quote: Brad Miller

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Did you not notice the condition of that Bollywood print? Prints don't get to that sort of pathetic condition without many, many plays and much handling by different people.

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It's been about 25 years since I worked a Bollywood house (Takoma Theatre in DC). Sad to know nothing has changed.
 

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Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 03-22-2008, 10:15 AM:
 
I guess I've been lucky. The occasional Bollywood films I've had to deal with have usually been new prints, fresh from the lab. I'm always amused by the variety of shipping cases they come in. Here's a couple of exmaples:

Many of them come in these burlap covered cardboard
boxes. The first time I saw one of these I thought we
were getting giant shipments of hash or something:


The last one I got came in this metal can-coffin:


All 7 reels were in here case. Technically, back when I was in the union I wouldn't have been allowed to lift this case. Now I'm too old to lift it! hahahhahaha

I have yet to receive a Bollywood film on any type of reel. They've always been on cores.

All of my Bollywood films have been picked up. Sometimes they sat around for months before we got instructions on where to ship them, but they all eventually went somewhere. I think it's sort of a cheap way for the distributer to avoid paying for vault storage fees. Just keep the print at the theater where it was last run and then have them ship it to the next venue when it gets booked again. Clever!
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-22-2008, 10:41 AM:
 
I've never seen a Bollywood film in any condition even remotely resembling "new." I envy those who have. The best ones come on cores, but without the cores, and the film slides around and cinches badly inside beat-up lab cans.
 

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Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 03-22-2008, 11:45 AM:
 
The burlap works well since the inside wrapping has a water resistant layer. I can quickly spot Indian products in our storehouse by the Burlap
We have a Bollywood feature being made in Miami over the next few weeks; using Miami Beach and downtown Miami.....small world
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-22-2008, 02:02 PM:
 
All the Bollywood films we get are with the exception of frequently missing heads and or tails in very good condition. The Indian merchant who presents the films does so primarily as a service and a payback to the Indian community for their loyalty to his business. He doesn't play anything that is more than 2 weeks out from initial release date.

None are ever on reels as would be expected on films from outside the States and Canada. The ones that arrive without cores are what really pisses me off since when they run the last time we take up on cores in split reels and if the print arrived without cores we have to push our cores out, if we didn't we'd need 200 cores a year and we are not going to be the distributors core resupplier
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-22-2008, 02:53 PM:
 
Buy 200 cores a year and bill the guy renting your theatre. They're not that expensive new, and they even show up ebay with some frequency.

Knocking out cores is Film Done Wrong.

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Peter Das (Member # 4690) on 03-22-2008, 08:43 PM:
 
Hi
If anybody wants to get ridoff Bollywood movies, let me know.
I will pay all the shipping and handling charges to ship to me.
if it is in USA, ship to USA location and if it is in Canada, ship to Canada location.
email me at PAY ATTENTION TO THE RULES PETER

[ 03-22-2008, 09:44 PM: Message edited by: Brad Miller ]
 

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Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 03-22-2008, 09:38 PM:
 

quote: Jim Cassedy

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The last one I got came in this metal can-coffin:

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I recognize that shipping box...was it Vanaja, by chance? We received two of those boxes for the San Diego Asian Film Festival last fall...at first I thought Vanaja was a very long film but, as it turns out, there were two prints: one for the festival, and one to go to a local art house for a longer run. I don't recall having problems with the print; the boxes, although heavy as heck, were pretty bombproof compared to the battered, mummified-in-shipping-tape cardboard boxes prints from abroad typically come in.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-22-2008, 11:05 PM:
 
We asked the guy who rents the theatre about replacing the missing cores, he said he doesn't give a shit, that for what he pays the distributor (around $2500 to $3000) he's not going to give them anything.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-23-2008, 08:37 AM:
 
Well, I don't think you should "ask." I would say it's a non-negotiable fee. A cost you must incur. Just charge him, or eat it out of your profits.

Looking over at Christy's Editorial, a 4" core is $1.05. Let's say the average Bollywood film is 10 reels, can you really not afford $10.50 per title? It should be in the noise, and you should be able to cover it with whatever you end up paying for shipping, etc. (And you should be able to find them cheaper used.)

Knocking out cores is simply Film Done Wrong.
There is no excuse for it.

Ideally every booth should have some spare cores on hand "just in case," but we don't live an ideal world, I understand that, and some people don't have an extra 8 cores. But anyone who runs Bollywood on a regular basis doesn't have that excuse. Expect the films to come without cores, and keep a supply.

BTW, Jon, we have that metal box for Vanaja lying around (along with Vanaja). It has degraded some, and has a bunch of sharp corners. Maybe I should extend my advice to Bill and replace it with two ICC cases. Unfortunately those are about $100 each, and they do present their own shipping difficulties with the regular carriers anyhow...

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 03-23-2008, 10:57 AM:
 
It's always a fine line for those of us who play old titles -- how much work hours do you spend on a print that you are paying good money to play against the desire to present the best show possible. There is the level of work needed to make the damn thing run thru the projector, but then how far beyone that do you go -- do you clean a filthy print? Do you hand ink out bad scratches? Do you add SMPTE heads and/or tails when none are present (more of an issue for change-over houses)? Do you send a print back with hubs when it came with none or do you work on broken reels (glueing them together when they won't stay attached to the hubs). Do you send them back in new cardboard boxes when they've arrived in boxes that except for shipping tape, would fall apart? Most times we have to make those decisions based on how what the picture is taking in. I mean in the rep house business we have all seen prints that could take hours of repair work. Unfortunately, economics trounces most considerations, just as the distributor looks at what a print can earn and decides he won't even supply $1.50 hubs, the exhibitor has to make those same decisions about what goes on up in the booth.
 

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Posted by Danial Simmonds (Member # 4638) on 03-23-2008, 11:09 AM:
 
Oh Talking abouy bollywood prints, I got one simple question do they purposely make the prints 3 to 4 hours long? We got to use 2 decks of the platter its too much film i guess... hahahaha

Bollywood films should be a bit more expensive than any other movie expecially if it is a bollywood blockbuster than it cost more like here it is RM10.00 per normal movie after 2 weeks it goes down to RM 8.00 but a bollywood movie sometimes cost RM 12.00 not that much of a difference here.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 03-23-2008, 03:19 PM:
 
Not all of them are super-long. We ran "black and white" which actually seemed quite short and AFIK didn't even have an intermission.

And now we have "Race" which isn't even a very long movie but they put an intermission about 1:15 into it (and it's only like 2:30 in total).
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 03-23-2008, 04:41 PM:
 
Intermissions are part of the cinema culture in that part of the world. The audience expects and from what I have been told, demands it and get super pissed if one isn't there. This is so ingrained that when the studios here are selling their product to that oversease market, they happily put an intermission title in an appropriate place on exports. And that begs the question, why can't they put intermissions in the super-long epic over here, like TITANIC, LORD OF THE RINGS, etc. If the studio can put an intermission in TITANIC when they ship it overseas and they don't seem to be concerned that it will "degrade the integrity of the director's vision," (blah, blah, blah), for the millons of Indians who are watching it, how come they can't be considerate enough about the American audiences who have to sit holding themselves so they don't have an accident sitting thru three hours of a film? And we say....directors and studio execs are full of themselves?
 

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Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 03-23-2008, 05:13 PM:
 
I do a lot of service work for these types of theaters. The movies are very long and VERY LOUD. There is always an intermission. There is also a buffet style table setup in the lobby with food. One of the guy has at least 100 prints in his garage. All in burlap bags. It's hysterical. Even funnier is during the movie, people and kids are walking around in the theater talking.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 03-23-2008, 07:38 PM:
 
Frank,

You're right that the distributors are being hypocritical about thus, but how is that an example of "begging the question"?


 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-23-2008, 11:04 PM:
 
If the guy who owns the print and the one who rents it don't care, why should I? From the look of it, if I replaced the cores, the next dump will just throw them out anyway, I learned this a couple years ago the hard way when I did replace 2 missing cores in a film that nearly filled the theatre, the film was brought back 2 weeks later and all the cores were missing.

Intermissions are expected by the older Indian customers, the younger ones (under 30) don't seem to care. Last summer we ran a film that was 87 minutes and didn't have an intermission and the customers screamed at us and the presenter for not having one. Now he says to put one in anything over 45 minutes.

[ 03-24-2008, 09:35 AM: Message edited by: Bill Enos ]
 

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Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 03-24-2008, 12:48 PM:
 

quote: Frank Angel

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Intermissions are part of the cinema culture in that part of the world.

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quote: Jim Cassedy

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("Jodhaa Akbar" - A stunningly beautiful, pristine print, I might add. Best print quality and color I've seen on ANY feature for a loooong time. 213minutes + intermission)

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Lucky bastard. The second half of the print I got was scratched every which way and quite dirty as well.
 

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Posted by Fred Tucker (Member # 4482) on 03-24-2008, 04:01 PM:
 
Chris,
Did you have fun finding the intermission on Race? I missed it for the first print only to find it on the second.
 

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Posted by Tim Asten (Member # 4051) on 03-24-2008, 08:47 PM:
 
Almost all of our Bollys are brand new and quite a few of the prints are of superb quality. A recent one we had (Jodhaa Akbar I think it was) was stunning. At almost 3.5 hours long, It was tack sharp, bright, rock steady, had vivid colour and the DD tracks had very low error rates. The print was from Adlabs in Bombay I think. However they do come in these horrible Hessian cardboard boxes and half of them never get picked up, as some here have reported. It just goes to show that we may blame the equipment when half the time its the prints that are sh*t (Stand up Deluxe). If Bollywood can churn out quality prints why cant the rest of the world? Or at least Europe. (Apart from Narnia, which was excellent ). Tim
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-24-2008, 09:02 PM:
 
I for one haven't complained about the printing quality. It's the physical prints that have made the rounds to a few thousand playdates prior to my receiving it that makes me detest Bollywood shit.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 03-24-2008, 11:59 PM:
 
I didn't build up Race so no I never dealt with finding the intermission. But it is on screen for a very short time so I could see why you'd miss it.

And when I was waiting for the intermission to come up to thread the second half I noticed a typo in the subtitles. Instead of saying "[something] is a big amount of money" it says "bog amount of money." That it unless my dyslexia was hitting me big-time, which is also possible.
 

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Posted by Dwayne Benallie (Member # 4443) on 03-25-2008, 02:09 AM:
 
At my old theatre we used to get a lot of Bollywood screenings, actually it was every Sunday and Wednesday I believe. Well at one point we had four prints sitting at our location and I became frustrated and contacted the screening rep and told him to pick them up. He sent his assistant over and pick up three out of four and then later that night he came back for the fourth one, after i called again. This time the rep came out and pick it up and wasn't really happy about it, I explain we're no storage facility, etc. He takes his print and while walking back to his car he just stops and places this huge metal box with foreign writing all over it and runs to his car. I have to point this out too, this was Saturday night in the middle of downtown Tempe, with a lot of foot traffic. It didn't help that the screening rep had Middle Eastern facial features, sure enough the bomb squad come out and local news, helicopters the whole deal. We had to stop all of our movies and escort all the customers through the back doors per police orders, it was a messy ordeal. I wanted them to blow up the Bollywood print, but I knew that all the managers would get in trouble with didn't say anything. We told the police what it was and gave the contact info of the screening rep guy and yeah a Bollywood print was saved that night. At the end, we all laughed about it and no one got into trouble. The End.
 

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Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-25-2008, 06:18 AM:
 
Would using the small cores that trailers come on be better than nothing? Those are free and most theatres usually have tons of them on hand.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 03-25-2008, 08:06 AM:
 
While those are better than nothing... they break REALLY easily as anyone would know.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-25-2008, 08:21 AM:
 
Honestly, it's not clear they are much better than knocking out cores.

A really tight wind is not good for film (though it's not as bad for polyester as it is for acetate). Knocking out cores is a huge inconvenience for the next theatre, and probably encourages incidental damage in handling, but doesn't actually physically damage the film in of itself.

So which is worse, the potential damage from mishandling due to lack of cores, or the overtight winding from a 1" trailer sleeve?

I guess on the balance I'd guess the trailer sleeve would be least damaging overall, but I don't feel that with strong confidence

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Paul Gordon (Member # 3320) on 03-25-2008, 11:02 AM:
 
If anyone wants cores I'll send you a box, just pay the shipping... I work at the National Archives in Canada in the film preseevation lab. We have 1000's of cores, 4" and 3" 35mm and 1" - 4" 16mm ones that we just chuck in the recyle bin. Everything gets put on our own archival cores so the old ones are tossed.
 

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Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 03-26-2008, 02:31 AM:
 
This is the case that's been hanging out in our booth for at least a month now. It was for a rental - one showing. All kinds of Jack Bauer jokes were made.



Our clients actually thought this DTS disc would work - and were upset when it was explained to them that it would drop to SR at some point (even after seeing the disc themselves). Apparently we don't have the latest disc reading technology...


 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 03-26-2008, 11:00 AM:
 
I wouldn't even want to run the DTS at all at that point. The disk would be weighted wrong (not evenly) and wouldn't spin flat. It would possibly hit inside the drive and break off more stuff and possibly F-up your unit.
 

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Posted by Jarrad Salmon (Member # 3818) on 03-31-2008, 04:38 AM:
 
I have had mixed experiences with Bollywood.

More often than not the print comes in well used and abused... Common things are: Oily prints, no bobbins, no heads/tails, scratches and general film/perferation damage. I even had an 8 spool print arrive an hour before the rostered screening!

That said, I had a print come in recently that was brand new. Was also quality film stock. Rare as rocking horse
 

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