What is the general opinion here regarding rating presentations opening day/weekend? Our fearless friend Evans has actually taken rating presenatations to a new level with his website, but to my knowledge he has never taken into account the fact that (it appears) he sees most movies on opening day, or at least opening weekend.

My firm belief is that ANY theater, even those equipped with complete idiots in the projection booth, can "do film right" on opening weekend. There are theaters that have not cleaned their projectors in years, but of course put a brand new print through them and it appears on-screen to be an excellent presentation. I see this all the time and even the studios don't seem to think about this, for otherwise why does TAP review the "first show, opening day" (never to return for a re-review) when they do their in-theater presentation ratings? That is in my opinion a complete waste of time. First it does not take into account the possibility of a bad reel and does not allow the theater to secure a replacement (no doubt due to TES not shipping prints early enough). Second, like I said ANY dump of a theater is going to appear to have a great presentation the first X number of times the film is ran. So why do people even bother rating a presentation during the first couple of weeks?

Evans, do you ever go back and watch a film that you gave a "perfect presentation" rating to on opening weekend a couple of months on down the line? I'm betting they wouldn't quite get the same review. Few theaters can truly keep their presentation up to the quality standard of the first performance.

I still say that a theater's presentation should not be rated unless they are running a film that is at least 2 months old. Sure many prints do not stick around for that long, but get a popular film and check up on it many weeks down the road and THEN you will see just how good the presentation really is. Even those theaters that manage to not scratch their prints during that time will almost always have objectionable dirt buildup at the reel changes. (Objectionable dirt buildup meaning any dirt whatsoever, no matter how minute, of course.) Online film cleaning is an absolute necessity as is proper film handling, well maintained equipment and correct threading every single time. I don't care how organized the booth is, what the projectionists wear, or how the film is transported (platter/reel to reel/tower). Without all of the above 4 points present, it just doesn't happen.

Opinions, reactions, comments?

Of course, all it takes is one mistake to ruin a print, so even a good first screening is not guaranteed.

On the other hand, I think there are more theatres out there that try to do a good job than people realize. Last year, I went to see "Gladiator" at a busy 25-plex a full two months after it had opened. And aisde from a little bit of dirt around one of the reel change splices, it still looked brand new! So it's not a safe assumption that theatres will automatically start to do a bad job after opening night is over. (I understand that's not necessarily what you're saying Brad, but I thought I'd point it out.)

I think one possible indictator on theater presentation quality could be determined from this: have someone check the print itself when it is returned or sent to the second run theater. It is print dirty and scratched to hell. Was the print even taken apart and put in the cases in the original order in which it arrived?

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I want my reviews to reflect how the majority of people see movies in the local theatres. Attendance for any given movie is usually at its peak on opening weekend. Therefore, more people see the movie on opening weekend than two months later. Even with this attendance pattern of mine, there is a wide variation in presentation quality ratings, so I don't see this as a major problem with my system. Many movies seen on opening day/weekend have many notable problems, and the theatres that are the most sloppy, in my experience, are the ones that have the most scratches/dirt on prints after several weeks.

I do occasionally make a point to see movies that have been running several weeks at theatres just to see if they have excessive print damage.

Regarding prints that arrive at the theatre damaged and presented with defects whiel a replacement reel has been ordered -- I take that into account too. Suppose a reel arrives with, say, one reel with a defective DD soundtrack, causing the reel to play in analog, and the manager tell sme that a replacement reel has been ordered, then I don't deduct. This has happened, and the replacement reel was indeed ordered and the problem went away.

Trust me: There are plenty of other problems other than print damage to evaluate. If a theatre is sloppy, they'll get deductions for alignment problems, running things out of frame, showing previews with the wrong lens (scope/flat), brightness uniformity problems, sound problems, etc., even without the print damage.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

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My firm belief is that ANY theater, even those equipped with complete idiots in the projection booth, can "do film right" on opening weekend.

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I'm not so sure. I recently went to see Spy Game the day after it opened at a local 1st run theatre and it had a horrible scratch from the very first trailer all the way thru the credits about one third the way in from the right side. (The trailers were badly scratched all over). It was probably the most noticable scratch I'd seen in quite a while. I made it a point to search out the manager/projectionist and ask him about it. He said it was not there when he previewed the film after build-up, but he was off the next day and found out about it when he came back the second day. ( It only ran 3 times the first day). He wasn't happy about it and basically trashed his co-workers, and said he knew it was not caused by the equipment, and his response was something like: when you pay minimum wage, you get exactly what you pay for....

Yet, a caring and skilled projectionist is also a very important factor in "Film Done Right". Decades ago, it was not uncommon for a print to run for many months in a theatre, accumulating close to 1000 screenings. Even without film cleaners, prints remained very clean and scratch free in theatres that had projectionists who knew what they were doing and cared about quality.

We've all seen diagonal "platter scratches" that happened during makeup due to improperly positioned guide rollers, or a vertical scratch throughout an entire print caused by a misthread early in the life of a print. "Film Done Right" is more than having good film and good equipment, it's having good PEOPLE in the projection room.

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You're right about many theatres handling film "just good enough" to have a decent presentation for a week or two. However, those theatres that handle film "just good enough" also tend to do everything else "just good enough" to get by and don't keep everything aligned as well as they could, don't keep the sound systems maintained well, and aren't as careful about running movies (especially flat) in frame.

The Regal River Oaks Cinema 8 in Decatur, AL, is an example of a theatre in which the manager goes the extra mile to keep everything in good shape. There are fewer alignment flaws and misframed movies there than anywhere else, and only on one occasion did I detect a minor audio problem. That's great! Guess what? That's also the theatre I can visit and see a movie that has been running for months and it will have negligible print damage! There is a high correlation between sloppy presentation quality and cumulative damage to prints. That's why I don't go to too much trouble to check older showings all that often. I believe the system I use for rating is sufficient, due to this correlation.

Go to my presentation quality review section and look at the rankings (not counting facility deductions for lack of adjustable masking) and those rankings also correspond to the amount of print damage that occurs over time. Carmike 8 in Decatur, AL is the worst and Regal River Oaks Cinema 8 in Decatur is the best. It's just that simple. By the way, I'm told that the Carmike 8, after that Decatur Daily article ran (I put it in its own thread), will soon have a different manager. Things might improve some there. It is common to see print damage there on opening weekend.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

Here in Lawton, the manager at the Carmike 8 is the main guy doing all the projection work and if he has any assistant managers building prints he rides their butts to make sure they do the job right. He knows how to work on the projectors and troubleshoot most problems. He also has a very good tech working in the district that visits the theater at least several times a year to fine tune the sound systems. The high school kids working the box office and concession stand stay downstairs. I've seen plenty of shows late in their run at this theater and they usually look very good.