Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Tears of the Sun

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Posted by Katie Smith (Member # 1594) on 03-06-2003, 01:35 PM:

Why did my theater's print of "Tears of the Sun" come in a cardboard-like plastic box instead of the normal metal cans? This box has an FBI warning on it; was it shipped in this box for security reasons?

Posted by Coleman L. Zatarain (Member # 1559) on 03-06-2003, 01:44 PM:

No, the Depot just ran out of cans. [Confused]

Posted by Paul Konen (Member # 41) on 03-06-2003, 01:45 PM:

If they are the grey boxes, then they were used originally for SW:EP1, then again for SW:EP2.

Because of the length of Gods&Generals, they were used again.

My guess is that they just want to get more use out of them.

Maybe it costs less to ship vs. two heavy metal cans.

Posted by Katie Smith (Member # 1594) on 03-06-2003, 02:28 PM:

Yeah, our print of Episode 2 came in one of those boxes too.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 03-06-2003, 03:26 PM:

I had Gods and Generals (13 reels) in two corrugated plastic boxes. With conventional cases at least 4 would have been required.

Posted by Katie Smith (Member # 1594) on 03-06-2003, 03:38 PM:

so why were they ever originally used, on Episode 1?

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-06-2003, 07:25 PM:

Were the new "Star Wars" movies the first ones to ship in these boxes?

Don't they have the 20th Century Fox logo printed on them? "Just Married" was a recent Fox-In-The-Box release.

Isn't "Tears of the Sun" a Sony (Technicolor) release? Or are these particular boxes generic versions?

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 03-06-2003, 07:34 PM:

Sony switched over to ETS in early January. Besides Fox the only other studios that have used the boxes were New Line for their release of Final Destination 2 and Warner Brothers for Gods and Generals. Now we can add Sony to the list I geuss.

Is this the beginning of a trend? Who knows.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 03-06-2003, 07:53 PM:

ETS in the Los Angeles area started testing those types of boxes back in 1996 with a few Fox releases. But they stopped using them a few months later.

Posted by Justin McLeod (Member # 1329) on 03-06-2003, 08:06 PM:

My theater recieved 4 cans for "Gods and Generals", but both Starwars films we recieved came in the grey FBI boxes.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 03-06-2003, 08:37 PM:

We got our "Tears" in a box, too.
It's sure a pain to haul the whole print by one hand. It's fun to balance yourself, especially going up the stairs!

Posted by Jacob Huber (Member # 1138) on 03-06-2003, 09:02 PM:

Last week, we got one of our prints of Cradle 2 The Grave in cans, and the other one in a box. Other than Star Wars, G&G, and now Tears of the Sun, we've also recieved Just Married and Kangaroo Jack in such a fashion.

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 03-06-2003, 11:15 PM:

Same with the boxes here on Tears Of The Sun... but my reels were shipped FLAT in the box, instead of upright. [Confused]

=TMP=

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 03-06-2003, 11:23 PM:

I can just imagine how much the bus drivers would complain if I were to receive prints in a box. They complain enough about having to carry one can at a time!

BTW, do these boxes survive getting wet or set down in the snow?

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 03-07-2003, 12:31 AM:

quote:
from Daryl...
BTW, do these boxes survive getting wet or set down in the snow?

Probably. The one I got for "Tears" is made of that plastic corrugated stuff like they make real estate signs out of. Looks like cardboard box construction, only it's plastic.

Water probably won't hurt it any, as long as you don't pour it in over the handle.

Posted by David Favel (Member # 1125) on 03-07-2003, 01:51 AM:

Welcome to the future guys. In New Zealand all prints are shipped in boxes & flat.
Cheaper?

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 03-07-2003, 02:02 AM:

Forgive me for going off the topic about the shipping container for the print of"TEARS OF THE SUN" but I thought you might all be interested to know that all of the outdoor African scenes (Nigeria?) in the film was photographed in Hawaii on the other side of the island of Oahu where I live. Many of the scenes in "JURASSIC PARK III and "WINDTALKER" was also filmed there. That's the wonderful thing about the United States of America. We have all kinds of environmental locations for film making that no other country has. [Smile]

-Claude

Posted by Brad Haven (Member # 954) on 03-07-2003, 11:05 AM:

i can't recall the last time i recieved a film in cans, all films now come in plain cardboard boxes [Frown]

i miss the cans and spools!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-07-2003, 11:54 AM:

I hate those boxes. They're hard to carry, and when open, the flaps get in the way.

Our print of Daredevil came in a box, but Just Married was in cans.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 03-07-2003, 08:17 PM:

Our print of Tears came in the box also. I, personally, prefer the box(es) as they are actually lighter than the metal counterpart. It is cumbersome to handle an entire print in one box, but it would seem to me that the bean-counters would figure out that the overall shipping costs incurred for the box(es) wind up considerably cheaper than the cans. All the monies saved annually on shipping could be re-invested in media cleaner(s) and other much needed booth supplies for those locations unfortunate enough to get them...

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 03-10-2003, 11:38 AM:

I first saw these boxes with prints of Strange Days.

Posted by Andrew Duggan (Member # 1302) on 03-10-2003, 12:55 PM:

Luckily, with the exceptions of Tears of the Sun and Gods & generals, all of our prints have still been coming to us in the good old fashioned banged-all-to-hell metal cans. Those boxes make me see red. I'm sure they're probably cheaper to use, but dammit, I'm set in my ways. Cans for life!

Posted by Gracia L. Babbidge (Member # 582) on 03-10-2003, 02:07 PM:

I do not like the shipping boxes - at all! [Mad]

I have a much more difficult time lugging a shipping box up to the booth than I have lugging a pair of beat-to-hell shipping cans up the stairs.
I can't exactly carry the box by its handle, puts me too far off balance, and makes my arm feel quite dead rather quickly. And hugging the box to my torso doesn't work much better - as then I can't exactly see where I'm going, and I don't feel like I have a solid grip on the box. It would be a little different if I was a bit taller (with arms a bit longer), but I'm quite sure that I'm stuck with being 5'5". [Razz]

The prints that I can recall arriving in boxes are Attack of the Clones, Drumline, Gods And Generals, and Tears of the Sun. I think there may have been another, but I can't remember what.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-10-2003, 08:11 PM:

Maybe you should remove the reels from the box before moving it [perhaps put them in some empty reel cans temporarily [Razz]

].

--jhawk

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 03-10-2003, 08:32 PM:

Originally, the boxes were used exclusively for Fox titles, hence the nickname 'Fox Box'. The earliest movie I have seen shipped in them was 'Broken Arrow'. Apparently other studios are using the boxes as well. I do like the fact that you can fit a 7-reel movie into a single box.

-Aaron

Posted by Andrew Duggan (Member # 1302) on 03-10-2003, 11:20 PM:

Yeah, the reel capacity is certainly a plus, but I just can't see these boxes being able to protect the prints as well as the cans do, against poor shipping, accidents, etc.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-11-2003, 04:55 AM:

The boxes would be OK if they made them in the same sizes as cans so that each box could hold 2-4 reels. As it is now, a box containing seven full reels is heavy and difficult to carry up steep and/or narrow booth staircases. I thought that the handle was useless and that it was easiest to carry the box by lifting it from the bottom.

Generally, though, I prefer clean metal cans. It would be great if someone designed a disposable plastic liner which could be used in these to protect the film and which could be replaced easily at the depot when it became dirty/damaged/etc.

For shipping on cores, I've seen a rather clever shipping container (from Spain, I think) which is made of plastic and looks very much like a standard octagonal ICC can. The inside of this container is designed to hold three plastic cans like what the European labs sometimes use for shipping film. Instead of a small metal carrying handle on the top, there is a large and comfortable plastic handle where the latch would be on a US-style can. The only problem with this container that I could see is that it is held closed by a plastic "pin" (like on a door hinge) which is easy to lose. With an improved latch design and those (Chinese?) cans which someone posted a picture of that are designed to hold the core in the center of the can, this might be an ideal shipping container for prints on cores.

Posted by Zach Zagar (Member # 379) on 03-11-2003, 09:05 AM:

What is better than the boxes and cans you ask? Does anyone remember the GIANT blue plastic reels? You would get 1 movie on two giant reels. This was, I assume, only in a limited run, and I haven't seen it since 98 or 99, but man, that made make up and breakdown so much easier. Think about it man, two splices instead of 6! Wow.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 03-12-2003, 11:20 PM:

IIRC, that was a Paramount venture, right? I'd assume that there were those who decided those were "too heavy" and "too awkward" to handle.. Jeez.... [Roll Eyes]

I liked 'em. Splice your prebuilt trailers on, hit the R3-R4 splice and away you go... [Smile]

Posted by Nicholas Roznovsky (Member # 861) on 03-13-2003, 12:14 AM:

For some reason, I seem to remember that as a Warner Bros. experiment. The only print I can remember getting in the big blues was Free Willy 3 , which I think was a WB release. I want to say that there was a press release saying that New Line was going to try them too, but I don't ever recall getting a New Line print in them.

Of course, that all may just be a hallucination. [beer]

I miss the big blues too. Hell to haul upstairs but well worth it once you got up to the make-up table.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 03-13-2003, 08:50 AM:

The large shipping reels were the Extended Length Reels (ELR) project of the Inter-Society Committee for the Enhancement of Cinema Presentation. Warner Bros. and New Line used them, although the reels and cases were not the original robust design proposed by the Inter-Society committee headed by Bobby Pinkston, leading to some problems with durability and compatibility with some make-up tables. Most labs spliced together standard 2000-foot reels to make up the ELR --- ultimately, the plan was to print in 6000-foot lengths. The initial problems and the cost of converting has put the ELRs on hold.

Has been discussed in several threads on Film-Tech. Search with keyword "ELR".