Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Delivery charges for classic films

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Posted by Tony Ratcliff (Member # 1196) on 12-23-2002, 12:22 PM:

I just got a bill from Reel Easy for delivering a print of "It's A Wonderful Life" to me from a theatre in Cleveland.
The bill is $225, one way !!!!!!
For that price it should have come via armored car, not the back of someone's personal vehicle!

Normally Reel Easy is outrageous. But "normal" is $100-120.

We tried talking with Warner Brothers before about Reel Easy. For about a year they used another courier, but now we are back to Reel Easy. And ouch!!

Any of you had similar experiences?

Tony

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-23-2002, 02:25 PM:

Yep. We had a print of "The Sound of Music" in 1990, and not only did it cost over $200 to ship in, the print was faded to pink and scratched to beat the band. There were no other prints available, so we had to run it, and apologized to every patron both coming in and going out.

To add insult to injury, it only cost something like $30 to ship it back (I put the cans into a large box and UPS'd it.)

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 12-23-2002, 03:21 PM:

And I thought the $30 a can Twin City News charges us to ship ETS prints from the Depot in Minneapolis to here in Eau Claire (about 100 miles) was ridiculous.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-23-2002, 04:43 PM:

We used to get all our ETS (formerly NFS) prints from Butte, Montana which is 400 miles from here...when I got in the biz it was $18, now it's over $80 each way. So we've gone to UPS or the postal service except in dire emergencies.

Posted by Paul Turner (Member # 832) on 12-23-2002, 11:30 PM:

I have always found Reel Easy's prices hard to figure. What I dislike the most about them was they would bill me if the studio didn't pay them. About the time I'm telling them I didn't agree to pay shipping and would not have used them if I did, it's made clear to me that my "other" prints (Pronounced, Sony Pictures Classics)will not be delivered until I pay the bill. As an art house, Sony Pics Classics is huge for me. I was very glad when SPC went to ETS. Reel Easy will send pick up couriers with no notice. Once they cornered my partner for a print. My partner isn't a projectionist so she gave them empty cans (the print was still on the platter. I wasn't to come off of it for another week) which felt heavy to her and , evidently, the courier. This story gets really involved, so I'll stop here. For the actual delivery I don't have a problem with them. They tend to use local couriers so i have to to deal with them -- yet another group that has no idea how a theatre is run -- but, Reel Easy seems to do their part of getting the film to the local couriers. But, unless I know what it'll cost to ship a print, I dread getting the bill from them.

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 12-25-2002, 09:02 PM:

Hey, where do you guys get the good deals on shipping?

At the Temple in Saginaw, MI, we were the first public showing of the new 70mm print of "The Ten Commandments". The print came from the video dubbing house in Utah. We had to pay $500.00 to get it and another $500.00 to ship it back to CA. The requiremnents were, portal to portal air insured.

That on top of the guarantee and percentage made this a very expensive week end. Oh, by the way, reel 7 had the sprocket holes torn out on one side for over half of the reel and we had to get a replacement reel from CA.

KEN

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-26-2002, 06:13 AM:

Tony, although I have gotten "sticker shock" from a number of Reel Easy, I've never gotten that kind of unbelievable shipping bill.

What I did find out was that, what will drive the shipping price up is that the print may be playing at another theatre up until a day or two before your engagement and the distrib will not tell you that. They just arrange to ship it to you using next day air or even next morning air which is many times the normal ground rates, and they do this without you knowing anything about it.

What I have now taken to doing because of this, is to ask the booker exactly how the print is being shipped and the approximate cost. Believe me, if I was told that, for whatever reason, a print would cost me $225 for one-way shipping, I would tell them to shove it. What was that, almost half the guarantee? You could have driven to Cleveland and picked it up yourself for a lot less than that. There had to be some special handling that was involved with that shipment to jack the price up that much. Thing is, that information should be part of the booking deal and you should be made aware of it up front. Demand hard numbers on the shipping costs with every booking.

Frank

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-26-2002, 10:42 AM:

Darren was recently telling me that film transport costs are a major issue in planning his 70mm shows at York. Apparently Securicor charge £30 (around $50) per reel for transporting 70mm, which can easily mean £300 for a full feature. For that reason, he's been collecting films himself and holding them until required by another venue, when they're picked up at the receiving cinema's expense. In a country as small as the UK I guess it's feasible to do this. But thinking about it, transport costs must be a serious problem for arthouse and rep theatres in countries covering a large geographical area such as the US, Canada and Australia.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 12-26-2002, 11:20 AM:

quote:
You could have driven to Cleveland and picked it up yourself for a lot less than that.

I knew a guy in Boston that routinely drove to NYC to pick up prints. If you have the time, it's not a bad alternative. Maybe $40 in gas.

Posted by Tony Ratcliff (Member # 1196) on 12-27-2002, 11:03 AM:

The other classic we showed this year, "Miracle On 34th Street", was from Criterion. They charged me $50 shipping, due up front with the guarentee. And that is for ETS to drop it off AND pick it up!!

It also came from another theatre. So if Reel Easy is thinking of that as an excuse, it doesn't fly with me.

I've also dealt with Sony on classics. I think they used ETS this last time. Before I think they had used UPS or Airborne.

I don't understand why Warner Brothers doesn't use UPS or Airborne.
I think Airborne has this print handling thing down by now. [Confused]

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-27-2002, 11:33 AM:

Criterion (non-theatrical 35mm distributors for Fox & New Line and a few others) has started charging an extra $50 on ETS prints (on top of local delivery charges). It's completely unclear to us what this charge is supposed to represent, and whether it actually has anything to do with ETS at all. We certainly don't see this $50 charge from non-Criterion ETS prints. It's not clear to me if that means Criterion is making it up from whole cloth, or if other people are eating this charge, or if it's somehow Criterion-specific.

Unfortunately we failed to really get a good explanation when this started happening, and I think we're stuck with it. It's a relatively recent "innovation"; perhaps 16 months old?

By the way, ETS will happily fedex prints to you if you give them a fedex account number. I imagine they'll do other friendly things too.
Tony, you should clarify though: ETS does not drop off or pick up prints. They subcontract that out to various local delivery companies who charge different prices to different people, sometimes they charge per-film, sometimes they charge per-month. It varies a lot from locality to locality. Generally those local delivery companies bill the theatres directly.

--jhawk

Posted by Tony Ratcliff (Member # 1196) on 12-30-2002, 11:21 AM:

John,
You are correct, the $50 paid to Criterion for "shipping" is in addition to the charge from the ETS subcontractor that actually delivered the print. I was mistaken on that in my last post. Exhibitor Film Service out of Indianapolis is who services my area for ETS.

Tony

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 12-30-2002, 11:44 AM:

Torn out sprocket holes on one side on a new 70mm print Hmm that took some doing since if it is new it would have been on estar stock and torn perfs are a bit difficult to do. STretched or mangled yes torn took some doing