quote: Chris Slycord

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First, the downstairs people tell me that they're complaining about the sound at which point I have to ask what the exact problem is.

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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A few times I've had someone say it was "too loud" and so I say I'll take care of it, and I go upstairs and then come back down (without changing a thing) and then when I see them after the movie I ask "was that better?" and without fail they say, "Oh yes, it was a lot better, thank you."

Mind games: The professional's choice.

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Helluva guy...a true professional, someone to look up to, my hero. Way to treat your customers
 

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Posted by Peter David Bruce (Member # 4447) on 12-17-2007, 02:16 PM:
 
That is brilliant!

wish id thought of that one... its genius!

remember - 'the customer isnt ALWAYS right'. damn right!

recently we had to reduce all our films from volume 5.0 down to 4.5. i cant see the problem with 5.0.... it IS a cinema - not your front room at home.... sheesh! We have debated this with management but in the end... all films are at 4.5 now and its okay.

I do turn the blockbusters up to 5.2 though just out of spite! speakers are designed to take vol 7.0!
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-17-2007, 02:46 PM:
 

quote: Frank Dubrois

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Helluva guy...a true professional, someone to look up to, my hero. Way to treat your customers

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quote: John T. Hendrickson, Jr

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How many times have you heard the "no sound from the surrounds" complaint, knowing full well that you're sitting right at 85db and there is no live track at the point in the film when the complaint was registered?

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I fully concur. I distinctly remember getting a complaint of no sound from them while I'm sitting there staring at the DTS display showing signal from center, left, and right.
 

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Posted by David Zylstra (Member # 4230) on 12-17-2007, 10:03 PM:
 
Here's one for ya - "Those speakers on the side walls aren't supposed to put out sound - it's just wrong!, the theatre down the street doesn't have them and I've been going there for years"

Of course age was a factor, the theatre down the street was an old mono house and we were the new game in town with all brand new 4 channel systems (this was '90) . . . . not to mention we were militant over verifying proper sound levels almost weekly.
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 12-18-2007, 12:55 AM:
 
If the theatre's EQ'd correctly (isn't yours?) then no, I don't go with the whole 'must be played at seven' crap. I do, however, set the levels on peaking dialogue and leave the rest to the director and sound designer/editor.

I therefore go with Mike meaning my levels are just fine for 99% of the audience and the other 1%...I'm sorry, but they just have to suffer. We're not all built the same (thank God)
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-18-2007, 01:31 AM:
 
The correct answer when a customer complains about the sound being too loud is, "Yes, I'll go check it.

Meaning: You will go to the theater (or send a trusted person) to listen to the sound and see if it really IS too loud. If it is, you adjust accordingly. If not, you leave it alone.

On the other hand, depending on circumstances, if the customer was nice, you MIGHT go tweak the sound a hair bit just to make them happy.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-18-2007, 01:40 AM:
 
I'm actually pretty lucky here because our lobby is so small, I can hear the sound from the office. If I get a complainer, I can usually know right away if it's just a reaction to an exceptionally loud part of the movie. There've been times I've explained that we set the sound so that the dialogue sounds "right" and then it goes from there. That almost always satisfies people.

Almost all of our volume "comments" come from people who hardly ever go to movies (older folks, mostly) when they bring the grandkids to an action movie like "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" and get mad at the volume.

I've also had the occasional comments about the volume of the trailers -- even though we play them at 4.0 (feature usually runs about 5.6 or 5.8, depending on crowd size).
 

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Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 12-18-2007, 02:25 AM:
 
After watching Legend today, Chris the people who go your theatre must be dumb. How could they think that after watching the trailers, then the 5 production company logos that flash on the screen and then the 4 min prologue explaining what happened think that the movie was out of order. It even flashs 3 years later on the damn screen. I just don't get customers some times.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-18-2007, 10:25 AM:
 
And it's not even "the people who go to my theater." This particular showing was the only complaint we had by ANYONE on ANY SHOWING of it since it came out (and we have 4 prints of the damn thing). Somehow all the idiots "knew" to go to the same showing.

edit:
And with the volume comments (and Frank's angry response), I'm pretty sure everyone's had someone with extremely sensitive ears attend a showing. I can still picture standing inside a particular auditorium back in Redmond with a guy clearly having pain from the sound after we'd turned down the sound several times and by now it was difficult for me to hear the dialog. He left with a refund. In retrospect, I think he had a hearing aid; after having my dad using a hearing aid I've found that loud things really hurt his ears since he's got it turned up for making everyone's "dialog" louder.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-18-2007, 07:01 PM:
 

quote: Frank Dubrois

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Helluva guy...a true professional, someone to look up to, my hero. Way to treat your customers

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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A few times I've had someone say it was "too loud" and so I say I'll take care of it, and I go upstairs and then come back down (without changing a thing) and then when I see them after the movie I ask "was that better?" and without fail they say, "Oh yes, it was a lot better, thank you."

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Do the same thing quite often. The way I look at it is if we have run several shows of the print (or any any other for that matter) and not had any complaints up until that point, it must be a person with sensitive hearing such as a person with a hearing aid. I tell my projection staff to come down and actually listen to the volume level prior to making any changes and when they do ,to make sure that the trailers have ended. I would say that about 99.99% of the time when we don't make any changes and I or someone else gets a chance to do a follow-up with the customer he/she says it was much better. I don't consider it a "head-game" but maybe like someone posted earlier, the customer came out at a time when there was a lot of action on screen or more than likely during a trailer(s) when sound levels are quite a bit above normal.
 

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Posted by Scott McGuire (Member # 4508) on 12-19-2007, 01:44 AM:
 
Change or no Change as long as the person that complains gets some sort of action from thier complaint they are happy. I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time.
 

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Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-19-2007, 03:03 AM:
 
Ironically, I had a sound issue with I Am Legend tonight. The DTS player crashed in reel 2 and for some reason the processor didn't switch from Digital to Stereo. Don't know how long it ran that way until someone complained. I took the discs out of the player and turned it off so I Am Legend won't have that sound snafu again.
 

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Posted by Peter David Bruce (Member # 4447) on 12-19-2007, 10:39 AM:
 
the issue with our cinema is we have one large screen (300seats) 2x medium (250) and 3x small screens (150 seats)... so if we move a print from screen one (at volume 5.0) and move it to a smaller screen, suddenly we need to knock off a few notches on the audio... sometimes right down to 4.0 if its an action film like transformers. run the same volume in each screen and it will always sound blastingly deafening in the smaller screens, and perfect in the large screen.

so its just a case of constantly checking when you move a print, so that the experience is 100% enjoyable for everyone - even us projectionists!

we are in this job to enjoy film. in all aspects... and sound, for alot of us, is up there with picture quality in terms of importance.

if one person complains, turn it down one notch... maybe 5.0 to 4.9 and at least that way you arent radically changing the volume, BUT you are abiding by your customers requests.

Peter
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 12-19-2007, 02:15 PM:
 
Then if another complains it's too soft do you turn it up 0.1 again? This could take a while...


If it's more than one complaint you may have a problem, but a single complaint when it's been screened a few times already...no thanks. We had a complaint 9 weeks into Death At A Funeral it was too soft...oddly enough...I ignored it.
 

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Posted by Tony L. Hernandez (Member # 3524) on 12-19-2007, 02:53 PM:
 
It is a hard call. I mean, even if you have as few as 60 people in your theater and just one of two are unhappy, you still have to consider the rest who are obviously happy. It breaks my heart since I am in the business of entertaining people and making them happy, I truly strive to have everyone walk out satisfied right down to the last one and two, but I must look at it from a practical point of view. I am one who usually adjusts the sound levels several times to fit the show perfectly. Ran an archival print last month on "Parallax View" and the sound was all over the place. What a nightmare keeping it adjusted. It is true that there is no set volume to always use. It depends on how your theater is built, weather there are 5 or 120 people in the audience, etc. I have found it, at one of my houses, useful to keep the trailers considerably lower than the feature.
I agree with Mike's practice although I usually go and make some ridiculously small adjustment just to be able to say I did. If they were still unhappy after the show, I offer passes if I'm managing and even if I'm just projecting, I request the manager to do so. No Mike, your practice is not wrong. Although I use these forums very rarely due to my busy life, seems every time I do make it over here, Frank is trying to cause trouble and verbally abuse someone, including myself in one thread last year.

The OT WAS more about dealing with bizarre complaints more so than sound, so I'll make an addition to that topic. One time I had some man walk up to the booth during a show after I changed over to reel 3/10 showing and started yelling at me accusing me of changing over to the wrong reel. I asked if he was sure and he said "yes, my wife has seen this film before" and then I politely told him he needed to go sit down or ask the box office for a refund as there was nothing I could so, which was the truth...I WAS showing the reels in the proper order according to the head and tail numbers and if some clown had spliced the wrong heads and tails on, there was not a damn thing I could do as whoever had the print last cut the heads and tails and left me no reference frame and we were only showing the print twice. And he did sit down and watched the rest of the film. After the show, I asked a few of our regular customers who had seen the film elsewhere if the reels were indeed being shown in the proper order and they gave me a firm yes. Was hard to tell since it was a documentary about an order of monks and had no dialogue and no narration.
I did run a film with the film maker in the audience and she insisted I run it with the bottom frame line rather high as her subtitles were printed too low and it was cutting them off. As a rule of thumb, I usually do whatever the filmmaker says when he/she is in the audience.
I too hate it when I have another staff member give me some vague comlaint and then demand I fix it.

A funny story: I was once at a mom and pop six plex to see "Amityville Horror" and the sound was so loud I decided to go out and complain, which is something I don't usually do. To give you an idea of how loud it was, I can be slightly hard of hearing at times and also enjoy my movies to be blasting...but this was too much! I went out to the lobby and spoke to an elderly man sitting in the lobby who was the owner's friend and assistant and he just shrugged his shoulders and said "Can't please 'em all". Normally I'd have been quite offended and angry but I have a dry sense of humor and have gotten many laughs out of that over the years.
 

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Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 12-19-2007, 03:59 PM:
 
My favorite complaint is "there are no surrounds", when someone is watching a Woody Allen movie like "Match Point". All you can say is "the director has chosen to issue this film in Mono", which means there is only sound from screen center. Sometimes they just don't understand.

On the other hand, I get a kick out of those folks (from the studio) that want us to run the faders at 7.5 for <this> or <that>. To which we say "okay", but leave them at 5.0. At 7.5, our systems are capable of rupturing eardrums.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-19-2007, 05:29 PM:
 
At my old theater we had that kind of thing with the Bollywood movie, Don (the "new" one not the 70s version). They requested it be run at 7.0 I believe and even when we dropped it down quite a bit below that (due to the fact that the people screening it were thinking "Holy shit this is loud") we got several complaints on the first showing that it was still way too loud. So we turned it down yet again.
 

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Posted by Hugh McCullough (Member # 1542) on 12-19-2007, 05:36 PM:
 
One cinema that I worked at we showed many films in double head for the film companies.
Without exception they always complained about the sound.

Not enough Bass, too much Bass, middle range not correct etc etc.

We pointed out to them the fact that we were showing normal release films to normal audiences without any complaints about our sound.
This fact they completely ignored.

So, we purchased the largest six track equaliser, about 18 ins square, that we could find.
Fitted it onto the wall next to the rack, and let them play around with this.
They went away quite happy.

What we knew, and they did not, was that the only thing that worked was the mains light. The faders were not connected to the sound system at all.

Another ploy that we used, when they said the sound was not loud enough, was to let them set their own fader setting using the monitor control.
Despite having the legend 'Monitor' under the control, they never queried this fact

Psychological projection
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-19-2007, 11:04 PM:
 
Hugh, that's hilarious! But totally believable.
 

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Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 12-20-2007, 12:12 AM:
 
When I saw "Sin City" which at the time was had been running for at least 6 weeks I complained about the sound level as it really was far too low. You could barely make out the dialogue clearly. It got turned up a notch but was still just ok where as other times the sound level was fine at that same cinema. On top of that center of the image was out of focus and the aperture plate was not in the correct position.

I always check out any complaint when I get the chance as to see if it's valid or not. You just never know. I once got complaint about the sound been too low in the middle of a feature. Checked it out and yes it was about half the volume of what it was at the start of the show. Result was a power supply for the led went a bit bung all of a sudden. All fixed now.
 

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Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 12-20-2007, 03:54 PM:
 
I ALWAYS get the 'no surrounds' complaints on Woody Allen movies.

and when I explain the 'Woody does it mono' to them they get snooty about it sometimes amd claim I am in the wrong.. or they say idiotic things like "On my home theatre system I get people talking from ALL the speakers!"

-Aaron
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-20-2007, 05:50 PM:
 

quote:

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or they say idiotic things like "On my home theatre system I get people talking from ALL the speakers!"

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Answer: "Then pick up your sagging tits and go home."
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 12-20-2007, 06:53 PM:
 

quote: Aaron Sisemore

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'Woody does it mono'

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His newest film "Cassandra's Dream" is in stereo on the stage (LCR).
 

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Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-20-2007, 07:20 PM:
 
You would think Woody Allen would be more appreciative of stereo as he is a Jazz Musician...
 

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Posted by Sam King (Member # 4029) on 12-28-2007, 11:12 PM:
 
Woody doesn't do it in mono, he does LCR. At my first theatre I ever worked at, we showed a lot of his films and he even came in a few times and we had a setting on the CP50 (yes, CP50) that was LCR, no surrounds.
 

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 01-05-2008, 05:53 PM:
 
Sam, I think there's some confusion over the L-C-R vs mono thing. Woody's movies (except for his latest, apparently) are mono, but on the optical track are encoded as common left-right information which a processor such as a CP50 would, if in good working order, sum together and "send" only to the center-channel speaker.

For more, see the thread Woody Allen mono???.
 

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Posted by Andres Briano (Member # 4621) on 02-26-2008, 02:28 PM:
 

quote: Randy Stankey

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The correct answer when a customer complains about the sound being too loud is, "Yes, I'll go check it.

Meaning: You will go to the theater (or send a trusted person) to listen to the sound and see if it really IS too loud. If it is, you adjust accordingly. If not, you leave it alone.

On the other hand, depending on circumstances, if the customer was nice, you MIGHT go tweak the sound a hair bit just to make them happy.

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