Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: usher cinema check's?

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Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 01-11-2002, 06:45 AM:

my pet hate is, everytime i go to see a film at a hoyt's cinema, the usher will walk in and then walk directly in front of the screen with his torch on, then walk up and down the aisles (some walk only in front of the screen), i find it to be the most distracting thing an usher could do.
is this common practise in cinema?
when i check the cinema i will enter (at the rear) without a sound and stand in a discreet spot and check sound, focus, temp and patron's, if anything a couple of people might feel my presence but that's it!.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 01-11-2002, 01:02 PM:

Our ushers walk toward the screen but never in front of it. I feel walking down the aisle is important because in bigger houses the temperature can vary from the front to the back. Also disturbances as people talking and feet on the seats can sometimes be hard to spot from the back.

That being said, our ushers only walk down the aisles 2 or 3 times per show. The rest of the checks should be done standing in the back in my opinion.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 01-11-2002, 04:44 PM:

Some companys have programs where a person sitting in the audience may be scoring the theatre. And if they dont see the checker then they get a bad score, So the theatre has to make the checker "noticable" not saying its right but, you gotta do what you gotta do when you work for a big chain sometimes...

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 01-11-2002, 06:22 PM:

I'd be happy if the ushers that walk into the theatres were trained to notice many common projection problems and mention them to the booth staff. As far as I know, one theatre in my area does this, and it's a primary reason why the presentation quality is so good there.

I've seen many users come in, look at a badly misaligned image, noticeably out of frame image, an image with very nonuniform brightness, shutter ghosting, poor focus, etc, or hear that the sound was poor quality and not playing in digital as it should be, and go straight to the exit door, make sure it's closed, and walk out. Training the ushers to notice projection problems and getting them to carefully check the image and sound when checking auditoriums, and have them report anything they find to the booth staff, seems to be a very cheap way of implementing some quality checking that would work very well, provided that the problems found are actually corrected in a timely fashion. This method required no more extra time from anyone than normal, except in the cases when a problem is noticed.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 01-11-2002, 07:13 PM:

Sean just pegged it. Standard policy in some chains is to walk to the front of the auditorium and look back at the audience in the reflected screen light. While doing this, it can be easy to notice beer, feet draped over the seat in front, unusual activity, etc. If an audience is rowdy (a term from the 1970s) a second usher (a mythical creature from the 1970s) would stand in the back to be directed to the perps by the first usher.

You are bringing back too many memories of how it used to be done. Of course at that time the projectionist knew what the *$%^ he was doing, and checking the screen and sound was superfluous. Time for me to fly up to Bob Maar's place and beg for a martini.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 01-11-2002, 07:53 PM:

quote:
a second usher (a mythical creature from the 1970s)

One showing at Regal Hollywood 18 stands out in my memory simply because two ushers entered the auditorium at exactly the same time via the left and right doors and each walked down their side of the auditorium in a perfectly symmetrical fashion. They went to the front, then came back and exited in the same manner, which looked really neat. This was in a 49-foot-wide auditorium. I don't recall seeing them do that again.

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

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-11-2002, 11:27 PM:

At a place I worked at, the manager was previously in the military. He would have the ushers do stuff like walk down to the front, salute each other, then return. Or send four ushers down in some kind of sequence, etc. Usually, the crappier the movie, the fancier he would get.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-11-2002, 11:31 PM:

Just to add my two cents, Sean and Jerry are correct. The usher must make sure that the entire audience sees him when he checks the auditorium. Now that doesn't mean he has to be a distraction.

We always have our ushers walk theaters at least twice: usually shortly after the show starts and again about half way through. I am pretty sure most managers at my theater are good about making sure the ushers do it. So why do I always notice images ever so slightly (or even not so slightly) out of frame when I walk the booth? Yes, ushers need to be trained to recognize projection problems!!!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-12-2002, 03:29 AM:

"The usher must make sure that the entire audience sees him when he checks the auditorium. Now that doesn't mean he has to be a distraction."

Anyone see anything wrong with that statement?

I'm not picking on you Ken, that's just kinda funny. I do fully agree how ridiculous this is. First off, if the patrons see the usher, then by definition it is a distraction. Unfortunately I can vouch for the "mystery reviewer" HAVING to notice the ushers do at least one check (some chains I think it is two) during the movie or they get points taken off of their score. I'm against any staff being seen (unless there is a problem they need to take care of), but this is the way it seems the pencil pushers want it done.

By the way Evans, I made a "what not to do" reel of film a couple of years ago for employee training. It was nothing more than some trailers spliced out of frame, backwards, parts scratched and such to show employees what the various projection problems were. Of course some of this had to be done "on the fly" like an aperture shifted out of place and sound problems (of which a business card intermittently blocking the leds for digital and constantly tapping the optical guide rollers to simulate warble in analog worked nicely). Did it work? Of course not. First, the floor staff was completely turned over within a matter of a few months and second these underpaid kids couldn't care less. It's a GREAT idea, but it doesn't seem to work in too many places. Hats off to the manager of the theater that does this in your area with success though.

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 01-12-2002, 04:21 AM:

How our ushers patron auditoriums depends largely on the problems we are having. If the auditorium is quiet, or there is only sporatic problems, we send some in discreatly (or at times undercover) to try to isolate and remove problem people. If the auditorium is generally rowdy, we will make very visible checks to try and calm the crowd. I do feel, however, that the distraction of an usher doing checks is nothing compared to the distractions caused by unruly patrons.

As for sending two or four ushers, I think the most I have send to handle one problem is 12. However, we were removing around 30 kids...

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 01-12-2002, 11:05 AM:

When I saw How High

at the AMC Hamilton -- Saturday before Xmas, 2nd matinee -- there was a woman at the foot of the auditorium with a clipboard in her hand. I didn't know whether it was a checker or whether it was a higher-up asked to keep an eye on the crowd.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-12-2002, 12:00 PM:

Brad M, I see your point. I guess what I mean is they can walk down to the front of the auditorium, glance at the audience, and leave, without makinig a big ordeal out of it. Although it must have looked really cool, I would find what Evans mentioned (the two usthers waling in sync) to be very distracting.

As far as making sure the audience sees the usher, think of it this way: The purpose of an auditorium check is to locate and identify any presentation or environmental problems and to report such problems to the management so that they can be corrected, right? (In theory; I know most ushers don't pick up on most presentation problems in reality.) The Company doesn't want its patrons to have to sit through an entire presentation with any such problems, so it requires it's ushers to perform such checks. Thus it requires the "blind checkers" who evaluate the theater to make sure the ushers do that, otherwise the theater looses points. And since you never know when a blind checker is coming or where they are sitting, you must make sure the entire audience sees you every time.

If there were no blind checks I would want the ushers to stay in the back. Also, when I go into an auditorium to check for a specific problem, I stay in the back because I know the ushers have already checked it.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-12-2002, 07:48 PM:

"I do feel, however, that the distraction of an usher doing checks is nothing compared to the distractions caused by unruly patrons."

That's a really good point, Jim. My virtually never screening a movie with patrons sometimes makes me forget about how annoying "patrons" can be. I am now altering my opinion more toward yours.

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 01-13-2002, 01:15 AM:

Want to know whats distracting?

I once worked at a theatre where the manager wanted you to monitor the theatre in this fashion:

Go in and sit in that back for a couple scenes.
Then sit in the middle for a couple scenes.
Then sit near the front for a couple scenes.

This way you could hear if anyone is talking anywhere in the theatre.

I always thought this would be distracting aside from being a rediculous way of doing things and I never did it.

At the most I would stand near the back for a bit and then, if the show wasnt full, I would sit near the front for a little while, being as unobvious as possible.

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 01-14-2002, 03:28 PM:

At my old theater, the door people were supposed to go into the theaters during the show but not be noticable and never walk in front of the screen; the main thing was to check for unruly patrons. HOWEVER, the doors to each theater would always slam really loud whenever going in and out; when I did theater checks as a projectionist I'd always slowly close them behind me so I couldn't be heard coming in, but then the door person would come in with a loud SLAM! I wondered what the point was of doing this to make sure everyone's quiet when they made noise going in...

Posted by Joseph Pandolfi (Member # 223) on 01-16-2002, 03:43 PM:

Our ushers are required to do theatre checks once at each show. They are to walk down one aisleway and punch a card and walk up the other one. They are to turn the punched cards in at the end of the night. And yes, we do have spot checks by SIR's, corprate people who just go to the movies and fill out inspection reports. Kind of like what Evans Criswell does, but it covers the entire operation, not just presentation quality. They also reward usher and concession people for doing their job right by their guidelines.