Single screen booking: Not for the faint of heart

[Marcel Birgelen]

Regarding the intermission thing... I've said it before: There are thousands of theaters internationally, that gladly cut-up every Hollywood feature of a particular length into two pieces and put an intermission in between... No studio has ever managed to stop the practice in the last 50+ years.

It's technically doable with almost any DCP compliant hardware out there. It would help if the filmmaker would give an appropriate time for an intermission, but broadcasters have been cutting up feature length movies into pieces for decades now, without giving a damn about the filmmaker... Given the fact that your "average modern audience" has an attention span of a goldfish with ADHD, I'm sure not too many people would start to complain, quite the opposite.

As for your booking scheduling issues... Hollywood isn't known for playing by the rules... or at least by coming up with their own rules. In case of Wicked, I really wonder what would've happened if you'd booked it for e.g. 3 weeks and would've rotated it with Avatar opening on the break. Probably nothing...

[Mike Blakesley]

It would be easy to program a home-made intermission. The only roadblock is knowing where to put the cut so it doesn't look and sound like crap. And there's never enough time to figure something like that out before a movie opens.

[Ed Gordon]

... The only roadblock is knowing where to put the cut so it doesn't look and sound like crap. And there's never enough time to figure something like that out before a movie opens.

Web sites like Hollywood Half-Time are great for determining the best place for an intermission, but are dependent on audience suggestions which means such web site are useless for most exhibitors. The studios have no incentive to provide this information to exhibitors. It would be beneficial to the audience and it would boost concession sales, but to studios it might mean one less showing a day and lost revenue.

[Mike Blakesley]

Putting on a pleasant experience should be the Film-Tech Forums priority, not the number of shows. That's another thing the bean counters have lost sight of.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Back in the film days, my instruction was to just put the intermission reel in "roughly half way". It often worked out pretty well, since the end of a reel often coincided with the end of a scene, but I remember some rather awkward moments.

While DCP still has "virtual reels", those are even more useless for perfect intermission timing. I know that most cinemas over here that stage an intermission try to figure out a good moment for an intermission during QC or the first run.

Something needs to change to make going to the movie theater special again, so the roadshow treatment of a movie should become much more the norm... Studios spend millions on marketing of a feature. Imagine them spending a few dollars on providing supporting materials, like a soundtrack for lobby and entrance music... a proper intermission, what about a special short after the movie for the real fans, only available in theaters?

Most people don't just go out to watch a movie, they want to be entertained. It's all a bunch of escapism after all, make them feel like they're experiencing something special, not just a cheaper version of what they could've had at home.

[Mike Blakesley]

It's all a bunch of escapism after all, make them feel like they're experiencing something special

And yet, even when we give them a huge screen, big sound, recliner seats, clean up after them and all of that.....it isn't special enough. I do feel like we as an industry are doing what we can, although some chains tend to cheap out on a lot of areas....but they have to, to keep those huge buildings running. The studios need to make movies feel special. Sticking them on video after a month is not the way to do it.

[Steve Guttag]

Putting on a pleasant experience should be the Film-Tech Forums priority, not the number of shows. That's another thing the bean counters have lost sight of.

The hashtag into a link got you! I'm sure you meant "number" 1 priority

[Mike Blakesley]

I did. I wish they'd fix that.

[Marcel Birgelen]

And yet, even when we give them a huge screen, big sound, recliner seats, clean up after them and all of that.....it isn't special enough. I do feel like we as an industry are doing what we can, although some chains tend to cheap out on a lot of areas....but they have to, to keep those huge buildings running. The studios need to make movies feel special. Sticking them on video after a month is not the way to do it.

I agree, it's for a large part in the hands of the movie studios right now. Although in the end, it should be a cooperative effort though, where movie theaters give movies the best stage to be viewed and the studios create an ecosystem for the movies to thrive, which would include a reasonable exclusive window for theatrical presentations.

Unfortunately, it feels like current studios see the exhibition industry more like a necessary evil than a partner. I guess it comes from the minds of the people that run those places. Most of them don't really like to share anything with others. Ironically, that's most likely also why they were so eager to deploy their own streaming platforms, even though no streaming platform other than Netflix seems to ever have made any substantial amount money. And Netflix only made money with their platform because of their first mover-advantage: having access to decades of back-catalog content for relatively low prices. I doubt Netflix really makes any money on the few high-profile features they put out.

PS: A Merry Christmas to everyone... may your holidays be only slightly dysfunctional.

[Jack Ondracek]

Back when I owned a quad indoor, we ran some Disney show that had damage to the last 10 or 15 seconds of the credits. It was bad enough that we had to cut the section out and fade out the picture before the splice hit.

On the Tuesday following our opening of the show, my booker called to tell me that the studio had received a complaint from a customer, accusing us of cutting the credits prematurely, and demanding we explain ourselves.

Fortunately, I had notified our booker of the problem on Friday, before our first show, and had pictures of the crunched -up film. We sent that off to Disney, who promptly sent me a brand-new replacement reel... just for the sake of 15 seconds of credits.

Based on that, more or less, we never played around with adding other shows or inserting our own intermissions, though we sure did think about it.

The longer those shows got, the fewer starts we could run, and the snack bar really suffered, because the place was full of people watching a three-hour-tour, and nobody was getting up for popcorn.

Frankly, I'm impressed that anyone with a single-screen house might have found a way to make it work, especially if the studios only let you run a couple changes a month.

[Mike Blakesley]

Unfortunately, it feels like current studios see the exhibition industry more like a necessary evil than a partner.

I think you're right, and how do we make them change that attitude? The industry used to say that exhibition was the engine that pulls the train, and studies show that theatrical release does indeed give a movie a lot more legitimacy...so why don't we get no respect? They talk at CinemaCon about how wonderful we are but I feel like they're walking offstage mumbling under their breath about what a-holes we are.

[Steve Guttag]

Fortunately, I had notified our booker of the problem on Friday, before our first show, and had pictures of the crunched -up film. We sent that off to Disney, who promptly sent me a brand-new replacement reel... just for the sake of 15 seconds of credits.

Early in my projection career, I was running Ordinary People. This was back in the days when a movie would play a LONG time and circuit around to different theatres so you might not be getting a new print, even if you were a first-run theatre. Anyway...the credits were a disaster. No like, they probably had about 12-splices in them. My guess is that after the original break, they kept making really bad splices and the rolling credits just confused the heck out of them so the splices weren't all on the frame line, which made for some interesting reading on screen. I was the relief operator and it was a platter house so someone else built up the print but I tried to fix it. Part of the issue is the credit scroll but another part is the music that played along with it (Pachelbel's Canon). Just cutting out a large hunk would be problematic with the score.

Even after I "fixed" the mis-frames, we still put in for a replacement. Back then, you didn't get a new reel (at least not for that movie), you got a new credit section. It came in and looked like a trailer with instructions on where to make the splice to attach it. To this day, I remember where that spice was.

My guess is, based on the era, either the tail escaped from the platter pack and started wrapping around the arm of the platter or, more likely, someone overpacked the last reel in a 6K reel house and had the tail wrap around a rewind head on the rewind. Regardless, by the time we got it, it was nasty and clearly got worse over time.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Early in my projection career, I was running Ordinary People. This was back in the days when a movie would play a LONG time and circuit around to different theatres so you might not be getting a new print, even if you were a first-run theatre. Anyway...the credits were a disaster. No like, they probably had about 12-splices in them. My guess is that after the original break, they kept making really bad splices and the rolling credits just confused the heck out of them so the splices weren't all on the frame line, which made for some interesting reading on screen. I was the relief operator and it was a platter house so someone else built up the print but I tried to fix it. Part of the issue is the credit scroll but another part is the music that played along with it (Pachelbel's Canon). Just cutting out a large hunk would be problematic with the score.

Even after I "fixed" the mis-frames, we still put in for a replacement. Back then, you didn't get a new reel (at least not for that movie), you got a new credit section. It came in and looked like a trailer with instructions on where to make the splice to attach it. To this day, I remember where that spice was.

My guess is, based on the era, either the tail escaped from the platter pack and started wrapping around the arm of the platter or, more likely, someone overpacked the last reel in a 6K reel house and had the tail wrap around a rewind head on the rewind. Regardless, by the time we got it, it was nasty and clearly got worse over time.

When I was working the UA 8 in Buena Park, we got the print of "Jagged Edge" (yeah It was that long ago) than ran for almost a week until a complaint came up to me that there was no sound during a certain part of the show. (I wasn't the one who built the print.) When I did the screen check around the time frame reported, sure enough there was no sound. I went to the booth to see what was up..and discovered that the optical track was...BLANK! The two track lines were there, but with no modulation. That continued into the next reel where the sound suddenly came back. The ENTIRE REEL had left the lab without ANY modulation at all on the track! The studio overnighted a replacement reel.

Years later, I had another major film (can't remember the title) at the 4 plex I ran. One reel had an odd image defect....imagine it as if someone was rhythmically pulling on the lower right corner of the image and then letting it snap back, over and over again all throughout one full reel. We had tons of complaints about it. I called for a replacement, but that distributor (which shall remain nameless even though I remember who it was) fought me about sending out a replacement reel. I told them they had 48 hours to get me the replacement or I'd pull the whole show off the screen. They threatened to bill me for the reel or damages if I pulled the show. I said go right ahead, I got video of the problem and would love to forward it to our head office and attorney. They sent a replacement over by courier, who waited to take the damaged reel back. Two days later I got a letter of apology from the studio. The distributor? Not a word, and they hated me forever after. IDidn'tGAF.

[Mike Blakesley]

And now the studio has announced that Wicked For Good will be available on digital (rental or buy) on Dec. 30, and on physical media January 20.

It's sorely tempting to tell them what they can do with their movie, but we've got a lot of people who have been waiting for it, so we're probably still going to play it after Avatar ends -- so that means we'll have it January 9-15, still be paying the high percentage for it, and then a week later people will see big displays of it for $9.99 in all the Wal-Marts...featuring bonus footage and all! Which will have the effect of eroding our business further, like it does every time this happens.

If single screens are going to have any hope of survival, we HAVE to be able to play movies for one week whenever we can fit them in.

We HAVE to be able to stack two movies.

Since we don't have the flexibility in our buildings, we really need it from the studios.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Nobody is going to disallow me to "stack" movies on my TV at home either. There, everybody can binge-watch whatever is on-offer on the streaming services they're subscribed to. Both the newest blockbusters, but also "Home Alone" or "Die Hard" if they want to see a "Christmas movie". Just try to get a license at a reasonable price to show any of those movies around Christmas time in your theater...

But, from the statistics I've seen, there are still about 5k single screen movie theaters in the US. I'm not sure how current that number is, but it seems to me, you're not alone with this particular problem. Maybe it's really time to get together somehow? It's clear that organizations like NATO are more focused on rebranding themselves, than representing single screens towards the studios.

To me, this also feels like a monopolistic stranglehold of the studios. I guess a lot is permitted in the race "to beat the competition", but this doesn't feel like an open market economy to me and in all honesty, it doesn't make any economic sense in most of the cases. It's the mutual interest of both the studios and the exhibition industry to make as much money with any movie as possible. The times there *might* be a slight conflict of interest, when two extremely popular movies hit at the same time, they're almost non-existent anymore... The last time something similar happened might have been with "Barbenheimer", where a studio might have a serious interest to have THEIR movie running in your theater at exactly THAT time.

I know studios are generally very restrictive, but over here, stacking a movie on a single screen is something that happens way more often, so studios seem to be more lenient over here in general. I guess it comes down to tradition and trying to have a tighter grip on a market they probably deem more important for them as the "overseas market".