Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Twilight question?

This is topic Twilight question? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=002134

Posted by Louis Belloisy (Member # 3836) on 11-20-2008, 08:28 AM:

Many theaters are having midnight showing on thursday night (11/20), including ours.
I am away from the office so I cannot make any calls, but I understand that the film will not be delivered until late tonight (thurs) with scant time for building and forget about proofing.

The film is from Technicolor but will be delivered by FTS (I thought DHL would be delivering until the end of the year).

Does anyone have any further info.

Louis

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-20-2008, 09:30 AM:

We got a note from Tech saying all deliveries via UPS would be on Wednesdays, and indeed all Tech films since then have been delivered on Wednesday.

We're not playing Twilight yet so I can't answer your question, but I'm surprised if they deviated from their new policy already.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 11-20-2008, 10:21 AM:

Twilight is coming out of Deluxe film services (Gray Boxes) and I got my prints last night at 10:00 pm.

Posted by Galen Murphy-Fahlgren (Member # 4535) on 11-20-2008, 10:33 AM:

I believe my old theater, which is playing a 12:01 tonight, got it yesterday. I, however, am not playing it (thankfully). Have fun with a theater full of weird teenage girls dressed as vampires!

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-20-2008, 12:32 PM:

We're running a midnight and so is our sister theatre. We received our prints Wednesday night.

I actually haven't seen this much demand for a midnight movie. We'll often have a good turn out for the major tent poles, but we usually don't sell more than 30%-40% of the tickets until the day of. As of Wednesday night I have already sold about 90% of the tickets.

Posted by Louis Belloisy (Member # 3836) on 11-20-2008, 02:42 PM:

Its indeed going to be grey boxes and delivery will be only scant hours before showing. If they are late, there will be many upset vampires.

Louis

Posted by Dennis Udovich (Member # 1066) on 11-20-2008, 02:44 PM:

Both prints came in Thursday morning, as usual. (Deluxe)
Same with Bolt (DHL). UPS is taking over Dec. 1.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 11-20-2008, 05:40 PM:

Our digital drives were here on Tuesday but the keys were not good until 9am Thursday. Granted if a drive ingested properly 99% of the time there won't be anything wrong, but its still annoying.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 11-20-2008, 07:43 PM:

My manager and I were ready to jump off the roof earlier this afternoon. We have 3 screens playing midnights, 3 prints. Our midnights sold out.
Our booth guy finds there is no soundtrack at all on Reel 7 on one of the prints. Not even a DTS timecode.
Deluxe said the nearest depot to us that has a replacement #7 reel is in St. Louis. Estimated time of arrival in Lubbock: Half Past Midnight tonight.
Fortunately the Stars and Stripes has the movie booked, but is not running the midnight. He lent us his #7 reel, which we return to him tomorrow.
Odd fluke...

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-20-2008, 08:21 PM:

James, your example is the reason why the studios really need to make the effort to get us prints at least by Wednesday. Even without the midnight showing it could have put a pinch in Friday.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-21-2008, 02:35 AM:

James, you are lucky you have a projectionist who had his wits about him -- it's not beyond the pale that some of these splice-jockeys would have just loaded that reel on the platter and missed the missing track. Can you imagine what would happen if you got that far into the film and the sound just went off? You'd be lucky if they left the seat attached to the floor! Screaming teen girls in heat....and ANGRY...it aint a pretty sight. [Big Grin]

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 11-21-2008, 03:58 AM:

I know. That's the stuff nightmares are made of.
This never seems to happen to films like The Haunting of Whats-her-face Hartley, where a bad reel would only be annoying.
The replacement reel arrived at 11 PM! We are giving that one to the drive-in so their COMPLETE print will be all new. (After verifying the reel does indeed have a sound track.)

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 11-21-2008, 09:29 AM:

quote: James Westbrook
Our booth guy finds there is no soundtrack at all on Reel 7

A long time ago, I got a print where the optical track had
been printed BACKWARDS.
(IE: the tail end of the track was printed at the head end of the reel.)

When I first saw it I thought perhaps the sound negative
was just mislabeled, but I threw it up on my sound reader
and it had indeed been printed backwards.

(yet another reason I prefer working without platters- it's easy
to spot check stuff like this)

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 11-21-2008, 09:52 AM:

A long time ago, we had a reel where its head was actually what should've been approximately 7-9 minutes into the reel and it played to the end, then at that point it hit the normal beginning of the reel and preceeded to play the first 7-9 minutes and when it got to the end of that it went to the next reel.

They got a replacement pretty quickly though someone could've just torn down the print to get at the respective reel and chop it up into the right order but at that point you wouldn't be sure if there was anything else missing from the reel as it were.

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 11-21-2008, 10:18 AM:

I had a preview once of "Memphis Belle" and the image on the second to last reel was printed in reverse. All the writing on the screen was, of course, inside out and the image didn't fill the right side of the frame.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-21-2008, 10:54 AM:

We had a James Bond movie once (a Roger Moore one, so this was a while ago) where a reel started normally, then after 3 minutes there was a lab splice and the reel started over again.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-21-2008, 07:58 PM:

Lab techs on crack! [Eek!]

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 11-21-2008, 08:36 PM:

This is Summit's first big wide release, so it's not surprising that they have a few problems, and don't have the benefits of experience and confidence of the larger studios to realize that getting prints out to theatres early is important when Thursday-night shows are frequent.

P2 opened at 2,131 theatres.
Penelope opened at 1,196
Never Back Down at 2,729
Fly Me to the Moon 3D opened at 452
Fly Me To the Moon (regular) opened at 713
Sex Drive opened at 2,421

while some of those counts approach Twilight's 3,419, none of those movies had the hype or will see the kind of per-screen averages that it will. And it matters...

Mike: And sadly, someone at the lab probably had to go to extra effort to make that happen, and they were trying to ensure you a lab-splice free reel. They expected someone to cut it out after
it was done processing. But no one did [Frown]

Jim: How did you notice the track was backwards? Because of the writing in the soundtrack section?

--jhawk

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 11-22-2008, 12:03 AM:

We were on 11 screens and almost hit our Dark Knight numbers...just short by about 200 people. It was so busy we opened up a 3am show in the Cine-Capri. It was crazy here all day yesterday and still going today!

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 11-23-2008, 12:28 AM:

I'm curious if other theatres are seeing repeat business already.

I've already seen a number of girls coming back for a second - and third in several cases - viewing of Twilight. It will be really interesting to see the gross after 3-4 weeks if the repeat business keeps up.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 11-23-2008, 04:01 PM:

There has been repeat business, but the problem is that there isn't enough new business. Word got out fast that this was a turd, and people are not showing up like they were on Friday.

Posted by Tyler Potts (Member # 4952) on 11-23-2008, 04:32 PM:

Our Thurs midnights were packed (made history, interlocked 3 houses for the 1st time!), Friday night ran interlocks, mildly busy Saturday, and dead by Sunday.

And worse... the other theatre in town just got a digital projector and were showing Bolt in 3D, definitely stole our usual family crowd.