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Author
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Topic: Morons! -More Technicolor stupidity...
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Gracia L. Babbidge
Jedi Master Film Handler
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Posts: 709
From: Bowdoin, Maine
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 12-12-2002 04:47 PM
Maybe TES employees need to score below a certain IQ level to keep their jobs or something...
How's this for a fiasco?
We got a call from a theater in Augusta, they wanted to confirm that we had accidentally received one of the cans of their print of Maid In Manhattan . Um, no, we certainly did not receive an extra can - confirmed by both the projectionist that was here when our print was delivered, and by yours truly (i.e. the projectionist building the print). They were confused, and somehow thought we had the can, and wanted to send someone to pick it up, instead of waiting for Airborne Express to correct their mistake. Someone from Technicolor called our theater to confirm that we had that same extra can - we did not receive any extra cans! The assistant manager talked her, I talked to her, she seemed to not believe either of us. As if we would deny the presence of an extra half of a print in the building! Someone from our home office had called Techniolor and told them that the theater in Rockland had the extra can. How on earth someone confused 'Rockland' with 'Lewiston' I'll never know - particularly since when TES was told it was the Rockland location they were also given the phone number of that theater!
Morons!
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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-13-2002 10:54 AM
I can top that.
Yesterday we recieved a print of Maid in Manhatten via airborne express. We were booked to open two prints, but I was not concerned about only getting one. This is because the competition about two miles away had run a sneak of Maid last Saturday. Almost always when one of our theatres sneaks the others movie we're allowed to just move the print with clamps, and that's what I was expecting to do.
That is, until another print arrived (via special courier, not airborne), 'Worlds Apart.' I was of course confused. I called technicolor and asked them why I had recieved this movie I wasn't booked for, only to be informed that 'Wolrds Apart' was a security title for 'Maid in Manhatten.' This didn't seem to make much sense, since the other print didn't have any security title. I let it go though and went to build the trailer pack.
So I grab reel one out of the cans and prepare to remove the attached trailer...and realize that in fact it is reel two, despite what the cardboard band says. So I swear at the faceless TES employee who made the mistake and put the reel back, grabbing the one marked reel two, figuring the bands got mixed up. Nope, that's reel two also. Cursing even louder I check all of the reels. Indeed, I have two reel two's and no reel one. I decide before calling TES I had better check the other print to make sure everything's as it should be. Lo and behold this one has no reel two's and two reel one's. I guess everything is fine then .
But we haven't gotten to the weirdest part yet. One print was virgin and the other one was used, presumably from a screening. So why did screening print come f*cked up? How the hell did they run that thing?!
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John Hawkinson
Film God
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Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 12-14-2002 11:54 AM
These don't seem like particularly egregious problems, I've gotta say. It's really easy to see how TES might mix up two theatres in a given chain (it just takes one person to make a typo or mis-hear something).
The Maid in Manhattan thing could almost have been serious, but of course it wasn't since it all worked out (why is hard to say; one would be inclined to call up TES and see if they have any explanation...). As for why one would arrive with a faux title and the other, that seems easy to guess: all prints before a certain date presumably bear the security title, and prints for general release do not. So when one of the screening prints gets shipped to a regular engagement, they don't bother to ship it back to to the TES depot first to change the label.
As for marketting materials, it's quite frequent that they're out of flat trailers and have scope trailers available. It's not hard to see how someone at TES would send you scope trailers when they're out of flat trailers, thinking that they were being helpful. The real questions are whether they entered a backorder for the flat trailers, and whether you have any chance of seeing those trailers ever. The former is resolvable by calling them and asking, or checking the online order history on exhibitor.technicolor.com. The latter is an industry-wide issue, and presumably a function of quantities and policies set by the studio.
--jhawk
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