Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Paramount Trailer Package on Iron Man 2

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Posted by Paul Looker (Member # 5420) on 05-06-2010, 03:33 PM:

I just wanted to chime in about some shady business. For those of you that have to deal with it today, and even for those of you that don't, enclosed in the locked can of Iron Man 2 prints is the "Paramount Trailer Package". They give you a run time of 5 minutes and a note saying they replace the traditional attached (2:30) and enclosed (2:30) trailers. I'm not going to program anything if I don't know what it is.

So I took the trailer package and started winding it down onto an empty reel so that I could identify them. The first trailer is Shrek 4. The second trailer is Avatar the last Airbender. The third trailer is the new JJ Abrams Super 8 thing. This letter enclosed with the print totally leads me to believe that there are only 2 (2:30) trailers in this "package". Now, run time on trailers is not a big concern for me, or my customers, but how many we have can and does get frequent complaints. I used to regularly get people that would count how many were on there and come out and complain if it would pass three or four. So if I programmed this package thinking it was only two trailers and then added another one or two on to it, two only if I felt like pushing the limits of my customers patience, I would have been getting complaints because I would actually have been running five where I thought I only had four, or four where I only thought I had three.

It's stupid I know, and a little thing really to be so annoyed about but don't these people understand that I kind of need to know what I'm programming on this? If Super 8 is anything like Cloverfield its going to be rated R and that's something I get flack for a lot of times, programming trailers for R rated movies on anything but R rated movies. I'll do it in this case but I should really know whats coming so that I can be prepared to deal with any outcry.

It's just shady business. I guess that's nothing new. Thank you film-tech forum for allowing me a place to vent.

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 05-07-2010, 08:06 AM:

I'd worry more about run-time, which you could probably figure out mathematically; with some formula.

Polyester film is I think 2 or 3- 1000s of an inch thick, subtract the diameter of the core and you cna come up with a rough running time.

The smart customers care about trailer TIME. Most chains try to keep it under 15 ish minutes.

Posted by Robert Minichino (Member # 3495) on 05-07-2010, 09:56 AM:

To get film length in feet (approximately) from the core diameter and outer diameter:

ID = core diameter (inches)
OD = wound film diameter (inches)
k = pi/(48*0.0055)
k = 12 for 0.0055" thick film

L = k (OD^2 - ID^2)

To get the diameter from the length:

OD = sqrt(L/k + ID^2)

To get the running time in minutes from the length in feet:

t = L/90

To get the length from the running time:

L = 90*t

Posted by Jonathan Smith (Member # 5609) on 05-07-2010, 10:03 AM:

Thanks Robert, I knew the OD - ID part, but that and the rest of it is much more concise than the one I had.

So 35mm Estar is actually 5.5mils/thous (~140µm) thick?

Only problem is those damned cheapie plastic "cores" they ship now are often deformed. Anyone know, OTOH, what the circumpherence or diameter of one of them, before they are mangled, is?

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 05-07-2010, 12:50 PM:

Well, first off, Cloverfield was rated PG-13, not R, so you can stop worrying about that part of your concern.

As for the Super 8 trailer, I don't think it's so much shady business as wanting to keep just a little bit of mystery in this age of over-information. The trailer does a teaser trailer is supposed to do, get you excited over something new while keeping some of the mystery alive.

I know I am intrigued.

Posted by Jonathan Althaus (Member # 5042) on 05-07-2010, 01:34 PM:

I don't see why there was so much confusion in the combo trailer. We get them attached to prints quite frequently and nobody freaks out. Maybe I just don't get the point about the rant.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-07-2010, 01:37 PM:

quote: Jonathan Althaus
I don't see why there was so much confusion in the combo trailer.

The confusion was over the contents of the trailer pack. The original note in the can didn't say.

Par did send out an email detailing what was in the trailer pack, and the slip that came in the can DID tell the 5-minute run time.

I have a feeling the content info was supposed to be on the original memo but somebody goofed and it didn't get on there.

Posted by Jonathan Althaus (Member # 5042) on 05-07-2010, 01:51 PM:

So if you didn't know what was in it, play it through. Thats what I did. All I got annoyed with were the multiple emails and phone calls yesterday about what it was and how to handle it.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 05-08-2010, 03:02 AM:

so here's my beef with this. our trailers are programmed by some higher authority, i don't know exactly who, but each week i get a sheet with an ad/trailer lineup for each film we have. on the trailer list it said "untitled paramount project", to arrive in the cans. now, sometimes, especially with the ads, the title on the list doesn't exactly match what it says on the label, and sometimes it's quite far off, so some guesswork is involved. i pulled this "paramount trailer package" out of the cans and figured it was the best match. we got iron man 2 on all screens and this pushed the trailer count on each print to 7! because of all the locked can bullshit and thursday midnight shows i couldn't pre-screen so we showed excessive trailers to hundreds of people and i had to stay super-late (a 14 1/2-hour shift) and pull those extra trailers off afterwards. and the movie isn't even called "untitled paramount project". it's called super 8. just put the name of the fucking movie on the label already, people.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-08-2010, 08:51 AM:

I got the same trailer schedule as Carl. I decided not to show it, as the trailer schedule listed the running time as 1:30, while the actual running time was clearly much longer.

Part of the problem with these combo trailers is that it is not possble to show them if your trailer policy is to only show trailers for films which are confirmed bookings.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-08-2010, 10:31 AM:

Paramount did a good job with this one though, there are green bands at each trailer in the combo as opposed to only one at the beginning. If you had to only run the Super 8 trailer for whatever reason, you would be able to wind through it looking for the green band and separate it.

This as opposed to winding through the green band and not seeing it, meaning by some corporate policy the trailer cannot be shown and goes into the trash.

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 05-08-2010, 01:56 PM:

I was annoyed as well that the package trailer was not labeled. Fortunately it only took a couple of minutes to see what was on it. My concern is programming two copies of the trailer! All in all a small annoyance in the land of many.

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 05-08-2010, 07:09 PM:

Did anybody else receive a trailer pack comprised only of Super 8. More specifically, the trailer for Super 8 printed exactly the same, three times in a row, and labeled as the Paramount pack. One of the theaters in our company did. They programed it, but realized the mistake when an employee screened it early Friday morning. (We have two prints, but only one sold enough seats for the 12:01 showing).

quote: Paul Looker
Now, run time on trailers is not a big concern for me, or my customers, but how many we have can and does get frequent complaints. I used to regularly get people that would count how many were on there and come out and complain if it would pass three or four.

I refuse to ever program anymore than four trailers . . . and that's even pushing it.

Posted by Michael Voiland (Member # 5386) on 05-09-2010, 12:56 AM:

I cut out the green bands and they didn't do a very good job as shreck and super 8 had no frame lines in the black well air bender did.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-09-2010, 02:40 AM:

How shocking that they left off frame lines on something they intended you to never touch and just play as-is... [Wink]

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-09-2010, 08:05 AM:

I am with Scott on this; I still only play trailers when they are used to advertise titles that will play on MY screens, i.e., only if I plan to book said title. If a trailer is attached for a film that we are NOT going to play, then it automatically becomes an advert for studio product, not for my theatre.

Now if a company came to a theatre and wanted to run an ad for their product, say, Honda or Brutt or Kay Jewelers, they would be handed a rate card and they would have to PAY for screen ad time, yes? They don't (and wouldn't expect) to get free advertising time for their product. Same way they don't go to a TV station and expect to get free ad time for their movie ad/trailer. And likewise no theatre is running Screen Ads for free. How is this any different when the studios hand the theatre an ad/trailer and expect that to get screen ad time for free?

Oh, I forgot....that not an issue for us because our policy is that we don't play adverts at all...for any product...ever. In other words, trailers for titles that we are not booking are off to the dead trailer box. We are an equal opportunity screen ad denier.

BTW one of the rationale for not running trailers for titles we are not playing came from right from Disney's own Richard Cook who years ago was a VP at the time & we had to book direct with him thru the Burbank office; he would refuse to let us run trailers for Disney up-coming releases because he said it could "possibly cause confusion with audiences" into them thinking they could see that title on our screen, but he hadn't yet decided if he was going to let us play that title. Idiot. Well, that works both ways. I don't want to "confuse" my audience. And given the already mentioned audience annoyance factor when playing too many trailers, I sure am not going to test an audience's patience by running trailers that don't benefit me at all.

Posted by Jerome Holmes (Member # 5013) on 05-09-2010, 05:21 PM:

A peculiar thing for us was that the trailer pack did NOT arrive with the film. We got a fax in the evening on Thursday (around 9pm, before our 12am set of iron man showings), saying that we received trailer packs for each of our prints of iron man. The fax went on to say that we "program these trailers as instructed by our home office," not dictating a necessity.

Naturally I was perturbed that they gave us this information so last minute. All of our prints had been built up by 6pm and moved to their respective screens. I'm trying to figure out why they didn't include those trailers with our prints... It would have made much more sense if they wanted them played.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 05-09-2010, 11:24 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
I got the same trailer schedule as Carl. I decided not to show it, as the trailer schedule listed the running time as 1:30, while the actual running time was clearly much longer.

i noticed that as well. but then, it's not unusual for the running times to be off on our trailer schedule. oh, i knew somebody had goofed by programming this, but i've learned to disengage my common sense when building trailer packs and just follow the sheet. otherwise i get a talking to.