Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Miramax Moving To ETS?

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Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 01-09-2004, 10:42 PM:

According to the staff at my local ETS depot, Miramax is poised to follow Sony and move their film handling services to ETS within the next few weeks. Now if Disney and Universal will just follow suit........ [Big Grin]

As a second run operator it is amazing to me how generally crappy the prints are that I receive from Technicolor yet the prints that come from ETS are usually pristine. I have always had the feeling that Technicolor deliberately sends worn prints to the second run houses.

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Where you stand on an issue depends upon where you sit!

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 01-10-2004, 01:28 AM:

It's not that they deliberatly send them it is the fact that they never really check them to begin with. They just slap that little inspected by stickier on there if you are lucky enough for even that to happen.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-10-2004, 04:26 AM:

The Miramax move has been planned for awhile. The last I heard, Universal is discussing the move as well.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-10-2004, 06:44 AM:

This promises to make booking of Miramax titles "fun" for a few weeks. Last year, I was involved with a group that tried to book the anime "Metropolis" (Sony) for a nontheatrical screening through Swank. Swank said it was "unavailable." It turned out that, as far as Swank was concerned, all Sony titles were "unavailable" at that time, due to the "changeover" (no pun intended) to ETS. It took a phone call to one of the producers of the film to straighten out that matter.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-10-2004, 10:17 AM:

What is the real reason for these switches, pricing?

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 01-10-2004, 11:12 AM:

Since neither ETS or Technicolor does more than warehouse & ship prints, the condition of your used print is the luck of the draw. Around here TES is far better at getting the replacement to the theatre tham ETS. Thursday I called TES for a replacement print at 3;45PM, the print was in the front door at 10PM, from ETS it would have been around 5 the next day. Technicolor 24/7 service, even with problems kicks ETS 9 to 4:30, Monday thru Friday service into the bushes. On other occasions I've had TES ship a print on Saturday, ETS isn't even open on Saturday.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-10-2004, 11:34 AM:

They both do what the distributors pay them to do. If the studios wanted full inspections then I'm sure both would provide this service. It's not really fair to blame the logistics companies for providing only the service that the studios pay for.

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 01-10-2004, 12:10 PM:

It's just he opposite here for me. Anytime I have had to replace an ETS reel, I have had within 2 hours of calling it in. TES usually takes a day or so.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 01-10-2004, 01:00 PM:

Issue H-50-56 of Kodak's "Cinema Notes" had a behind-the-scenes look at Technicolor Entertainment Services:

Technicolor Delivers

ETS is now affiliated with Deluxe Laboratories (The Rank Group Plc.), as is Atlab:

Rank Annual Report

Money Extra UK Publication

Posted by Paul Turner (Member # 832) on 01-10-2004, 04:51 PM:

I've trashed TES with gusto and good reason -- but the last year or so they've been better to me as far as delivery. The condition of the prints still leaves much to be desired ... I've had really good luck with ETS and the condition of the prints. I think this might be partly due to the fact most of the time I pick up at a depot, which means I'm face to face with the guy who is going to have to deal with me if my print is toast. Nothing like a little accountability to improve quality. A concept TES doesn't seem to get.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 01-10-2004, 04:51 PM:

Steve has it correct. Actually, the blame for wrecked prints belongs with the theaters that had them before.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-10-2004, 06:03 PM:

Of course, trashed prints are the responsibility of the previous theatre. However, the depot isn't blameless, either. They shouldn't be sending out prints at random for second-run and repertory engagements. Instead, they should spot-check prints as they are returned from first-run houses and prints from theatres which have a history of print damage should be the first to be shredded. The prints from houses which have a history of returning prints in good condition should be the ones that are saved for future engagements. In this way, intelligent film depots can reduce the chances that second-run houses will receive inferior prints. I don't know if this actually happens, however.

Obviously, full inspection of every print (along with bills sent to theatres which cause damage) would be ideal, but that appears to be unlikely to happen for mainstream titles. [Frown]

For what it's worth, I have received prints from ETS depots in Landover, MD. and Salem, MA. and both seem to be about equal to Technicolor as far as print quality, so I'm assuming that all three are simply sending out prints at random. Other than ETS having better reels and TES having reel bands for all prints (not just 10-year-old ones), I haven't noticed much difference between depots. I've never gotten a totally unplayable print and I've replaced three reels in six years (two ETS, one TES).

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 01-10-2004, 06:28 PM:

I've talked to TES about their integrity check process recently, so I have some hard information.

It turns out that TES's "integrity check" (IC) in fact involves having a human being look at the first twenty feet of each reel, counting after the splice (so twenty feet of actual projected film, not counting leader). Prints that have damage are supposed to be rejected. They only look at the end of the reel that is out, so it is not consistently heads or tails that are inspected.

As I understand it, they are pretty religious about doing these checks (i.e. they always happen when a print leaves the depot, except if a the print iscircuitted directly from another theatre) but the criteria applied during the checks is less tightly controlled. And, if there are no more prints available, well, there's not much they can do without the studio making more.

Anyhow, so to recap, Bill's statement "neither ETS or Technicolor does more than warehouse & ship prints, the condition of your used print is the luck of the draw" is incorrect. I don't know what ETS's inspection policies are, but TES always does the IC inspection, regardless of studio (they have a "full inspection" option that studios can pay for). Obviously ETS can get replacements to many theatres faster than TES (i.e. less than one day) because of their distributed vs. centralized model.

As for Scott's comments on frequency of replacement, I guess it depends on where you are in the food chain. Down here at the bottom (non-theatrical), I'll give you our stats for this fall, from August through December. We had 4 replacements out of 11 prints for TES (36%), and also 4 replacements out of 16 prints ETS (25%). That only counts prints we actually replaced, as opposed to those perhaps we should have but were too busy to deal with the hassle or logistics/timing made it infeasable.

--jhawk

Posted by Vernon Cramer (Member # 1181) on 01-11-2004, 06:27 PM:

Sorry to hear another studio is shifting to ETS. We are non-theatrical and the shipping costs for us are higher for prints from ETS than TES. Overall, the print quality control through TES has been better than with ETS. We've had prints arrive from the Landover, MD ETS depot with film ends not secured (on more than one print we've had to pull all the reels out at once because the film was so badly tangled up you couldn't get just one reel out), leaders missing or heads & tails switched, one print that was missing a reel, plus a fair number of broken reels. In spite of these annoyances, the condition of the prints has been very good to excellent.

In contrast, we've had far fewer problems with prints that shipped from TES, although we've had a couple of prints (both Universal titles) that were more worn than we typically get (got to see film-guard really do an incredible job cleaning up a heavily scratched print of Bourne Identity). In over 2 years we've actually only had one significant problem with a print from TES. They shipped a mag-only SP print of Fantasia (labelled "archive print" with heads and tails still attached) when we had requested the 1990 reissue. Between Swank and TES we had the correct print in hand (and a good one) in a couple of days, still way ahead of the showdate.