Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Movie "theater" reviews

This is topic Movie "theater" reviews in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-30-2001, 01:52 AM:

I've been getting this request a lot lately to open up a forum specifically for reporting presentation quality in theaters. (No, it's not just Evans submitting the idea over and over. These emails are actually coming from different people). The general idea is to open up a forum that encourages people to report good and bad experiences with specific theaters, including specifics such as auditorium number and sound formats (THX, DTS, mono, etc) whenever possible. It would be a sort of public TAP program.

Now there are two things that can happen here. First is positive. Theaters who put on a great presentation will be reported here as a quality place to see a movie. It will let people (at least those who read this site) know where their best chances are of having a good experience at a particular theater. It will also quietly let the people behind the scenes at a particular theater get a pat on the back. Any studios lurking about will also see the reports from the field as well as the district offices for these theaters.

On the flip side, such a forum could undoubtedly be a blunt and harsh instrument to those theaters who do a poor job of putting on a show. Are we worried about hurting people's feelings who do a sloppy job? Or would it be more politically appropriate to not post such a forum to keep these theaters running along quietly?

In the end, would theaters reading bad reviews of their location take the extra effort to improve? Would this just anger people and accomplish nothing? Will people take the time to report GOOD experiences? Will people NOT post reports on THEIR OWN theaters? Would this possibly assist the studios and the TAP program in their quest for presentation excellence? Could this assist companies like Kodak and the printing labs of patterns with particular releases? And so forth, and so on...

Other things to consider would be how such a forum should be organized. Should this be done per theater complex, or by movie title? (I am leaning more towards movie title, for it would be potentially interesting to see how the print condition decreases over time. Also, there are several hundred theaters in the US alone!)

I've toyed with the idea for months now since the first time it was brought up and I've decided to just let the members vote it out. Please respond here on the forum (email responses will not be counted) as to your opinion, for or against such a forum, along with your reasoning. The majority vote will be the deciding factor.

This should be interesting.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 06-30-2001, 02:14 AM:

I like the idea but I agree that it could quickly turn into a flame fest.

Maybe there could be some sort of posting guidelines? I'm sure the UBB program isn't set up for this but I have an idea to spitball:

There could be categories for each aspect of the presentation... framing, focus, sound, etc. Each one would have a rating from 1 to 10. If it was set up as a form with check boxes or entry boxes for for each category. Not only would this keep things on an objective level but it would give a way to calculate average ratings on each theatre.

Of course there'd have to be a text box for people to type in general comments and stuff.

Posted by Mike Judge (Member # 558) on 06-30-2001, 05:42 AM:

I wouldn't think that a theatre with a bad presentation would be reading this site. I like the idea, with Randy's ideas, it could be a very good thing.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-30-2001, 08:13 AM:

I kind of like the idea. I would prefer that it be organized by theatre name, in order to facilitate discussion about whether each theatre mentioned _usually_ has presentation problems or if it only occasionally makes mistakes. Every theatre has good and bad shows, and so it's a good idea to not limit discussion to the context of a particular title.

Also, posting guidelines would need to be enforced. Certain information should be required or strongly encouraged, such as the date and time of attendance, auditorium number, and film title. It should also be required or encouraged that users state any affiliations which may affect their reviews (e.g. employement at the same theatre or chain or employment at a competitor in the same market, etc.).

In general, though, I do like the concept.

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 06-30-2001, 08:35 AM:

Wow. Randy cut to the chase on the first post! Good goin' guy!

Reviews are subjective, forcing posters to use a form would instill at least a small amount of objectivity. The next problem to tackle would be further standardizing the ratings. Like "film done right," I suspect "reviewing done right" would take a lot more effort than most people are willing to provide.

Brad, you wrote: "It will let people (at least those who read this site) know where their best chances are of having a good experience at a particular theater." unless you somehow linked to Yahoo movie times and gave Scott a nervous breakdown increasing server capability, this would seem to be more wishful thinking than any real usefulness. The idea of putting these reports in front of the public and district offices might have a small positive effect, but one must temper such optimism with the fact that bean counters haven't loosened purse strings or returned full time projectionists to many theatres, even though we have regularly complained about those issues here.

I would find the forum amusing for the possible flames that might occur. Where some people see art in slice-n-dice movies, I see art in well-crafted flames that take the anger of a shitty experience and flip it against the perpetrator.

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 06-30-2001, 08:53 AM:

Auditorium number could be problematic, Scott. Some theatres are built in a crazy quilt pattern. Example: Miami Lakes has an auditorium off the lobby on the right, a long hall with a side hall on the left containing two auditoriums, two side hallways on the right with two auditoriums each, and auditoriums off the main hallway. No rational numbering system is possible, much less one that an outside observer would understand intuitively. When the point 2 position is manned, no one is allowed down the halls to count auditoriums or guess at what number they might be.

One issue that would be tricky to address would be the possibility of a reviewer coming across illegal activity. While those interested in presentation might not focus on the problem, it is there, it does affect the theatre and distributor, and there are legal implications to reporting it. I've done more than my fair share of theatre audits, and if I went in on blind checks with the idea of looking for problems, I'm sure I'd find doormen passing in friends, ticket scams, intentional misrings at concession, auditorium swappers, and other theft in addition to the presentation issues Evans mentions.

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 06-30-2001, 09:07 AM:

I'd like to see theaters organized by state, then by chain/owner if possible. The way prints get moved around the megaplex going by title would be tough.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 06-30-2001, 09:31 AM:

Actually, there are already two sites that I know of that rate movie theatres. Digital City is a forum-type discussion for a limited number of cities and SRAT's Movie Theater Reviews is a form-type system.

Digital City reviews are hard to find (here's a sample) and you will see a lot of "I liked the movie" type of review mixed with reviews of the complex. I wouldn't go the forum route, as it would encourage off-topic discussion. SRAT's form system looks decent, but I don't think it's been updated in a couple of years. Also, his form sends an email that he has to convert.

I thought about doing something like this on my site a while back, but (ideally) it would have involved going to a live database instead of an offline database producing static pages. Too much work and not enough time.

Maybe Brad can get Evans to share some of his Perl knowledge to come up with a live version of his Decatur/Huntsville database. If the site's running on Apache, I think there's support of MySQL and PHP databases built in (or there are mods available).

Regarding auditorium numbers, I've always used the standard of ... Looking at the front door, start on your left with #1 and go clockwise around the perimeter of the complex until you're back at the front door.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 06-30-2001, 10:00 AM:

Uhh, after a little more digging, I found out that SRAT died and one of his friends is trying to keep up the page as a tribute. It hasn't seen any new reviews posted since 1998.

But if you look, you can get the jist of it.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 06-30-2001, 11:35 AM:

This could be interesting as long as people didnt flame or be too harse on a particular theatre. People need to remember that a theatre might have its good and bad days.

------------------
------------------
Michael Brown
Bradford Student Cinema
www.Bradfordstudentcinema.co.uk

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 06-30-2001, 12:47 PM:

quote:
I've been getting this request a lot lately to open up a forum specifically for reporting presentation quality in theaters. (No, it's not just Evans submitting the idea over and over. These emails are actually coming from different people).

Actually, I don't think I've ever actually requested a forum for theatre reviews, although the link to my site, which contains reviews, is in my signature, which appears on most of my posts.

Getting people to be objective is the most difficult part of letting people post reviews. I know this because at times, I've found it a bit difficult to be objective at times, but I've made myself do it.

Since most of the people on this forum work at a movie theatre, I'm not sure that having staff members of theatres rate their own theatres or rate other (possible competing) theatres is a good idea, and may lead to personal problems on these forums. I have a tendency to believe that this might be a very bad idea. If I knew there were staff members of the theatres in my area here, I probably would not criticize their presentation here on the forums simply to avoid personal problems with people. I'd let them come to the reviews on my site rather than bringing my reviews to the forums if that were the case.

I think reviews of theatres should be done by customers of theatres, or a third party specializing in such reviews. This third party should not work for or be associated with any particular theatre or theatre company. The reviews should be in two categories: technical and non-technical. Technical reviews are by people who have enough knowledge to look for a wide range of technical problems when watching a presentation. Nontechnical reviews are done by the average customer who has no idea how film works. The two types of reviews would likely address different aspects of a theatre's environment and presentation. Mine are of the tchnial variety, which most of the comment cards that Regal received from customers are probably of the non-technical variety. I've never seen an existing "theatre review" sytem that addresses all the issues I feel are important, so I do it my own way.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 06-30-2001, 04:47 PM:

I believe it would be a great idea. If someone bad judges a cinema, i don't think they will care because they really don't care about their presentation if they make it look like sh*t. So WHY WOULD they care now. I am sure people would complain a lot but they just don't care.
Demetris Thoupis

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-30-2001, 06:59 PM:

Maybe there ought to be a way to rate the "audience" too. There are times in my theatre where I'm sure most of the crowd has an awful experience due to seat kickers, talkers, crying babies, fidgeting kids, aisle-runners, Pepsi spillers, candy throwers, cell phone talkers, frequent bathroom goers, candy wrapper rattlers, popcorn crunchers, chewing tobacco spitters, lighted-digital-watch time checkers, etc. It's impossible to monitor everyone all the time.

And there are plenty of other nights where everyone has a great time.

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 06-30-2001, 10:30 PM:

I do like the idea. I would also opt for listing by state, chain and/or independent theatres as opposed to films playing. Some theatres not only move the films from one auditorium to another but they have been known to swap the numbers on the auditoriums as well.

I think all registered members should be allowed to post their critical notes. I like the Idea of a form that could be printed out with the critical questions so we are all working toward the same end.
Personal opinions can always be added.

This forum can be a good thing as long as we do not make it personal to the owner or the employees.

Everyone here shares a common love for film. We all want it to be shown in the correct format with the proper sound.

I would probably be more critical of first run houses than I would of the theatres with the under belly runs.

Many of the low grossing auditoriums do not generate the monies to maintain equipment the way the large chains do. However if they run a clean theatre with proper presentation they can survive.

My vote would be to proceed with the new forum.

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 07-01-2001, 06:17 AM:

"This forum can be a good thing as long as we do not make it personal to the owner or the employees."

That's nice, but how much of a theaters problems are employee, management, or owner related!?

From experience, bad management and cheap owners are the biggest reasons for bad shows.

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 07-01-2001, 07:28 AM:

Dennis,

Let them recognise themselves without using names or sneid remarks.

They know who they are.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-02-2001, 09:22 AM:

I still think that having a theatre review forum here may create problems between some of the members here. Let's say that two managers or projectionists from the same city from competing theatres posted reviews of presentations of each other's theatres or posted general reviews of the theatres. I don't see how staff members of such theatres could ever give "objective" reviews since there is a clear conflict of interest there. I just don't want to see any resentments form here, or see anyone get in trouble with their higher-ups about posting such reviews here.

Since I receive no income from any theatre or theatre company, and since my theatre reviews are in no way related to my employment, there is no conflict of interest. Having theatre staff members rate theatres would be like having me rate the research centers at my University to grade which ones are doing the best research. Since I work at one particular research center, I'd definitely want to make mine look the best, and if I didn't I'd probably get in trouble with the director of the research center where I work. I suspect that the same thing might happen with the theatre reviews if done by theatre staff members.

Suppose there are two theatres in the same area run by the same company and one staff member from one of them posts a review here that someone from the other theatre finds negative, and the upper management gets upset with the one that posted the negative review. I suspect they'd be let go.

I can think of many different types of problems that could arise because of implementation of such a forum here, from personal problems among members to staff members getting in trouble with their higher-ups. Theatre companies may develop a "don't post reviews of theatres" policy as a result.

Brad, think this thing through long and hard before you go through with it. I'm afraid it would degrade the personal relationships that have formed here over the past few years and cause problems for the participants. I'm sure that some managers in my area despise my theatre review site, especially if their theatre does not have a good rating. However, since I don't work for any of those companies, all they can do is write me and ask me to stop doing it (which hasn't happened) or file some sort of suit against me (which hasn't happened). If I became employed at a theatre company, I feel that I would have to stop running my site.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 07-02-2001, 09:53 AM:

Well, Evans makes an excellent point about who is reviewing the theatres. There was a similar type of rating systems in 98 and 99 on the DDTS.Com site.

At that time I was working for Loews and I can remember some of the critiques of their NYC and NJ theatres that infuriated me, because I knew for a fact that what was being reported was not true.

I am therefor changing me earlier positive vote to a negative vote. "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Posted by Jerry Chase (Member # 660) on 07-02-2001, 01:39 PM:

Count me in with Evans and Bob. The more I think about it, the less productive or helpful this idea seems.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-02-2001, 02:28 PM:

If the goal is to improve presentation quality, the evaluations should be returned directly to the theatre personnel who can do something about any problems noted and appreciate any praise given. Consistently good or bad presentation deserves a .cc to someone higher up the management chain.

Boxoffice Magazine publishes an annual Exhibitor Directory ("Giants of Exhibition") listing contact information for the 50 largest theatre circuits:
Boxoffice Exhibitor Directory

The International Film Journal likewise publishes an "Exhibition Guide":
Film Journal Exhibition Guide

The best management person to .cc on technical issues is usually the VP of Projection, or VP of Engineering, or VP of Operations. Examples include Roger Frazee, John Wolski, Jim Kappus, Phil Hacker, Robert Carmony, Steve Scott, Kurt Macfarlane, Barry Blackburn, Ray Gaudet, Michael Norris, Michael Thomson, Deborah Clark, Mark Louis, Carl Peterson, Dennis Daniels, David Kilderry, Dan Herron, etc.

Perhaps Film-Tech could facilitate communication by developing a directory of e-mail addresses or phone numbers for the key people at individual theatres who could respond to any problems found. Even Film-Tech people may be shy in pointing out problems in person on a busy night or when they attending a movie with others. But if they know who and how to contact someone at the theatre, their expert comments may be of help in correcting a problem. (We could start out with a directory of contact information for theatres Film-Tech people work at). Also verify the "chief" technical person at each theatre circuit who would want to know about persistent "saints" or "sinners" in each circuit.

For any film participating in the Lucasfilm THX Theatre Alignment Program (TAP), also contact the TAP hotline:
TAP Services
TAP Hotline

Phone: 1-800-PHONE-THX

Current films participating in TAP include:

Moulin Rouge

Planet of the Apes
Dr. Dolittle 2
Shrek

Evolution
Pearl Harbor
A.I.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 07-02-2001, 02:40 PM:

I like the idea. Will theaters take the reviews to heart? Keep in mind that some major theaters are the only gig in town and therefore audiences may attend them irregardless of presentation. Some companies may come up with political excuses for a bad presentation. Some theater chains are noteworthy for bad presentation and have recieved many complaints-what have they done to make improvements? What about legal/liable implications? Also, remember that many people might not know the differernce between a good and bad presentation, an exception being sound quality.

What really gets me is with the billions of $$ that are spent on pictures, studios are powerless to demand excellent presentation?
I understand that when Star Wars I came out, Lucas said that his prints would be boycotted at theaters intending to interlock? Why dont studios give theater chains ultimatems? I went into a Cineplex theater, asked to see the "booth"-you should have seen how filthy the equipment was!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-02-2001, 04:42 PM:

Will, how was their presentation? I've gone into booths where I was disgusted with the dirt, lack of organization and everything else about it right down to the stench...but onscreen everything was fantastic! Having a clean "show booth" is nice, but 99.999999999999999% of all patrons will never see it. All they see is what is on the screen and THAT is what counts.

(Evans, feel free to correct my figure above. I rounded.)

Back to the topic at hand, I think John has come up with a potentially fantastic idea here. Can anyone add to it?

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-02-2001, 05:14 PM:

I think having a list of contacts for each theatre company is a great idea. For example, if I knew which people at Regal and Carmike would be most interested in my quality reviews and that had the authority to take action to get problems corrected, I could send them the URL for my site or even occasionally send them a printed version of my ratings for theatres in my area run by their company.

Regal has a comment card mechanism, which I frequently use, but I have no idea who gets the comments I send. Long ago, the email messages I'd occasionally get back would have the list of recipients in the email header, but the last few haven't. The comment cards used to yield canned responses (I know because one response I frequently got used to have an ungrammatical sentence). I haven't heard from any submitted comment cards in a long time, so I don't know if they're getting lost, or just quietly being sent to the local theatre managers. I wouldn't be surprised if Regal didn't have their software set up to throw anything from me away.

Carmike does not have this type of mechanism on their WWW site for submitting comments. I get the impression that Regal cares more about their presentation and have better maintenance policies overall than Carmike does. The local, neat, well-run Carmike 10 is not representative of Carmike threatres in general, but the Carmike 8 in Decatur, from what I've heard from several reliable sources, is much more representative of their theatres in smaller areas. I'm not sure Carmike as a company wants comments from customers about their presentation quality at theatres. At least Regal invites such comments with their comment card WWW page. Carmike needs one similar to it.

In my area, Regal needs to:

1. Priority 1 (over anything else) : Install adjustable screen masking on screens 3-8 and 10-16 at Hollywood 18 and screens 3-6 and 9-12 at Madison Square 12 so that both the flat and scope formats will not be shown at 1.85:1 as they currently are.

2. Train the booth staff at Madison Square 12 on framing, splicing, alignment, aim, and finding and fixing common problems. Installing new projectors will not get rid of common careless operation of that equipment.

3. Put the digital sound systems in at Madison Square 12, since in 1999, all staff members I talked to thought that all auditoriums were getting digital sound during the stadium seating upgrade. The current systems are quite poor.

Carmike needs to:

1. Train the staff at Carmike 8 in Decatur as far as splicing, framing, alignment, aim, and lamphouse alignment go. Train the staff to find problems and report them and fix them as they occur.

2. At Carmike 8, update the awful sound systems in the old Litchfield auditoriums (1, 7, and 8).

3. Upgrade the equipment at Carmike 8 to give brighter images in the old Litchfield auditoriums (1, 2, 7, 8). Images are generally dim and have poor contrast and color quality,a nd often have uneven brightness.

4. Put the same effort into running and maintaining Carmike 8 as they do running Carmike 10.

So, who are the best people at each company to write concerning these types of problems? The problems have gotten the attention of the management at certain points in time, but there seems have always been very little energy directed toward improving anything.

I really think the large companies don't care much about these issues, since people will go to these theatres if they're showing movies that people want to see rather than drive a few more miles to go to a different theatre.

The bottom line is reviews do no good in improving presentation quality if the theatre companies do not care. They only serve to let people know what to expect, on the average, when they visit a certain theatre.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-02-2001, 05:26 PM:

Evans,

Actually, if people know in advance that attending a certain theater will result in a poor experience, it is the theater that will suffer as attendance drops from that knowledge.

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 07-02-2001, 05:42 PM:

A few years ago after a less than stellar film presentation,
I sent e-mail off to DTS letting them know of a major sound problem with the print/theater. The response was instant. Free tickets AND the problem was fixed. Karen even followed up with a thank you.
I have given up on the theater "technical" staff.

Emails to people or corporations that care AND get the job done
is the best way to go.

Dennis

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-02-2001, 07:12 PM:

quote:
Actually, if people know in advance that attending a certain theater will result in a poor experience, it is the theater that will suffer as attendance drops from that knowledge.

You'd think that, Brad, but I think that most of the people that go to movies don't really give a flip. People still flock to the Carmike 8 in Decatur even though people have known for years that they're consistently sloppy. People still flock to the Regal Madison Square 12 and Hollywood 18, content to see scope chopped to 1.85:1 in many auditoriums, not knowing any better, and even if they do, they still go.

Most people don't have that much of a choice when it comes to seeing movies. A person in Decatur only has one choice (whichever theatre is showing the movie they want to see) unless they wish to drive to Huntsville. The average moviegoer just doesn't care about presentation quality, unless the sound is distorted enough to be noticeable or the image is really messed up in some way. Most people don't even understand how the movie formats work and don't know enough about composition to know when a flat movie is misframed significantly and they surely don't care if the image fades out 6 inches to a foot from the edge of the screen, or goes that far past the black area onto the drapes.

I've been in showings where these things took place and I'm the only one that went out and complained about Erin Brockovich being so far out of frame that opening credits were cut off and microphones were dancing around at the top of the screen. I'm the only one that complained the one time when the film was loaded backwards (mirror image with soundtrack visible, with the edge of the image played as the soundtrack) at the old, now closed Regal 8. I'm the only one who complained when the douser was falling down during the show, darkening the bottom 25 percent of the image in a showing of American Beauty. The other people just didn't care, and were totally content to watch it the way it was.

With customers as apathetic as they are now, theatre companies can get away with minimal care, maintenance, and quality checking. I hate to say it, but customers are mainly to blame for the sorry presentations they put up with. If customers would start caring about what they're paying for and take a stand, saying "This is not acceptable" when things go wrong, certain theatres in my area would either have to clean up their act, improve their facilities to modern standards, and implement a good quality checking and control system.

Educating the "average customer" to know how to notice various problems with presentations and report them would be nice, but have you ever tried to teach a non-technical person about anything halfway technical? It's hard enough to explain it to my technical friends that are software devlopers and engineers. It would be like trying to teach a pig to sing.

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig." -- Paul Dickson

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 07-02-2001, 07:23 PM:

I feel that the suggestion put forward by John is solid and do-able. Notifing the correct individuals within an organization is (excuse the pun) paramount to getting action on the complaints. Maybe rather than call them complaints we refer to them as suggestions.

John is absolutely right, in that the ultimate goal, is a better presentation to the public, than is presently being delivered.

I know that I am coming in from a different perspective than the majority of members. However, after 45 years in this industry, I do know a good presentation from a bad one. Without knowing how to fix a problem, I know what needs to be done, to correct the problems that I encounter. Therefore if you know, what is creating the problem, I would offer a solution. The solution may help the person receiving the suggestion in speaking with their technical department.

If you are making a suggestion to a company whose technician is a member of film-tech.com, you may want to contact them by e-mail, first and give them a chance to deal with the problem before going over their heads.

I Know we all want to be able to show "Film Done Right" plus we also want to see "Film Done Right" so please let us all work together.

Anyhow I will support whatever Brad deceides to do.

Brad, I thank you for bringing this thread up, John I thank you for your insight and suggestion. I believe this can work.

Ut oh! Move me back to the positive side.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-02-2001, 08:01 PM:

Evans said:
"You'd think that, Brad, but I think that most of the people that go to movies don't really give a flip."

Yes, you are correct. However if the customers really cared that much they would stop patronizing a particular theater in the end and they would go out of business. (Sure this is an extreme example, but you get the point of it.) Your last post seems to have just made a valid point to the Regal and Carmike theaters of Decatur that they no longer need to consider putting in variable masking, for people (including yourself - the one person who complains constantly about it) will continue to patronize the establishments.

Calculate this, what is the actual percentage of all of your posts right here on Film-Tech that mention these couple of theaters with their aspect ratio handicaps? Then calculate the odds of any Film-Tech lurker not reading at least one of your aspect ratio posts and being uninformed about patronizing those two specific theaters whenever they visit the Huntsville/Decator area. Now please calculate how many OTHER people have complained on this forum about those two specific theaters. Finally guesstimate just how valuable those Huntsville/Decator theaters are to a chain in respect to other theaters in their circuit. Does it add up?

One person complaining over and over and over and over about a particular item will accomplish nothing, unless the theater chain's head tech decides that enough is enough of the complaining and decides he needs to satisfy you. (Highly doubtful. The odds are much greater that he will learn to detest everything you say and hope you never visit their theaters again. After all, if these two theaters had adjustable masking, would you patronize them enough over what you do now to justify the expense? It's not just hanging some black cloth up. It's new lenses, aperture plates, labor, etc to make it happen.) So to put it closer to home, there is a far better chance of the Huntsville/Decator theaters receiving masking upgrades if multiple people speak out...so if in the end this idea is a "go", get everyone you know to report their findings with these two theaters positive or negative and see if it can make a difference.

Posted by Will Kutler (Member # 770) on 07-02-2001, 08:14 PM:

Brad,

I agree with you. However, people may overlook a theater's downfalls if they are the only game in town. Century is getting a monopoly in Tucson, and other chains such a Loews/Cineplex are suffering! Harkin's is supposed to be building on Tucson's northwest side, but with Century having 2 ea 20 Plexes to cover each side of town, competition will be tough. There is also supposed to be an IMAX opening up downtown as part of Tucson's Rio Nuevo project.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 07-02-2001, 08:17 PM:

Brad ... have a peek here. If you want, I can export the info in my circuits database to a delimited text file for you to use as a starting place if you decide to go this way.

Posted by Greg Pauley (Member # 503) on 07-02-2001, 09:54 PM:

Although this sounds like a good idea on the surface, I think you would be opening up a can of "Jerry Springer." The exhibitor community is a small group of people and I think feeling could be strained if your competitor or ex-employee drops a bogus posting on one of your theatres. I think that most forum member would be professional and honest in their posting , be assured that a few would abuse. One solution would to use a company that already handles problem with theatres, TAP. You could setup a page with slots for all the information needed and fowarded the information to TAP. If everyone had to give their name, phone number and address to TAP, this would cut down on any bogus claims. If you wanted you could also post the infomation on the forum minus the theatre name to avoid stirring up problems. Just my opinion!

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 07-03-2001, 10:08 AM:

quote:
Your last post seems to have just made a valid point to the Regal and Carmike theaters of Decatur that they no longer need to consider putting in variable masking, for people (including yourself - the one person who complains constantly about it) will continue to patronize the establishments.

Sadly, that's true. (Actually, it's the Regal theatres in Huntsville (not Decatur) that have nonvariable masking. The Carmike in Decatur has variable masking but bad presentation qualtiy, The Regal in Decatur is excellent.) Even though I patronize the theatres I don't like, I do it to try to keep the number of visits to each theatre relatively evenly distributed. Most showings I see at the two Huntsville Regals are on opening week of a movie, which are typically in the few large auditoriums that do have variable masking.

About the postings and the percentages of people who patronize Huntsville theatres: I would be surprised if there were a single person other than myself from the Huntsville area that was registered with film-tech. There may be a few people that occasionally look around film-tech from Huntsville since I link to film-tech from one page of my site.

Sure, I complain a lot about these problems because Huntsville seems to be one of the few cities with the problem. I've seen a few posts from other people mentioning being in "1.85-only" or "2.00-only" auditoriums, but they seem pretty scarce. I'd be willing to bet that before I started posting here about those problems, most if not all of the higher ups at Regal didn't even know that the Huntsville theatres they got from Cobb had this problem.

I've communiated with two of the higher-ups at Regal. One, who no longer appears to be with the company, responded to a letter I wrote on February 9, 1998. In that letter (written before I had as much technical knowledge as I now do), I had mentioned a string of major problems at one particular location, as well as the aspect ratio problem. He said that the aspect ratio problems were "inherent in the theatres when we acquired them" and indicated no inclination to fix them. The second higher-up at Regal that I communicated with was here on film-tech a few months ago. We had some email communication which seemed positive. From that communication, I got the feeling that the problems would likely (although not definitely) be fixed soon. For all I know, the problems may have been fixed in the past few weeks and the higher-ups may be laughing about me not yet knowing (although I think this scenario is very unlikely).

quote:
(Highly doubtful. The odds are much greater that he will learn to detest everything you say and hope you never visit their theaters again. After all, if these two theaters had adjustable masking, would you patronize them enough over what you do now to justify the expense? It's not just hanging some black cloth up. It's new lenses, aperture plates, labor, etc to make it happen.)

They probably do detest me. How many customers post reviews of all the showings on the WWW? It's not exactly a likable thing, unless a theatre is doing a really good job (like two theatres in my area are). [This is why I thought implementing such a thing here on film-tech would be a bad idea] If the problem gets fixed, it won't be because I want it fixed. It will be either because more customers complain about it, the studios or distributors start giving them problems about it (not likely), or the higher-ups get tired of the negative publicity on the WWW. I'll bet most companies who get negative product reviews in Consumer Reports magazine don't like Consumer Reports magazine! How many students who get bad grades they don't think they deserve like the teacher that gave them to them? It's not a likable thing, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I were strongly detested by several of the local managers and the higher-ups at both Regal and Carmike. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I went to see a movie at one of the theatres I've given rather negative reviews and not be allowed in.

quote:

so if in the end this idea is a "go", get everyone you know to report their findings with these two theaters positive or negative and see if it can make a difference.

You're right. This would definitely work. Getting it to happen is another story. I'd probably have to register a domain name that everyone can remember easily, and be more aggressive about advertising it (which is a problem since I have put no money into the site (except for the costs of seeing the movies, most of which I'd probably have seen anyway, even if I didn't run the site). I really don't want to have to put ads on the site, and prefer for it to be a content-only site. I don't want just anyone to be able to submit reviews because getting people to be as objective as I am is difficult, and getting them trained to recognize various problems is difficult as well. Having multiple reviewers that "grade like I do" would be the ideal solution, but if I do go with multiple reviewers (the software already has the ability to handle it) I'll likely have to settle for higher margins of error in the ratings (due to subjectivity and politics that will slip in). I think just getting more people to use the site for their showtimes is a big start toward making the rest of it more popular, since most people use it to see what new movies are coming out and what's showing at various theatres.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 07-03-2001, 09:37 PM:

I'm not in favor of adding theater reviews to film-tech. The quality of a theater can be very subjective, and, unless everyone agrees on a certain criteria ahead of time, the reviews won't really reflect much except personal opinion.

I've gotten pretty good responses to the cards in the lobbies and even "send a message to the president" boxes on web pages. I don't even attempt to talk to people at the theatres, as they usually look at me like I'm some kind of alien. Try getting information from an AMC manager on whether a film is playing in 8-channel SDDS or not...the group of "suits" I ran into didn't even know what 8-channel was!

(I have noticed one thing about letters to chains. I usually get a response to the first letter, but after that, letters get ignored. Guess I get put into the "crank" file.)

Recently, I detected a problem in the sound at a local Imax theater. I knew I would just get blown off if I talked to anyone at the theater, so I contacted the company president via the web-page. I explained the problem (reversed l-r channels) and gave situations where the problem occured. I heard back in just a couple of days and they DID fix the problem. If I had just posted this problem here in a review, I doubt the company would ever see it.

We can post all the reviews we want...the places that care about presentation will keep doing good presentations, and the junkhouses will still scratch films on the first showing and not care.

One thing we could do (in addition to a lists of technical contacts at the various chains) would be to list the films that have the 1-800-PHONE-THX at the end. If I knew ahead of time which films have this, I'll pay a bit more attention.

I vote no on theater reviews.

Mark Lensenmayer, Patron of the Cinema

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-05-2001, 10:08 AM:

Mark said: "One thing we could do (in addition to a lists of technical contacts at the various chains) would be to list the films that have the 1-800-PHONE-THX at the end. If I knew ahead of time which films have this, I'll pay a bit more attention."

I provided a link to the TAP Hotline, which lists current films that TAP is monitoring. Here it is again:
http://www.THX.com/professional_services/tap_800.html

Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 07-05-2001, 10:59 AM:

In my area most of the theatre 'reviews' on AOL's Digital City are either current employees extolling the virtures of their theatre or former dissatisfied employees dissing the same. In some isntances it degenerates into name calling between the two groups. Not exactly balanced reporting.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-05-2001, 01:57 PM:

Isn't everything on AOL like that though?

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-05-2001, 03:17 PM:

The NATO website maintains a fairly comprehensive list of links to theatres and theatre circuits (at least those that are NATO members):
http://www.natoonline.org/links1.htm#circuits

As of 2000, there were 6,571 indoor theatre sites and 408 drive-ins, for a total of 6,979 theatre sites.

Some theatre websites do have a way of letting the management know of any presentation problems, and most give a listing of key personnel in the theatre company.