This is topic Cinema service & design companies & LHAT in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 01-28-2003, 01:50 AM:
 
This isn't so much a booth issue as a cinema service & design issue.

Are there any cinema service & design companies which are members of the League of Historic Theatres (LHAT) ?

http://www.lhat.org/

LHAT is an organization ostensibly to provide support to folks who operate "historic theatres". Typically the situation is that the people operating the theatres are individuals in various non-profit foundations with experience mostly in management or fundraising & are not very knowledgable in issues concerning operation of the theater.

So they pay a yearly membership fee to join LHAT, with other theater operators.

The problem is that LHAT is a vendor-based conduit for information. The information supplied to the theater-operating members comes from VENDORS who pay a membership fee as a "service provider".

http://www.lhat.org/join_now/service_provider.asp

So the polarization & information flow is vendor to people at the theater. As you can see, this arrangement produces a flow of only that information which may profit a member vendor. Also, if information is needed that is not in the expertise of any member vendor, that information is brought to the theater-based member.

The monster cock-up of this arrangement came to full fruition a couple of years ago at the LHAT conference in NYC. One of the seminars was "Digital Cinema", in which apparently a vendor pushing LCD video projectors told attendees (managers & XO's of theatres) that film was obsolete, & that their video projectors had "no scratches, no film damage" etc. The result was a couple of theaters represented by technically-uneducated managers were snowed, bought the projectors, killed film projection at the theaters, & began presenting films in video. Attendance dropped to nearly nothing, but reversing the theaters' new video policy cannot be because 1) some of these people really can't tell a bad picture like their audiences can, & 2) that problem of management which is motivated by fear of being seen as being wrong. The damage is apparently irreversible.

So while these video projector people are giving this snow job to the LHAT member theaters, are there any real cinema companies which are members of LHAT?

It's really sort of important, because the organization has a LARGE number or member theaters that only do their professional association & reading (outside of fundraising & management issues) through LHAT. The only theater information they have is what they've learned there.

I dropped my LHAT membership because it became apparent it was sort of like payola for vendors to have access to historic theatre operators, that information not presented by paying vendors could not be presented, & that monstrous damage was being done. I'm still fuming about it.
 

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 01-28-2003, 04:02 AM:
 
I'd say that if there is a theater operator that only subscribes to the one opinion of one vendor just because they're members of the same organization, then that operator needs to pull his head out of his ass and join the real world.

An organization that actively supports this kind of informational inbreeding is not worth my $225-$575 membership fee.

Just wait until the Theater Preservation forums on cinematour come online. Those will be free.
 

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Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 01-28-2003, 09:44 AM:
 
William:

That's exactly the same reason I dropped my membership in LHAT, too. I've seen the same snow job go on in a few historic theaters myself. The "board of directors" run everything, yet they know nothing!
 

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Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 01-29-2003, 01:49 AM:
 
I'm sure that Adam's forum will be an excellent resource (I've had the same idea which came from these same directions).

But I wonder if it will be effective in communicating to the one minute manager types who are not really in the "theater business" & when they have an issue just call one of the companies they've seen in an LHAT magazine article, & consider the issue "handled". They don't really associate professionally with other groups & information for managers, arts councils, fundraisers, etc.

It really does look like there just needs to be some higher profile for real cinema folks in LHAT. The highest profiles of vendors in LHAT are restoration studios, & even though several are extraordinarily good, it's gotten inbred because they're the "historic restoration" companies that have long lists of venues they've done *because* they're in the LHAT magazine, hold seminars at the convention, do mailouts on the LHAT mailing list, etc. It also has become apparent that some of the manager-types who "handle" by using LHAT as a reference also do it by cost - & chasing the "good" restoration companies are the companies associated with LHAT that work cheaper but leave technical wrecks behind them. They're selected just by going down the list of folks in LHAT until they get to someone cheap & often clueless.

Many of them are movie theaters, & I would like to spend Kodak's money to sign Kodak up & set a PR guy in charge of LHAT. As soon as John Pytlak will leave Mr. Eastman's checkbook out somewhere I can get to it.

The odd thing about the LHAT "Digital Projection" seminar & the theaters that were persuaded to dump their film projection equipment for video projectors is that some of the LHAT directors are actually from theaters with good film programs & know that they're making money from them. It really looks like they couldn't speak up & point out inaccuracies & shortcomings because the video projector vendor paid his money to run his game.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-29-2003, 02:10 AM:
 

quote:

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The odd thing about the LHAT "Digital Projection" seminar & the theaters that were persuaded to dump their film projection equipment for video projectors is that some of the LHAT directors are actually from theaters with good film programs & know that they're making money from them. It really looks like they couldn't speak up & point out inaccuracies & shortcomings because the video projector vendor paid his money to run his game.

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