Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Earliest Advance Screenings

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Posted by William Valdes (Member # 2690) on 11-16-2004, 11:59 PM:

Hey Everybody,

I just wanted to start off my first post ever by asking how early have any of you recieved a print prior to it's official release date? and what movie was it?

In my (almost) two years working as a projectionist, I recall recieving a print of The Italian Job a good three months prior to it's release for a screening. The print had temp tracks for music and had no credits.

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 11-17-2004, 03:37 AM:

hehe,

I think I remember that print. [thumbsup]

The one that I remember "teh best" was like Harry Pothead, we had that GINORMOUS print eating up space for like three weeks.

I remember when LOtR:FotR came out we had it like two weeks in advance but it was locked in the vault until the day before release.

Posted by Ryan Gardner Smith (Member # 2818) on 11-17-2004, 04:31 AM:

I also had that early version on The Italian Job. I've had more Paramount work prints than any other studio.

As far as early screenings go, my favorite was seeing American Beauty a good six months before it was released in the Denver area. For six months I was telling friends they had to see it, they began to think it didn't exist. The print was the same edit only without credits and no digital soundtracks.

Another odd one was when I screened Big Trouble on Sept. 10th of 2001 before the press screening on Sept. 11th which was obviously cancelled. Because the movie then got bumped, it didn't hit screens until April.

Other than those, I've seen a few movies years before they came out because they were all movies distributed by Walden Media and the owner (who also owns my theatre) had me run the prints for him. Those movies were Danny Deckchair, Swimming Upstream, and I Am David. Two of which still have not been released.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 11-17-2004, 08:51 AM:

Unless you were running separate picture + soundtrack it's probably not really a workprint (although there are rare exceptions where the term might apply to a composite print). A real workprint besides having no track would generally have each scene change be a physical splice in the picture reels although with digital intermediates this may no longer be an absolute. If it's a Super 35 show the picture will be native Super 35 before conversion to Scope.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 11-17-2004, 10:07 AM:

Many of the studios will make a dup of the workprint and send it out on preview. As Steve said if the print is a picture and track format and the picture has many splices then that is a true workprint. Paramount, New Line, Miramax, Columbia, Fox, Warner, all do the dup type print thing. And sometimes if that is the final screening cut of the picture. They will use that print as a bid type print for theatre chains.

I handle Studio Post-Production and Media screenings here in New York for the major studios. For media type screenings of new releases, they start screening as early as 3 months before release, that I've handled. As for Post-Production, I've had films as early as 1 1/2 years before release. In many different film and video and sound formats.

Posted by Jason Gazaille (Member # 2846) on 11-25-2004, 01:57 AM:

Hey Will,
I remember building that print. Not only were there no credits and non-complete editing, there was only an SR soundtrack, 7 reels, and the print was flat. The final was scope and 6 reels. I was surprised that Paramount sent us that print to show for 3 screenings for the public.
But the longest advance print I've received was a print of Disney's Tuck Everlasting, which we had somewhere around 6 months before release. It seemed complete, though I didn't watch it. There was only like 20 people in the audience.

Posted by Rich Ferrando (Member # 2056) on 11-25-2004, 11:36 AM:

We did two screenings of Miramax's "Dear Frankie" in June of this year. Miramax currently lists the film's release date in March of 2005.

Miramax has a tendency to do things like this. They delayed and delayed the release of "Shaolin Soccer" for about a year-and-a-half, and kept pushing back "Zatoichi" from April 2004 to the end of August 2004.

Posted by Ever Gonzalez (Member # 2794) on 11-26-2004, 01:44 AM:

Not only did Paramount leave us Italian Job like forever, but they also left K-19 for like two months and we had it on the bottom platter of projector 1!

Posted by Jason Gazaille (Member # 2846) on 11-26-2004, 01:49 AM:

Ever, for the hundredth time, it was on the bottom of number 2!!

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 11-26-2004, 10:32 PM:

ahh shit...

Someone open a window...its gettin all Mission Valley in here.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 11-27-2004, 12:06 AM:

Has anyone here ever ran a screening for John Travolta? I saw a work print screening of 'The Generals Daughter' while he was in Savannah filming 'A Civil Action' (or vice-versa, I forget.)

Anyway, it was at our older Savannah location, as the new one was 3 days from opening (yes, they cut our openings that close when it comes to setting up the booth equipment... I recall that they had two projectionists fly in especially to run the print, complete with mag track tied into our processor/amp rack. John himself was there...as was Tim Dalton..

This was a true work print, for sure. I especially remember it having what looked like 1000 splices in it! It just now, some 10 years later, occurred to me that I had actually seen a work print... not knowing what the proper term for it was at the time..

Posted by Jarrod Cocker (Member # 2773) on 11-28-2004, 02:39 AM:

We got sent Matrix Revolutions Spool 5 with Runaway Juy... about 2 weeks before matrix was released world wide. We where missing spool 3 of Runaway Jusy if i recall correctly..

When we rang the Distributors - we got put striaght through to someone who was important - and he didnt belive us... He was like, tell me what the scene looks like.....

Both Prints came from Atalb Australia... And i think someone there would have got in trouble

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-29-2004, 09:26 AM:

With thousands of reels from multiple features going through a lab at any given time, an occasional mixup may occur in the shipping room. Most large release labs now use computerized tracking systems with barcode labels on each reel.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-29-2004, 02:08 PM:

One of my reels for Incredibles had the bar code sticker on the leader for Polar Express. Same lab, printed about a week apart. The actual content was fine, only the bar code label was wrong, so no reason to complain. Still, it's interesting.