

Edward, please explain what part of my comment is incorrect.

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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008

posted 01-23-2012 11:16 AM

Your snippy comment "Way to have an open mind" to my statement about Fox News. You have no idea what the hell you are talking about, when it comes to me and my history with Fox News. It really is that simple.

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 01-23-2012 12:01 PM

quote: Christopher Crouch
I encounter people who have purposely shown up later, to avoid the expected advertisements, only to discover they've missed the start of their movie

Simple solution to that is to do as we do -- we publish three times -- 1) when the doors open. 2) The Showtime, i.e., the start of the entire show including the cartoon and trailers, possibly a short subject. We tell them that. Then finally 3) the Feature Start Time. This way they know exactly what's what. If they choose to miss the trailers (they also miss the cartoon, which is a catch because even the most jaded patron loves the cartoon). They also may not get the best seat if they choose to forego the trailers. Letting them know exactly what you are doing eliminates patrons getting surprised or annoyed. We also state that we run no more than 8 minutes of trailers. That's usually 3 or 4 max. When we run classics, those trailers can be as long as 4 min, so we'll adjust according. We also proudly state that we run NO TV commercials. It's served us well.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-23-2012 02:02 PM

My comment was in response to your snippy comment. There's no reason to join the conversation just to tell us that you're not joining the conversation.

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Victor Liorentas
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 800
From: london ontario canada
Registered: May 2009

posted 01-23-2012 02:11 PM

I refuse to participate in this discussion! [Big Grin]

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-23-2012 02:52 PM

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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008

posted 01-24-2012 12:09 AM

It's actually a pointed commentary on the worthless of anything coming from Fox News, Mark, but thank you for playing.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

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

posted 01-24-2012 01:39 AM

quote: Christopher Crouch
They've become conditioned to 15+ minutes of commercials/previews at other theatres and are angry with us for not having them.

That's one nice thing about being in a relatively isolated market. We are rarely fighting the bad habits of other theatres. We set our standard as "about 10 minutes" many years ago and we have never wavered from it. Sometimes with a major blockbuster we'll stretch it out to 12-13 minutes, but those shows usually have longer lines and it allows extra time to get everyone settled in.

The few people we have who purposely arrive late to miss the previews are always about 8-12 minutes after show time and they never gripe about missing the start of the show.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

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

posted 01-24-2012 11:23 AM

quote: Edward Havens
It's actually a pointed commentary on the worthless of anything coming from Fox News

Sorry, but that's simply not true. Does Fox have a right-leaning slant? Yes, just like CNN has a leftward slant. But they both report news and facts, and to say that anything coming from either of them is "worthless" is just incorrect.

Back on topic: I feel a need to defend my practice here of running four or five trailers. First, we don't run any other pre-show content (not even slides), so five trailers is at most 12 1/2 minutes worth, meaning a 7:00 feature is going to start by 7:13 at the latest, which to me isn't unreasonable. Second, we are a single screen so that means all of the movies for the trailers we play might be coming within the next six weeks. And, we have no space for a lobby video screen to play trailers on, so we only have the one place to play trailers.

There's also the fact that I've gotten zero complaints about our trailers in the last 30+ years (outside of them revealing too much plot info), which has got to count for something.

Of course, the length of the feature can have a bearing too. If we're running a 140-minute movie, I might play only two or three trailers, depending on what's coming up. And, thanks to digital cinema, I sometimes feature fewer trailers on the late shows. There are no hard and fast rules, really.

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Mark J. Marshall
Film God

Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-25-2012 05:26 AM

quote: Edward Havens
It's actually a pointed commentary on the worthless of anything coming from Fox News, Mark, but thank you for playing.

You think I didn't know that's what you meant? Ok.

quote: Mike Blakesley
to say that anything coming from either of them is "worthless" is just incorrect.

...or closed minded.

At AMC we had a system that tracked and reported customer comments which came in through the 800 number. The system was web based and all of the comments were organized by theater. Those of you who manage at AMC may know what I'm talking about. If you don't, look into it. It's pretty interesting stuff. At the end of the night, I used to like going through those and reading all of the comments from all of the theaters.

After reading them for several months, I noticed that the complaints generally fell into two categories.

Things that happened that should not have been part of the experience. This included things like: The bathrooms were dirty, the movie started late, the popcorn was cold, the box office person was rude, the air conditioner was broken, or whatever.
Things we did correctly but the customer didn't agree with. An example of that would be enforcing the age restriction on an R rated movie.

Overwhelmingly, the complaints that came in were of the first category. However, of all of the complains in the second category, the number one complaint was "too many trailers / commercials in front of the movies." Despite that, we would constantly add more trailers, more commercials, modernize the commercials and make them more glitzy... It seemed like we never listened to the complaint at all. That is why I said that I believe the execs don't care. Maybe that's harsh, though, so I apologize for that. A better way to say it is that the execs don't think it's a big enough problem. But my experience from working on the front line and talking to customers tells me that it is a problem.

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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008

posted 01-25-2012 11:54 AM

Actually, Mike B., it has nothing to do with Fox's right-leaning slant. My bias against Fox News has everything to do with the amount of misinformation in every article on their site that has ever been brought to my attention.

So I went back and read the "article" Mitchell posted. And, sure enough, it's filled with the same kind of backwater journalistic bullshit I have come to expect from Fox News. This story starts off with one anonymous person's experience with one show at one theatre (most likely the author of the "article" themselves), and then continues to postulate the issue this one person had at this one theatre this one time is typical of every person's experience at every theatre, and finds "experts" to support the writer's theory, most of whom have nothing to do with the industry in question.

I can only speak for my own personal experiences, but ever since the advent of the digital pre-show about a decade ago, I have never been to a movie screening in a commercial cinema that had more than 16.5mins of trailers before the actual movie started. Before the digital pre-show, there'd be ads for newspapers and radio stations and soda and other products as part of the trailer pack once the film projector started up. Now, all that stuff is in the digital pre-show, and the only time I've ever seen a commercial during the trailer pack was at a 3D movie, when the first thing shown after the "Put on your 3D glasses" insert was a 3D commercial. Always less a minute long, and it still kept the time between the start of the program and the start of the movie at less than 16.5mins.

But seriously, the "suggestion" in the "article" from the CMPAA to start shouting out during the show? That's irresponsible, since we all know why that would be ineffective, and it's rude to the other guests, most of whom don't give a crap.

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Taylor Wiemann
Film Handler

Posts: 4
From: Murfreesboro, TN, USA
Registered: Jan 2012

posted 02-02-2012 06:43 PM

dont forget you can also print out signs from their website saying you "refuse" to sit through commercials. I found this entertaining to say the least.

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