How widespread is this practice? I see this all the time and believe this sort of thing is just as much to blame for the slowing business as bad movies.
 

Our bigest problem is with MovieFone. Almost all of the times for our theater have been incorrect in their listings. We've called them and fought with them, but they still screw everything up. They had us showing Gladiator, The Kid, M:I-2 after they had been gone for months.
 

I've seen people make the trip to a particular theatre so they can see the film in DTS or Dolby Digital, only to realise that the film is only screening in SR. (I've had to speak with a few annoyed customers with this problem from time to time)

I've also seen films which I know don't have a digital soundtrack as being advertised as running in Digital (eg The Full Monty).

I'm sure that all cinema chains, in all countries have done similar things. Most of us are Human.

A more telling question might be how many theatres in a (perhaps desperate) bid to attract more customers deliberetly include mistakes in thier advertising? How many customers then know the difference?
 

Shaft was in Dolby Digital (at the time, it's in DTS now that the discs have finally arrived!) and The Ninth Gate was in Dolby SR at the time (and has since moved to a Dolby Digital screen). I checked both at the time of the complaints and the surrounds were indeed working. Strange; I can't really understand why this would have generated a complaint!

Doesn't it seem strange when people complain about things that you're doing absolutely right whereas I've been to other cinemas where seriously deficient aspects of the presentation go seemingly unnoticed?

Can I ask everyone to differentiate between:
1. Theaters that do not have the sound system advertised *in any theater* Of couse, this is totally wrong.

2. Theaters that have the sound system advertised, but the film advertised is not running in that auditourium.

I know they're both wrong, but sometimes theaters switch screens (while it take a week to change the ads), so #2 above might be somewhat understandable.

Wasn't there a lawsuit about avertising Dolby Stereo, when you only had Eprad, or something like that?

We've had several problems with our newspapers getting things wrong. There are two areas where people can look. One is "The Movie Clock" that just shows the film title, theater and show times. The newspaper provides this for free, and generally won't take any responsablity for any errors (and there are many.) Sometimes, when they have completely screwed up, they will just put in a statement; "The theater did not send the showtimes to us in time for printing." ..which usually is BS.

The regular ads are paid for (co-opped) so there are less mistakes. But, many times, the ad space is shared with other films, and a "Dolby Digital" logo is simply placed at the bottom of the ad... without specifing what is or is not in DD.

Here is a legal tidbid. It is OK and LEGAL to advertise a film in DOLBY, DTS, SR, whatever, and not even have the equipment. Here is why... If the film has a soundtrack PRODUCED in dolby, or whatever, than you can show it in mono, and still say its a dolby film. Yes its cheating, and lame, but it is in practice all over the place.

BUYER BEWARE...

Dave
 

I've actually been hounded so much by a couple of people about how incredible their home THX system was that since they lived very close, agreed to go listen to it only to find out they were not even running it in digital...or even pro-logic! Many of these home receivers have a "cinema surround" mode that more or less just adds an echo into the surrounds. They will inevitably sit there and play their "WOW" laserdisc while I cringe at the pathetic sound for 8 minutes. The funny part is these guys get junker speakers (almost as if they came from a Ford stock car radio) and hook them up to a "THX receiver" and actually believe they have the best system in existence. "Deep bass" to them is about 400hz.

Next time you get that complaint, chat with the customer for a minute. I guarantee that is what they will say.

If they say they won't run your ads anymore if you refuse to pay for mistaken ads, go up the ladder as high as necessary.

They only walk on ya if you let'em!
 

At Cinema West we would quite often advertise in "DTS" as if to say "In the auditorium that is equipped to play DTS" because quite often - disks wouldn't show up etc. etc. And even THEN - it's in DTS Stereo. And still to this day they make very little differentiation between ULTRA and DOLBY Stereo.

SECOND THING I KNOW - in "Suburban Directory Ads" where it's a GIANT Co-Op ad listing all the theatres in the area... most often the ad agency decides who has digital and who doesn't.
 

Also, I actually have heard a couple of good sounding car systems, but they were set up by individuals who knew what they were doing. One fellow actually built in a second alternator, added two marine batteries and had a mini sound rack full of a cross between home processors and 1/3 octave equalizers and cinema amplifiers, all run through a power inverter in a full size Cadillac! Oh, did I mention he had two 18 inch subwoofers built into his trunk, using the entire trunk as an enclosure? Talk about crazy! The guy was in his car about 10 minutes a day.
 

Another case are distributors, some use large SDDS / DTS logos with films dubbed into German and released in SRD or worst case - American Pie - QS matrixed Dolby Surround (Stereo without NR encoding !!!), or SDDS 8 track with U571 released in Dolby only. They want fraudentially and on purpose lure moviegoers into theatres with pretending to offer high-tech systems, but all they only offer is low tech video mixes for films originally intended to be dubbed tape / DVD releases only. And theese have to be plastic TV enclosure type speaker ciompatible.
How to screen a QS matrixed film? Only very few theatre sound decoders allow the use of a surround decoding sound format without use of NR. You might use CP 50 with Stereo w/Surround, no NR (doesn't this apply the Academy filters?) or link cards for the NR modules? Some digital domain processors allow to program this format, the ADSG, the USL DSP60 and I think the Sony 3000 (?) could handle it.
 

40 Days and 40 Nights is in SRD/SR/SDDS/DTS. The stack ad only mentions SRD/SR -- with the logos all but unreadable.

Amelie is in SRD/SR/DTS. The stack ad only mentions SRD/SR -- again with the logos all but unreadable. Amelie is now in its 17th week at the Montgomery Cinema in Rocky Hill NJ -- an arthouse that began as a twin in the 80's and became a 6-plex in larger quarters in 1995. Miramax still refers to the Montgomery Cinema as a twin.

Italian for Beginners is in SRD/SR. The stack ad does not ID the sound formats. Also, Miramax refuses to include the Princeton Garden Theatre in the stack ad. That theater just opened Italian for Beginners -- and the Star-Ledger includes the showtimes in the movie clock.

Iris is in SRD/SR. Again the stack ad does not ID the sound formats.

In the Bedroom is in SRD/SR. Again the logos are barely readable.

Another embarrassment: Miramax refuses to include the AMC Hamilton 24 in stack ads for Northern New Jersey. That theater is running 40 Days and 40 Nights, Iris (area exclusive), and In the Bedroom. Miramax does have room in the stack ads to list the Multiplex Cinemas at Town Center Plaza -- which was a Regal Cinema until 2/28.

Now THAT'S funny. Made me laugh out loud. Let's see, Realistic speakers that retailed for $199 but were really worth about half that new. Bet those puppies really pumped out SPLs that would embarrass the over-priced EV, JBL, etc. AMC knew a bargain when they found one.

OK, come on now, all you other techs and small independent screen owners 'fess up!! How many of you are running Radio Shack equipment??!!

We only have DTS in cinema 1, the other 3 are either Dolby or Ultra, and we do move prints midweek, depending on popularity.
Also we sometimes find that DTS sometimes puts off some people (shall we say the more mature customer!) as they tend to associate DTS or digital with VERY LOUD!

While on the subject of DTS, we haven't run a film in DTS since last November, due to the increasingly terrible support for DTS in the UK. We ran Lord of the Rings in analogue (even though it had a DTS track, and was playing in our DTS theatre) for almost two months. Apparently the distributor for Rings in the UK "does not support DTS". Monsters Inc had faulty DTS (reel 5), and the distributor wouldn't send us replacement disc's. So i ran that in analogue, rather than have 4 reels of great sound, with the last reel being of poorer quality.
 

We have a "Showcase" section of the newspaper for arts and entertainment that comes out every Thursday. The theatre advertises its UPCOMMING movies with Co-Op ads and then there are the CURRENT movies advertised in a 1 X 3 collumn ad.

Of course, the current movies will end Thursday night and the upcomming movies won't start until Friday afternoon. (morning?)
We constantly got people comming in looking for the upcomming movies on Thursday, despite the fact that it says, "STARTS TOMORROW" in big letters. Not only that, we get people comming in on Friday looking for the movies that ended on Friday, even though the ad clearly says, "Today's Times Only".

We just felt like we were just shoveling shit against the tide trying to explain it to people. Most people who get the "Showcase" section keep it for the whole week. For MOST things in the Arts and Entertainment section, the ads ARE valid for the whole week.

To make matters worse, the newspaper wants to have all the ads for the "Showcase" section delivered to them no later than 4PM on Tuesday. If you miss the deadline, any changes might not make it into the final edtion. Of course, in the movie buseness we get last minute changes right until Thursday night or even Friday morning!

It's a catch-22! If you advertise only one day a week, it's pretty much got to be in the Tursday edition of the Showcase. On the other hand, the Showcase the most difficult edition of the paper to get your ads into.

On top of that, as other people have said, the newspaper is famous for scrambling the information... Digital being advertised when it's not... etc, etc.

A lot of theatres in the company that I worked for have started ditching newspaper ads in the traditional form. They just put in a 1 X 1 collumn ad that says, "Cinemark Theatre -- Address -- Phone number -- Web Site address -- Call for showtimes"
 

MONSTERS, INC had a revised Reel-5 issued during its run. It came with a matching DTS Disc.

This happened with A BUG'S LIFE (another Disney/Pixar) movie because they changed the "outtakes" at the end to encourage people to come out and see the movie again.

The revised DTS disk was silver with blue printing. It is possible that you got a mismatched Reel-5 and DTS disk.

This info doesn't help you now, but MONSTERS, INC is still playing, so maybe it will help somebody.

------------------
And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

~Manny.

quote:

---

Who tops the chart when it comes to false newspaper advertisements? Miramax!

---

None of your examples were in any way false. They were incomplete. Listing two formats for a quad format film) is much better than falsely advertising quad format for a film with only two formats.

And don't studios sometimes decide at the last minute to add an extra sound format? In that case the advertisement may have been created before the extra sound format was decided on. Now, if they knew about it at the time the ad was created, that's their loss, but it's still not false.

Legibility of sound formats is a function of newspaper line screen and logo size. Miramax is running an ad for its movie, not for DTS, Dolby, or Sony. The logos are reduced proportionately with the rest of the ad for the size run in the paper, and line screen (usually 85-110 lpi) makes it illegible.

Of course, what they're doing is not the best way to advertise their film. But they're not being fraudulent in any way.

------------------
Tao Yue
MIT '04: Course VI-2, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Projectionist, MIT Lecture Series Committee
 

------------------
This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....
 

I understand mistakes can be made, especially when a distributor tells you that you're going to get a quad format film with DTS discs and then it arrives only in SR --but that's after you've placed your ad and all that good stuff. As bad as some distributors can be, you may not get a certain print until late Thursday night or even Friday morning mere hours before the first show. Forget about being able to double check a proof then. However, those occurences are rare. And I think the film release info so many contribute to this site well in advance of a release certainly helps cure any potential mistakes.

I've seen Miramax's New York stack ads. They suck. Plain and simple. Not only are they leaving out the DTS and SDDS notation in their ads --their theater listing art quality IS TERRIBLE!!! I should drop a note to Roger Dressler at Dolby and have him take a look at the funkafied knock-off attempts Miramax uses on trying to reproduce a Dolby Digital logo. Horrible! Good Lord, Dressler even has an Adobe PDF file providing exact dimensions for all the elements and type in the Dolby Digital logo. There is no excuse to have that logo reproduce in less than perfect condition.

Overall, some places have good stack ads and other places have stack ads that suck. Generally, I like the ads produced in New York and Los Angeles, but there is bad work going on even in those markets.

There's two reasons for this. Disorganization between the ad agency, film distributor and theaters. And low paid amateurs at work schlocking the art together at the last minute. You can identify a well assembled ad when you see it. And the slapped together stuff looks like crap.

In many cases, technical notation has been dropped from most stack ads around the country. Dallas used to be great at listing sound formats. I have some old clippings from the Dallas Morning News Guide showing as such. But now, most of that stuff is gone. With that kind of practice happening, I can only visit theaters where I know exactly what kind of hardware they are using and am able to give the manager a call to see what digital format the show is using.

I can't rely on stack ads very well to tell me what I want to know. And that's a shame because the newspaper stack ads used to be pretty cool --especially back in the day when they had those big 70mm logos running over the theater listings. Oh well, I saved some NY and LA Times ads from the late 1980's and early 1990's. They're cool to check out once in awhile.
 

------------------
Bill Purdy
Component Engineering
 

Companies like Wagner/Zip Change and Gemini have marquee icons for all three digital sound formats as well as the Dolby symbol and THX logo. And then fellows like me can design larger customized icons to fit any kind or size of marquee. Anyway, the resources are there in terms of sign supply if a theater manager wants to use the tool correctly.

On the Dolby stack ad advertising thing, it is wrong for any theater to claim "Dolby Stereo" or "Dolby SR" if they don't have the authentic playback equipment for those formats. If the booth rack just has Smart or Ultra Stereo processors, then the ads should just say "Stereo" for their optical analog presentations (and that's presuming the theater even has stereo gear and not mono). I see such practices as being as equally inaccurate as a theater playing a film in Dolby Digital, but claiming DTS presentation instead.
 

Is a "stack ad" the circuit's ad? I mean if Regal runs a display ad for 1 or more Regal locations, is that referred to as a stack ad?

In a small city, a movie may play at only one theater. It can't really be called a stack ad. A lot of managers call them "co-op ads". Obviously, the stack ad in a large city newspaper would be paid for primarily by the film distributor and perhaps with a smaller percentage coming from theaters listed in the ad.

A theater circuit ad, such as Regal, which lists only their theaters and what is playing at those locations is very obviously called a theater directory ad. I think it is funny how a lot of stack ads will not feature technical notes on sound/projection format and then just say "check theater directories for showtimes and stereo sound". Many of the theater directories don't even list the tech info either!

I think some theaters don't list sound format info in their directories in an attempt to hide just how badly equipped their theater might be. I know that's the case with Dickinson Theaters here in Lawton. Their Central Mall 12 theater has never noted sound formats at all. And that's because they have only 2 DTS units, and that would pale in comparison to the Carmike 8's ad which seems to have DTS noted by every show week in and week out with very few exceptions. Even the art films they get now like "Monster's Ball" or "Brotherhood of the Wolf" have DTS.
 

Regal's circuit ads say "Digital Sound in all auditoriums" at the top, and "DIG" next to the name of each feature. Oddly, a legend at the bottom explains "DIG" = Digital Sound, and "STR" = Stereo Sound, but they haven't annotated a film as "STR" for a very long time. (They also claim "Largest screen and auditorium in Eugene/Springfield" which is only half-true. They don't have the largest screen.)

Cinemark 17's ads say "Digital Sound in all auditoriums" and that's all. But Cinemark's Movies 12 $1.50 theater uses the DTS logo on the movies playing there in DTS (3 screens are DTS-capable). And it says "Stereo Surround Sound in all auditoriums" (happens to be pathetically bad Ultra Stereo).

I was the one that made the statement about that it was completely legal to say a film is in dolby, and not even present it in such, and still be able to advertise as such.

You did clarify my point, as you stated, you cannot say that it is "Presented" in dolby, dts, whatever, and then it is not. My point was that you can say that a film is "IN" dolby, dts, whatever, and not ever say that it actually "IS NOT" presented in such.

An example would be like this...

YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDANTLY THEATER PRESENTS

1. STAR WARS #1 - Attack of the menace (DTS)
2. Rat Wars - Jar Jar gets shot to death (DOLBY)

and so on.

However if the header reads...

YOUR LOCAL THEATER PRESENTS DTS SOUND

or

YOUR LOCAL THEATER IS RUN BY CORPORATE BUTNICKERS...

AND PRESENTS ALL FEATURES IN DOLBY...

then you must...

The clarification is purely a legal one. The moral thing is of course its wrong to imply, even if you dont atually state. Its like saying you have a ton of money, only to reveal later that it is all confederacy money, or pennies.

So it is completely legal to put that a film has DTS or Dolby, but NOT legal to say you are presenting it in such.

Another trick used is to say "DTS AVAILABLE" in the header, only to discover one of eight has it, and the rest are mono. Also common practice used to "unintentionally" distract the consumer from the truth.

And truth be told, sometimes, I prefer an analog presentation. Sometimes the DTS mix is horrible. And always way to sterile.

Dave
 

sometimes the website may say "Digital Sound" but who knows which.
they never play the trailers before the movie either, except one cinema that has closed now used the play the DTS flying disc before every movie.

Universal adopted a similar approach for its arthouse titles beginning with Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Most ads in the Dallas Morning News newspaper use a similar motif. You'll see a movie stack ad, several rows of theater listings under the poster artwork and then perhaps a DTS or SDDS logo --with no indication of which theaters are showing what format (or even if a number of theaters are not showing the film with digital sound).

Those logos are not all-encompassing. That's something many theater customers do not understand. They automatically believe any theater they visit is going to be showing the film in the best format available. So many customers will commonly wind up in a theater with no digital sound equipment and not realize it until the show starts --and this is assuming any of these people actually care at all about things like digital surround sound. The ad people out there must be assuming most don't care if the audio is coming out of a ham radio.

I'll tell you one thing that pissed me off when I heard it. One of my friends has an old classmate that started working at the Central Mall theater here in Lawton. Even though the 12 plex has two DTS units and they get discs with just about every print, the people there are too lazy to bother loading the damned things. They also don't have their automation set up right and have to manually switch stereo matrix on out of mono. So most shows play in mono. Now I am glad that theater doesn't advertise which shows are in DTS or even stereo for that matter. They have a state-of-the-art bleacher seating 12 plex in all-mono sound!
 

USA Films and Universal share the same ad agency for their NYC-area ads. With that format on upmarket/arthouse titles those 2 studios don't pull a Miramax on the public.

(Coincidentally, Universal owns a part interest in USA Films and will soon own all of that imprint.)