Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinema staff to patrol screenings with night-vision goggles to combat movie piracy

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-24-2015, 02:22 AM:

Cinema staff to patrol screenings with night-vision goggles to combat movie piracy

quote:
Cinema staff across the country will be required to don military-style night vision goggles in order to help crack down on movie piracy ahead of the release of two of the most anticipated blockbuster smashes of the year.

The release of the latest film in the James Bond franchise, Spectre, as well as the next installment in the hugely successful Hunger Games series, Mockingjay Part 2, has meant the film industry is looking into ways to beef up security at screens in order to stop the movies leaking online.

As part of a new measure to stop piracy ahead of the release of Spectre in October, staff will use equipment that would not look out of place in the 007 blockbuster, wearing night vision googles in order to make it easier see who may be illegally recording the film.

In recent years, pirates have found new and inventive ways to record movies while watching them at the cinema screens, including using a smartphone to film through a popcorn box and covering their phone with a sock with a hole in to hide the glare of the screen.

Kieron Sharp, director general of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), said: "The bigger the film and the more anticipated it is, the higher-risk it is. We have staff on extra alert for that. James Bond is a big risk and we will be working with cinema operators and the distributors making sure we will keep that as tight as possible. We really don't want to see that recorded.

"They [cinema staff] are on alert to really drill down on who is in the auditorium and who might possibly be recording. They still do the sweeps around the auditoriums with the night vision glasses regardless of the film. But sometimes extra security is put in place for things like Bond."

The initiative arrived after a man in Nottinghamshire was arrested on suspicion of recording recently released films American Ultra and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and posting them on the internet.

Following the arrest, Sharp said: "Over 90% of counterfeit versions of movies originate initially from a copy recorded in a cinema. Piracy not only costs the film industry millions of pounds but can also affect thousands of jobs, so it is crucial we act upon intelligence we receive about this activity.

"With two big releases due to hit the screens in the next few months it is incredibly important we work to combat those behind illegal film recordings."

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 09-24-2015, 08:29 PM:

This is nothing new, cinemas in the UK (where the article is referring to) have been encouraged to use night vision goggles for a few years now.

The effectiveness of this is probably minimal against any half-intelligent pirate.

quote:
The initiative arrived after a man in Nottinghamshire was arrested on suspicion of recording recently released films American Ultra and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and posting them on the internet.

Impressive if they managed to pirate Maze Runner in 3 screen Barco Escape.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 10-30-2015, 06:28 PM:

We just had security guards sent by Sony to patrol screen showing Spectre with night-vision goggles for the opening night of Spectre.

We have our own set of goggles that we have been using for a few months too.

Occasionally we have customers complain that "they were being filmed" and we just explain that it's night vision goggles. [Big Grin]

Posted by Christopher Lani (Member # 7952) on 11-28-2015, 11:13 PM:

Why do you never hear or see anything about someone recording a movie at a drive in theater? You would think it would be easy enough to record the fm broadcast and set up a tripod and record from the back seat of an SUV or some other easily concealed vehicle. Never heard anything about this. Have any of you? I know the movies are supposedly watermarked, but how does that work?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-28-2015, 11:47 PM:

I don't know the answer to the drive-in question, but one guess might be that many drive-ins are not located in the areas where this kind of piracy is rampant (big cities) AND a lot of drive-ins don't play first-run content on the break.

Then there is the issue of drive-ins starting the movie before the sky is completely dark thus making it hard to get a good quality image -- not that that would stop a lot of cammers, I guess.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 11-29-2015, 01:34 PM:

A drive-in not far from me, back in the era of 35mm "crap code", was notified that the sound of a movie he had played via FM broadcast was used in pirate copies of said film, with the video part from another source. I forget what movie it was but legend has it the broadcast signals could be picked up at a nearby residential area...

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 11-29-2015, 01:56 PM:

Michael,

Did anybody offer you and your fellow employees any training on legal and civil rights issues before they turned you loose with night vision goggles in the theater? Search and seizure? False arrest? Wrongful incrimination?

Is this your theater's policy or is is the movie company's?

One false step and one of your customers could have a nice, comfortable retirement, courtesy of your theater's management! [Wink]

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 11-29-2015, 02:48 PM:

Are those issues different because of night vision, compared to simply seeing camming going on without night vision?

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 11-29-2015, 03:18 PM:

Why are you guys playing cop for the film companies?

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 11-29-2015, 03:48 PM:

I don't know for sure but I do know that there is a difference between an ordinary person observing something with the naked eye and that same person using binoculars or a camera with telephoto lens. One is ordinary behavior and the other could be considered a search, depending on the circumstance. The fact that a company specifically sends its employees out to search theaters with vision enhancing equipment might easily sway a judge or jury.

I find this troublesome because companies will tell employees that they are not cops or security guards when it comes to holdups, fights, drunk/disorderly persons or other similar things but, almost in the very next breath, tells them to act like cops by searching customers or their personal property. In one sentence, they say that low-paid, teenaged employees don't have the training, experience or authority to act like cops then, with the next, send them out to do just that.

Some might say that there is a difference between searching bags and dealing with a criminal carrying a gun but you should ask why employees are being asked to search. They are being sent out to search for guns. Right?

What's the difference between a stickup artist with a .38 and a lunatic with a Kalashnikov?

In my opinion, theaters are sending their employees out to walk a tightrope, both in a legal sense and in a safety sense. To me, it doesn't matter whether they are searching for guns, drugs and contraban, searching for smuggled bags of Doritos or searching for cameras. It's all the same thing.

If theater's want to have security guards they should hire security guards and stop impressing their line-employees to do the jobs that professionals should be doing.

If movie companies want theaters to have security, they should pay them to hire professionals.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-29-2015, 04:29 PM:

This is all getting a bit out of hand to the point it's becoming ridiculous.

TSA type security checks and ushers with night vision binoculars tracking down illegal "camsters".

quote: Christopher Lani
Why do you never hear or see anything about someone recording a movie at a drive in theater? You would think it would be easy enough to record the fm broadcast and set up a tripod and record from the back seat of an SUV or some other easily concealed vehicle. Never heard anything about this. Have any of you? I know the movies are supposedly watermarked, but how does that work?

The watermarking actually is in the audio. No mortal soul is supposed to understand how it works, because that's the key to the magic. Although there are plenty of public documents of how you can "invisibly" watermark both images and audio.

I guess drive-inns using FM transmission for their audio, operate somewhat in a grey area. I'm pretty sure most studios don't like the fact that their precious content is at least partially transmitted in high quality over the airwaves without any encryption...

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 11-30-2015, 09:35 AM:

We are a single-screen first-run drive-in. In 9 seasons (which for us might be about 200k patrons), I have only seen one person set up a tripod and camera and attempt to video tape a movie (35mm at the time). I asked him to stop or leave. I'm not always on-site of course, and though I've never seen anyone trying to do it from INSIDE the car, it would be harder to tell if they were now that many cars have "video screens" on the center consoles, which look a lot like a camera viewfinder. It's true that dark scenes projected at dusk would provide less than ideal video. The sound would potentially be much better than an indoor of course if they hard-wired a good FM receiver to their recording device. No studio has ever written, e-mailed or spoken of any concern about our FM broadcasts to me.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 11-30-2015, 09:43 AM:

One would think with the relative availability of dash cams, DI bootlegging would be a breeze these days. Someone would have to be dedicated enough to do some tweaking, but if it is what they want to do...
Hell, I can imagine someone doing their own version of MST3K from inside their car and doing a live-stream podcast! [evil]

Posted by Dave Bird (Member # 490) on 11-30-2015, 10:34 AM:

Is that why people keep asking for our wifi password? (I should've had our IT guys name it something other than the theatre's name.)

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 11-30-2015, 01:34 PM:

I find it hilariously ironic that due to the transition to digital projection, cammed bootlegs actually look better since flicker/strobing isn't an issue anymore.

Posted by Jay Glaus (Member # 6011) on 12-01-2015, 12:51 AM:

I can actually speak with some experience to the drive-in situation.

Apparently what a lot of pirates do, it record the video in an auditorium, and get the audio from a drive in, then put the two pieces together.

Apparently you get much better quality filming in an indoor opposed to a drive in. I suppose the screen is generally smaller, no outside lights, headlights. But the audio can be tricky as people are moving around, talking at times, cracking wrappers. That is where it is better to get the audio at a drive in, if you can. A feed right from your car's stereo system sounds just as good even if you are yaking away on your cell phone or an airplane is passing over.

How do I know this? This happened for a little while at the drive in. The pirate was finally caught, but he was recording audio and mashing it up with video that others in the group captured. It was a large ring with video sometimes even coming from other countries.

We were one of the first drive ins in the area to start processing our sound with a Dolby, and the pirate even admitted he liked ours best to the cops. (Hey folks, come to our drive in! The sound is so good even the pirates love it!)

Apparently, we were told, when he was taken in he gave up a lot of others in the group obviously in exchange for a lesser punishment. But since then we haven't heard of any piracy from any of our shows (knock on wood).

When I was at CinemaCon I know they use that PirateEye or whatever it is called in the Colosseum that detects camera lenses from a camera on top of the screen, but I'm sure that is expensive.

Just my two cents.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-01-2015, 05:21 AM:

Why would anybody want to invest in something like a "pirate eye"?

And if the movie industry wants this, they should pay for the installation, the maintenance and other operational costs, including the gazillions of false positives this will produce and the fallout for the affected customers from handling those false positives.

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 12-01-2015, 05:01 PM:

never having heard of PirateEye, I thought I'd google for it...

One possible reason an exhibitor might invest in this sort of this is so that they don't need to ask staff to go poking around with night vision kit, and perhaps more importantly, risking confrontation with an angry punter.