So I'm thinking about how I rate presentation quality in my pseudo-reviews on Film-Tech. My benchmark for "excellent presentation" is based pretty much based on whether the feature is shown with the best-possible image and sound quality, with no serious distractions such as dirt, scratches, bad focus, etc. To a lesser extent, I consider whether the overall moviegoing experience was positive (clean auditorium, show started on time, etc.). If, for example, the rolling stock is dirty (happens all the time), I don't deduct anything (unless something is really trashed). Certainly no deductions for lack of curtains or because they show dim & dirty slides.

I like to think I'm a pretty harsh critic of poor presentation quality, but maybe I've caved in too much to the multiplex mentality. When you're critiquing a theater's "presentation", what factors (if any) do you take into account besides the feature looking and sounding good?

The look and sound of the picture are number one in my book. This includes all you mentioned plus PLENTY of light on the screen and crisp edges.

The curtain and lights add to the movie going experience (ambience)and makes the feature special when you shut down between the trailers and feature. I've yet to visit a multiplex that even has curtains. If I were to rate the 'plexes I've attended the best I could give them (average on a scale of 1-10) is 7 for performance and 1 for ambience.

Ad slides are degrading to the theatre and movie-going experience and I do my best to ignore them and chat with my wife while they're running.

I believe the ambience created by curtains and lights is very important to the movie-going experience and both will be included in my project. Ad slides will not.

A feature like LOA or Cinerama should stand alone without ads, trailers or shorts

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Bob
The Old Showman

For those who have not seen my rating system, go to http://hsvmovies.com under the "Presentation Quality Reviews" section and look at the ratings chart as well as the notes for all of the movies I've seen at each theatre, which list specific problems and deductions for each. That gives a good feel for how I rate the theatres and what I consider to be "good presentation quality".

To get an "A+", a theatre must average (using the weighted average) less than one point worth of deductions per showing attended. The "A" range is 2.0 points deducted per showing to 1.0. "A-" is 2.5 to 2. The "B" range is 5.0 to 2.5. "C" is 7.5 to 5.0 . "D" is 10.0 to 7.5. "F" is 10 or more points deducted per showing (weighted avg.).

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

If you were to ask me, I would give two different answeres; one would be for the multiplex environments and one would be for classier situations. I feel badly about "allowing" a lower standard for multiplexes, but such is life.

For the multiplexes: picture must start and remain in frame; picture must be in focus; picture must be in correct aspect ratio (including 1.33 or 1.66 as appropriate), picture must be evenly illuminated to SMPTE standards with no visible flicker; splices must be invisible/inaudible; lab splices must not be visible; sound must be clear and crisp (dialogue should be easily understandable and music should sound...umm..."musical"); sound must not be too loud or too soft; sound should be played in the best-sounding format that the theatre is capable of playing it in (mono films or Dolby A films should be run in thos formats, of course); house lights should dim at appropriate times; picture should be free of dirt and scratches (with exceptions for lab problems); all other material presented (slides, non-sync, etc.) should be done tastefully; curtains should be used if available; there should be no sound leakage between adjacent auditoria. Any defects in the presentation should be fixed as quickly and
imperceptibly (to the audience) as possible, with little or no disruption to the presentation. Any "stupid" defects in the presentation (e.g. film starting out of frame or with wrong lens/aperture plate, scratched/damaged film, etc.) immediately disqualify the presentation as being "good.")

For the better theatres: all of the above (of course), plus the following: non-sync music should be appropriate for the film being shown; curtains _must_ be used; slides may _not_ be shown (with the possible exception of self-promotion for upcoming film bookings...but the slides must be "classy"-looking and not the typical NCN/Val Morgan garbage); film ads may _not_ be shown (with exceptions for self-promotional items, e.g. concessions, gift certificates, and film trailers); slides/film ads may _not_ be shown under any circumstances with "roadshow" films which feature walk-in/walk-out music; auditorium must be tastefully decorated and lit; and a bunch of other qualifications that I can't think of right now.

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Knowing Pacific they must have extra projectionists to handle the
Dome.

The following information about the Dome's presentation of This Is Cinerama was posted on rec.arts.movies.tech by Matt Lutthans.

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Presentation: Although not free from flaws, overall the presentation was
excellent. The projection booth was manned by Dave Strohmaier (Able,
typically), Gunther Jung (Baker), and a Pacific employee by the name of BJ
(Charlie). John Sittig, president of Cinerama, was in the booth to supervise
everything and coordinate each start and stop. Around his neck, he wore a
lanyard which had, as I recall, 11 items on a checklist. He carefully went
over this list prior to pushing start for each show. Very thorough. Point
being: any flaws to be found in the TIC Dome experience cannot be blamed on
the guys in the booth, who went above and beyond, and are actually working
every show for seven straight days. Curtains opened and closed right on cue,
lights dimmed, etc., all at appropriate times, all well-timed with the action
on the screen. Kudos to the booth guys, and to the technicians who designed
and installed the very impressive custom automation, which includes an
"on-the-fly" 24/26 fps switch.

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If there are no curtains, the screen masking MUST be set for what the first FILM-sourced picture will be- yes, I'm referring to having top-masking screens go to flat so the slides will look "bigger", but this also goes for anytime more than 1 film is sharing the screen. When alternating 2 films what I liked to do was have the masking change as soon as the projector changeover closed after the previous show. (I've never seen a mixture of flat and scope trailers programmed together and seems hard to do in most situations, though there's probably someone out there who can do that well.) If showing slides, time them so that they are not cut off in the middle of a trivia question- let the "Answer" slide show before starting the projector. (This is not to say that slides should be shown at all but if they are going to be shown they should not seem to be 'cut off' when the show starts.)
First thing to hit the screen should also not be cut off at the beginning- ideally the first trailer should include as much show-able black from its leader as possible to make it less likely the regular clear thread-up leader will be seen on the screen.
Last thing to show onscreen should also not be cut off before it's over, nor should any of the tail end be seen or heard- after debating this with myself for a long time I've found that if there's any pure black with silence after the usual blue rating screen, have the changover close on that, but if it immediately goes into 'junk' it's better to have it close on the ratings screen a few frames early (thanks Steve for showing me the way!)
House lights should never be bright as to distract from the screen, however they should be up to 100% by the time the picture has left the screen (they should not still be coming up after the screen has gone dark, nor should they be all the way up at any time when there is still film being shown!)
Show MUST start EXACTLY at the scheduled time, especially if there is more than 5 minutes of trailers!

I help out at a small town (2nd run) single screen house and all we get is used and very ABUSED prints. We mainly show weekends and Tuesday nights so I doubt replacement reels would get here in time.

If we had two 70MM prints booked in the Hollywood Pacific. We
had one projectionist in the main house and one projectionist
in the twin upstairs. Because at most theatres before they went
limited service. You had two regular projectionists and one
relief projectionist for most houses. Otherwise you would have
to call the local, to get someone off the extra list. So the
regulars would split the shifts or do doubles. And the relief
guy would pick up the rest. At that time the regulars had like
40 hours + a week plus overtime. When limited service hit, some
theatres had 25-30 hours a week, plus overtime for the projection
budget. At that time the contract was from 12:30PM to 12:30AM plus
prep. Anytime before 12noon was daytime overtime and anytime after
12:30AM was night time overtime. So the guy sitting in the main
theatre got regular theatre scale (tri-plex rate) to run the single
house in 70MM. When I left that theatre I was making 6 plex rate to
run a tri-plex.

Remember it's cheaper to have a good projectionist in the booth, than
damage a full 70MM print. I remember up at Cineplex Universal Citywalk
one of the regular operators damaged the full 70MM print of "Adventures in Babysitting". He scratched the hell out of that print, by missing a roller. Cineplex had to pay for the print.

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Your suggestions (especially Scott's) should be compiled into a "Ten Commandments For Projectionists" and be printed on posters and sent to every theater in the country. Also to every circuit's main office.

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I agree. I doubt that most multiplexes will ever put too much effort into having excellent presentation quality, unless a particular multiplex has great management and staff who all put the extra effort into it. I don't think large companies, as a whole, care too much about presentation quality. Since many younger people who go to movies now have never seen consistently great presentation quality at their local multiplexes, they simply don't look for defects and don't consider a presentation "bad" until there is something major wrong (like bad focus or out-of-frame with framelines visible).

Even most of my "high tech" friends know nothing about film and don't know when they're watching a scope movie cropped to 1.85:1 or watching a flat movie out of frame (no frame line visible, but still significantly out of frame). They don't care if the image doesn't quite touch the screen edges or if the jagged edge of the aperture plate is visible. They only notice the lack of digital sound if the volume is too low. Shutter ghosting doesn't even bother them unless it's really bad. After going to see movies with friends, if I noticed defects, I'll ask them if they noticed specific problems, and the answer is usually always "no".

If the majority of the customers are willing to put up with sloppy presentations, then the upper management will certainly not spend money to improve the presentation quality. A "10 Commandments List" of things to be sure of when projecting movies is great, but getting major chains to actually enforce them is another matter.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site