Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Showing Trailers in the Lobby

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Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 05-03-2001, 12:01 PM:

We may have covered this before, but I couldn't find anything during a quick search ...
(In Ground Level that is)

Anyway, I'd like to have your opinions regarding TV's mounted in the lobby for showing trailers. As a projectionist I personally don't care, but I can identify with the complaints from other staff members.

First, there are two TV's, one mounted above the box office, the other above the concession cash register. The sound is pumped through the lobby speakers as well as the unit speakers. This does make it difficult for our older employees to hear the customers in both locations during the showing of action trailers.

Second, many of the trailers are downright tastless. I never realized how stupid and sickening the trailers for "Animal" and "Dr. Dolittle II" are. Think about this: If NATO made the much-publicized statement of no R rated trailers on PG films, then shouldn't these TV's be out the window too. Granted, the above films are not R rated, but we're showing restricted previews on our particular tape in our lobby (things that make you go hmmmmm).

Lastly, and this is more personal for our folks, that money could have been spent on other items. Our ice machine is from 1986 and on it's last leg, the stand needs more counterspace, and I need about $1000 in parts upstairs. None of our customers really pay much attention to the TV's anyway, but we HAD TO HAVE 'EM.

Let me know about your views on this marketing tool. Do you like it, hate it, or are indifferent? Don't get me wrong, it has its good points and its bad points. I'm just saying lets spend the money where the money is needed.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-03-2001, 12:48 PM:

It must work, since it's been done for years and no sign of slowing down.

I don't like it, however. You can't get the full effect from a trailer unless you're actually paying attention to it, and people in line or in the lobby are busy talking, looking around, etc. or the area is too noisy to hear the sound, which means the sound gets cranked up louder, making it noisier, etc.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-03-2001, 01:23 PM:

Can't do much about the content of the trailers, but the problem of hearing the sound clearly while in line without having to turn up the volume to deafening levels would be helped by using multiple speakers closer to the audience. Sort of like they use at Disney World, Universal Studios Tour, and other theme parks as you wait in line.

To keep a "movie theme", how about some classic drive-in in-car speakers mounted on the posts used to hold the line ropes? That way, no one would be more than a few feet from the speakers, and the volume could be kept at a comfortable level.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-03-2001, 01:35 PM:

Just a personal "rant" on the quality of video displays and "video walls" in theatres --- I find the quality is often

The impression a theatre makes on the audience begins while waiting in line and in the lobby. Do the best you can to maintain quality in the video and audio display. Use a direct video feed to the monitors, not RF. Use a distribution amp to maintain proper video signal levels if multiple monitors are used. If a VCR is used, maintain it to keep the heads clean and drop-out free, and tracking properly. Adjust the monitors to have matched color and tone scale, ESPECIALLY in video walls. Avoid showing copies-of-copies VHS tapes, as the quality is .

IMHO, if theatres maintain cinema as poorly as they maintain today's video displays, digital cinema has a tough time ahead.

Posted by Doug Willming (Member # 728) on 05-03-2001, 03:32 PM:

As a company that provides trailer tapes for showing in lobbies, I thought I'd make a comment or two. I agree that some of the trailers we get that are green band are tasteless, and I have thought about reactions by patrons with children to some of this material. However, I have the same complaint when watching "Star Trek Voyager" with my 9 year old son on UPN, where ads for their stupid "reality" shows (i.e. Chains of Love)are run constantly through what I consider a family show. We occasionally get red-banded trailers from the studios which I don't even put on our list.

That said, if theatres are going to advertise in their lobbies, I as a moviegoer would much rather see trailers than anything else. Most of the newer theatres I've been in have done away with the expensive video walls and gone to 27 - 35" monitors, sometimes spread across the lobby or snack bar area. I think these make more sense, since they last longer, do not require the maintenance the video walls require, and are easier to see if you're standing close to them. I agree that the sound is usually either impossible to hear or just adds to the noise level of the theatre. Most trailers have so much visually in the way of action and titles that the sound could just be turned off without losing anything.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-03-2001, 03:37 PM:

John, about VHS machines being used for these types of applications: Most stores and such that I've seen that use VHS VCRs for playback of music videos, commercials, movie trailers, and other material on a repetitive basis frequently have serious problems with their video quality. VCRs and video tapes are not made for that type of application. Even if the VCR is built to take that type of continuous use, the video tapes themselves cannot. They get wrinkled, creased, scratched, worn, and so on, creating all types of playback problems. I've seen too many VHS tapes playing in stores showing horizontal bars of noise, excessive snow, jitter, flagging, and skew. Once the tape is damaged, it is going to give a poor impression until a new one is substituted.

If the organizations (theatres, stores, etc.) using prerecorded video for this type of purpose cannot afford to have the repetitive material put on DVD and have the player hooked up to decent quality, properly-calibrated monitors using at least an S-Video cable, they don't need to be using video at all.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-03-2001, 03:45 PM:

Hey John, I've helped install some of those awesome video displays in lobbies with Ian

Price! Ian is actually the reason the monitors are so bad because it was his job to make sure they all matched. Since this is Ian

we are talking about, that is why one monitor will be green, another purple, etc...

Just kidding, but I agree on the quality of the monitors. And I feel for the staff who must be driven insane by the constantly repeating trailers and ads. At least UA used LaserDisc players instead of VHS.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 05-03-2001, 05:04 PM:

I just ran them in the lobby (6000 foot reels) using a BX-100, RCA-1050, a Peerless lamp equipped with a RV Driving light, an old Altec Vacuum Tube amplifier, a Shure Microphone mixer, a video game power supply for exciter power, and an old beat-up Radio Smack speaker.

People went nuts over that set-up, and gathered around the projector and a little screen I made to watch the projector and trailers.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-03-2001, 05:12 PM:

Oddly, I've never seen the video thing in a theatre lobby. I'm curious about the economics of this: do the distributors pay the theatre to show the trailer tapes? Or does the theatre pay for the tapes and equipment itself? Or do distributors pay for equipment and tapes, but no cash to the exhibitor himself?

Some Regal theatres have a rear-projection 35mm setup in the lobby, but I'm assuming that they just order 35mm trailers as usual and run those, and that no money actually changes hands there, except for the shipping for the trailers that they order.

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 05-03-2001, 08:11 PM:

Way to go Paul!

and a very nice Altec tube amp it is by the way

We have a [broken] Electrosonic video wall in Sebastopol that we ran our trailers on until it began to not work properly...

If I had any say in the issue i would also go with a vintage projector running 6000' reels of trailers as well. its the only way to go...

Aaron

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 05-04-2001, 12:13 AM:

Brad:

In our chain, the cost of the equipment, upkeep and tapes comes directly out of the theatre's P&L. I can tell you, dropping $85+ for a 1/2 VHS tape at least once a month adds up. The company we use has begun to produce DVD's now, but they want damn near $200 for each one! When I asked why they were so much, I was told that the video compression/tranfer method was more time consuming and costly in DVD production. Whether or not it's true, I don't know. I'm no production/transfer major. What I do know is that were they reasonably priced, I would order them in a minute!

A GREAT advantage to DVD loops would be the fact that one could actually put MORE trailers from EACH distributor on the DVD which would increase overall exposure for each film! Of course, since this makes perfect sense to me, and you know, I'm just a lowly multi=plex manager, there's no way in hell it would ever work out that way...

If I had more insight, I'd be interested in setting up a little production/transfer/distribution company of my own... Especially if there are SUCKERS out there willing to pay damn near $200 bucks for a DVD!!!!

DOUG:

Mayeb you should contact me offline to discuss future potential ordering from your company??? Jasonwan@sccoast.net

Posted by Andrew Neff (Member # 844) on 05-04-2001, 04:39 AM:

A theatre that I have managed for several times has used lobby trailers since the late 70's. 35mm. projected onto a mirror in the booth with what looked like a very big tv in the lobby. The owner even had a platter installed just for the lobby. If you think 10 or 12 reels are fun to set up try 3 hours of trailers. It was a real pain but the people in line at the candystand enjoyed it.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-04-2001, 07:13 AM:

$85 per tape?!?! How much do "video walls" cost? I'm sure they're not cheap... It seems like it might almost be cheaper to buy a brand-new Simplex or Century and run trailers in 35mm (particularly since there is no need for a platter or fancy sound system). Maintenance would be cheaper, too, I suspect, although I agree that splicing together an hours' worth of trailers probably wouldn't be much fun.

Posted by Doug Willming (Member # 728) on 05-04-2001, 08:45 AM:

Well, Jason, we charge $39 per 1/2 hour tape original and $12 per dub. With our program, you get to pick which trailers you want and we put stuff like policy trailers and advertising on for no extra charge for theatres that want to pick up extra revenue from local advertisers. You can go to our web site at www.WRonyourscreens.com/30min.htm for a current list. Some of our customers order 2 tapes per month so they have a backup when the first tape starts looking bad - occasionally, I get complaints from people that have run these tapes day in and day out for several weeks that the tape isn't holding up! Hey, it's videotape! Rent a tape from Blockbuster that's had 100 passes put on it and see what it looks like.

We don't offer DVD yet for the reason you've mentioned - price. DVD's are still expensive and time consuming to produce in small quantities. If we had a circuit that needed several hundred copies every month, maybe it would be cost effective, but many of our customers are people with 1 - 4 theatres. They are usually looking for the cheapest option (we offer SVHS at a $10 surcharge, and SVHS machines are cheap now, but I still have no takers currently). I get requests for DVD, but we can't offer it for $19.95 like a studio that has made hundreds of thousands of copies of the same title. A one-off DVD is expensive and time consuming. The studios don't give us the trailers in a digitized form, which means we would have to digitize and compress each trailer we get (and we get them in different tape formats). Also, it would be difficult to just do one master DVD per month with every current trailer we have on it, and just give everyone a copy of that and let them do their own programming. For one thing, a lot of them would probably not know how to program the DVD player to play the selected titles (and nobody wants to advertise a film in their lobby that will be playing across the street at a competitor's theatre). Also, we get trailers from studios constantly, and try to use the most current version. A DVD master would go out of date quickly.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-04-2001, 11:00 AM:

SVHS would certainly be a step up in qualilty over VHS, especially if the S-video output was used.

Digital mastering involving compression "authoring" is NOT inexpensive. DVDs are relatively inexpensive when the mastering costs can be prorated over a pressing of several thousand units, but the price climbs dramatically on smaller runs.

Posted by Phil Connolly (Member # 465) on 05-04-2001, 12:22 PM:

I worked on a DVD project recently, the mastering was about £300 ($500ish) for a ten minute program and then burnt DVD-R copies were £30 ($50) each. I have seen short run DVD copies for as little as $18 each.

Or you could get one of those nice Apple G4 DVD-R packages.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-04-2001, 12:49 PM:

Would VCD (video CD) be an option for this? I know that the picture quality is horrible (worse than VHS), but the cost to burn a VCD is the same as any regular music CD (i.e. under $.50) and the disks wouldn't wear out with continuous play for a few weeks...

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-04-2001, 01:33 PM:

Maybe the idea of a "vintage" 35mm projector projecting trailers onto a moderate sized screen in the lobby isn't so bad after all. You could even build the lobby decor around the theme -- sort of an "industrial" booth look. Instead of running reel-to-reel or off a platter, loop the print and run it overhead (out of reach of patrons) across the lobby stretched between rollers. Ten minutes of trailers would only need about 10 rollers to guide the film back-and-forth over a 100-foot lobby. (Don't forget to use a film cleaner). Watching the print get transported overhead could be as interesting as what's on the screen.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 05-04-2001, 02:52 PM:

Yes, John - that would look neat with the endless loop. But, two things come to mind:

1. The largest theater chain in the world has a very stiff upper lip (along with others) and would probably never try it.

2. Too many theaters have all they can do to get the movie on the screen right in the first attempt. I can see a disaster coming with an endless loop system.

When I had my setup in the lobby, I did not allow others to run my machine for two reasons:

1. It was my personal property.

2. Most importantly, I was always afraid that if I let someone else run it, they would forget to lock the upper and lower spindles to prevent the 6,000 foot reels from falling out and land on someone's head or foot.

Perhaps a platter might be the answer.

I do like the idea of a separate set-up in the booth where it is projecting into the lobby with a set of mirrors.

But, from my experience, people were more entertained by watching the projector being threaded, being started, and run. The patrons loved to ask questions on how it all works, and how we make it all come together.

We took great pride by interacting with the customer and adding a personal touch to their movie going experience.

It never failed us, as we believed that entertainment should start as soon as they step through the door and buy a ticket.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-04-2001, 03:28 PM:

Paul, you're correct that the personal interaction as you threaded the projector in the lobby was an important part of the "show".

idea.

Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 05-05-2001, 11:34 PM:

The theater that I am currently at uses a TV monitor in the lobby, however the theater that I worked at before actually has a projector in the lobby that is used to show movie trailers. The projector is positioned in a balcony above the box office and projects the trailers on to a screen above the usher post. The sound is played on lobby speakers both inside and outside the building. Although the lobby is a bit too bright during the day to get the full effect, it looks really good at night. So it works out pretty well.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 07-17-2001, 02:55 PM:

We've had trailers in our lobby for the 3 years that we've been open, and it works well. We use 32" TVs and a tape that we get from a distributor (the name escapes me at the moment).
Our only problem is receiving tapes before the trailers get old (at one point, only two movies on the tape hadn't been released while we played the tape!). We can fax in a request for a new one, but it usually takes about 3 weeks.

Posted by Will Cook (Member # 928) on 07-17-2001, 06:23 PM:

We just use some mounted 24" monitors with VHS tapes, but we do not play the sound from the trailers in the lobby for most of the previously mentioned reasons (too loud, not loud enough, distracting, etc.) Instead we just play normal lobby music or movie soundtracks. Customers don't seem to mind the lack of audio on the trailers and people still seem to watch them.

Posted by Freddie Dobbs (Member # 915) on 08-13-2001, 08:31 PM:

Or you could do like a chain I visited in Detroit, they built a special platform and inclosed it with glass, put in all new Strong stuff and projected trailers on a screen in the lobby.

Posted by Ky Boyd (Member # 23) on 08-20-2001, 08:30 PM:

One great advantage to running real trailers off of 6,000's in the lobby as opposed to the video wall system is the ability of the theatre to control the content of the presentation. Why would a theatre want to promote movies that are not going to play in that theatre? I've never understood why some theatres do promotion work for their competitors. With 6,000's it would be real easy to pull off old trailers and add on new trailers as materials arrive and bookings/dates change. I too like the idea of the show in the lobby. As Ian has said in other thread's, the show starts on the sidewalk.

When I lived in Cincinnati there was a USA theatre (now part of of Loews, I think) that had the booth for 2 of its auditoriums up 1/2 story and totally visible from the lobby. I always thought that was cool. People were fascinated to see how it all worked. Of course, the downside to that is that you can't swear when something or someone screws up. Guess that's what the glass walls are for.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 08-21-2001, 11:52 PM:

Ky, the glass walls never stopped my voice when something screwed up. As a matter of fact, I remember one time at Cinema 5 in Mount vernon, WA in 1984, maybe 1985, I stepped on the return film path of No. 3 and naturally, the fail-safe shut the machine down.

The audience accepted tha fact I was off the screen, and all of the sudden they started laughing. Well, they heard a loud voice yelling F***! The walls never stopped that one. I guess it must have been a classic.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-22-2001, 01:03 AM:

Yes Ky, I used to work for USA Cinemas wich prior to that was Mid-States Theaters. They used to be owned by two brothers. One of them came up with the idea of building mutiplexes and putting some of the projection equipment up onto platforms in the lobby. THey even went as far as to put these boxes on the back of the lamphouses that had lights in them. They didn't do a damn thing.

These machines were the hardest to keep clean do to all the popcorn oil and cigarette smoke in the lobby. People used to sit on the steps to these platforms and get in your way trying to get up there. But, if it wasn't for the abbility to see these machines in action, I wouldn't be doing this today.

Loews did purchas USA cinema in 1988 and later sold off the Cincy and Louisville theaters to National Amusements in the early 90's. A lot of the old theaters are closed now. I think the Northgate, Kenwood Town Center, and Florence mall in northern Kentucky are the only ones open right now of the old ones.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 08-22-2001, 04:16 PM:

Yes, Darryl. I think that was the Rose Theater (or something like that) in Portland, Oregon.

It also had speakers along side of the screen, and the center channel was above the screen. I was not very impressed with it.

Paul

Posted by Kristin Wahlund (Member # 922) on 09-25-2001, 07:26 AM:

At my theatre, Regal 16 in eagan, we have a preview screen in our lobby. Its about twenty feet long and 10 feet high. It uses a century projector which our GM claims in broken so we dont have to use it. Its really not so we use it sometimes when she isnt around, its quite cool, the projector is on the backside of the screen towards the top of the ceiling. its pretty neat.