Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: El Caballero de la Noche (spanish for "don't be a dumbass")

This is topic El Caballero de la Noche (spanish for "don't be a dumbass") in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-19-2008, 05:22 PM:

This has got to be one of the funniest stories I have heard in awhile, so much that I feel it deserves its own thread.

So there is this theater that is opening The Dark Knight who receives a brand new print for the national US opening yesterday. They receive the print on Wednesday and build it and check screen it like good projectionists do...except they weren't exactly good at their job.

Now this story has nothing to do with their building skills. There were no out of frame splices or reels on backwards. No they didn't dump the film onto the floor or damage it in any way. This story isn't even about how the projectionist screening the film fell asleep for a few reels during it and didn't notice there was a reel on upside down. Nope, this one is so much better.

Thursday night were the midnight shows that all of the Batman nerds came out in abundance to attend. Another one of the chain's theaters across town is selling out their midnight shows of Batman like mad while this theater isn't doing squat for ticket sales...so they loan them one of their prints for the midnight show so the bigger, more profitable theater can run it on more screens for that midnight performance. A nice gesture...well, sort of.

So the bigger theater across town is running the smaller theater's print interlocked on 3 screens. Imagine the fun those managers had when suddenly about 2 hours into the movie 3 auditoriums full of really pissed off Batman fans come out of the theater because the movie suddenly started talking in Spanish!

Let's back up a minute.

During the check screening at the lower performing theater, at the end of the movie the words "El Caballero de la Noche" appeared on the screen where it should say "The Dark Knight". Being the lazy projectionist, he decided that it wasn't worth his effort to exchange the reel since is played fine and the only thing wrong was the spanish credits, even though it is supposedly company policy to replace a reel for any problems. (I don't have a copy of their policy handbook, so my info there could be outdated...that isn't the issue at hand though). I mean, after all that was the last reel of the print, and that is such a hard thing to swap out, right? [Roll Eyes]

At this point I'm sure many of you can figure out what happened. Yes that's right, the theater that check screened the print played it in dts...and then they loaned it to a theater with Dolby digital sound. As would be expected, the dts ran fine because they weren't playing the soundtrack on the print, they were listening to the dts discs...and reel 7 was in fact from a spanish print!

The morals of the story are a plenty.

*ALWAYS check screen your prints...even if this means sitting through the next Lindsey Lohan or Will Ferrell movie. I understand that is one of the most painful things that a projectionist will ever have to endure, but it is after all part of the job.

*NEVER assume that a brand new print is fine. Don't get cocky about it. Just because YOU didn't make a mistake building it is no excuse for you having a 'tard attitude regarding being a lazy twat and not check screening it before you present it to the public. Labs and depots DO make mistakes!

*If your leaders say "El Caballero de la Noche", be suspicious. Be very suspicious.

*Finally, never EVER screen a print in dts!

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 07-19-2008, 05:42 PM:

Some parts of Latin America opened the film prior to the USA.....

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-19-2008, 05:51 PM:

Daryl: Please apply your "Magic Condensing Machine" to Brad's loooong/wordy/confusing post! Thanks bub! [beer]

Posted by James Whittle (Member # 4864) on 07-19-2008, 06:11 PM:

wow! a few red faces in that cinema now!

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 07-19-2008, 07:16 PM:

Do'h

I always screen my prints in SRD since I do not have DTS in all houses and I don't want to miss some SRD issue that will be noticeable in few weeks. DTS can be checked by the booth and assuming that there is no drops during the show, everything is ok.

Once I was screening Mystic River and one of the reel was in German. Was fun because I took few moments to realize that it was not an intentional effect! [Smile]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-19-2008, 10:06 PM:

Brad: Once made an emergency sound call because no one could understand the sound; repaired itself while driving over. Reel 4 was Spanish; rest English. Louis

Posted by Geena Phillips (Member # 3726) on 07-23-2008, 08:14 PM:

I was disappointed to find that, in the Spanish dub, he's called "Batman" and not el Hombre Murcielago. [Razz]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-24-2008, 12:51 AM:

quote:
Daryl: Please apply your "Magic Condensing Machine" to Brad's loooong/wordy/confusing post!

Allow me:

Dumbass at theatre A didn't realize that part of his Bat-print had a Spanish soundtrack, even though it had Spanish titles at the end, and since they were playing the print in DTS the Spanish never came to light until the print was loaned to theatre B, where it was interlocked onto three screens of midnight shows. Wackiness ensued.

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-25-2008, 03:40 PM:

Thanks Mike! I understand it now! [beer]

Posted by Michael McGovern (Member # 4807) on 07-25-2008, 05:29 PM:

That's a pretty bizarre freak occurrence, I could totally see how it could have gotten overlooked. While I do agree that screening prints is very important, speaking as someone who works for a corporate owned megaplex, time and logistical constraints often make doing so impossible. When most of the management staff is already scheduled for their full 40 hour schedule, finding time to screen movies is difficult, and paying overtime is usually frowned upon greatly. I wouldn't blame the projectionists for screw ups like this, I would blame the constraints placed upon them that cause it to happen.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 07-25-2008, 06:20 PM:

It's easy to catch sound issue in DTS from the booth: while the player does not drop to SRD there will be no issues in the screens.
This is not true with SRD: a bad lab splice can cause mute sound in the screen that DTS will cover with its 3/4 sec of flywheel.
Then, if you don't have DTS in all of your screens the SRD issue will come out after several weeks, when the print will be moved to smaller screens.

This is a good reason not to screen movies in DTS.