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Author Topic: Morons! -More Technicolor stupidity... Gracia L. Babbidge Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 709 From: Bowdoin, Maine Registered: Aug 2000 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!  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 12-12-2002 05:48 PM                     You forget that you're not a name to Technicolor ... you're a number.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 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?!  |  IP: Logged Jacob Huber Expert Film Handler Posts: 172 From: Evansville, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-13-2002 07:42 PM                     Our sneak print was also shipped under World's Apart. We sent that one back the day after our sneak (2 weeks ago). The prints we got last night were both shipped under Maid in Manhattan.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 12-13-2002 11:56 PM                        Another question might be why they thought they needed a security title for that picture in the first place.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-14-2002 07:43 AM                        More Technicolor stupidity: At a single-screen theatre, the owner recently ordered trailers and posters for "Real Women Have Curves." The posters arrived fine, but they sent _two_ trailers (separately, each in its own "entertainment pack" mailer), both of which were scope. We only show flat trailers at this theatre and, anyway, there's no need for a single-screen house to have two copies of any trailer in the same format. Weird.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-14-2002 11:41 AM                        That happens all the time here. I think they feel like if we order a flat and a scope, and they're out of one format, they'll just send two of the other. Hell, the audience will never know it anyway! (see that other topic about the wrong lens...)  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 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  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-15-2002 12:02 AM                    Uh oh...a TES apologist! CROWD: A witch! A witch! A witch! We've found a witch! A witch! A witch! We've got a witch! A witch! Burn her! Burn her! I was having a nice little argument with them the other day. I got a bill from Airborne because one small distributor told TES to charge me for shipping. I never pay shipping. In the past when this error occurred I would simply call a particular person at TES Wilmington and she would make it go away (rebill to the studio). But now that function shifted to someone in CA whom, it was just revealed, is no longer with the company and they're basically saying it's up to me to persuade said distributor to make the correction. No, I don't think so. If I open my credit card statement and there is a bogus charge on it from XYZ Corp I don't have to call XYZ Corp and get them to reverse it, I simply write the CC company and tell them that it was unauthorized and they'll bounce it back and that's what TES should do. I see no reason to pay for something I never authorized. And I'm certainly not fronting the money for this particular client who is seriously in arrears.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-15-2002 01:49 PM                     Hey, Steve, you should see my night-shirt. A big ORANGE T. Yeah, that's it! Guess how I got it? Do you get any legitimate billing from TES for anything at all? Perhaps you could try the "swank method"; any Swank customer that gets TES films has a seperate TES account with the invoice address being Swank and the shipping address being the actual customer. You could just pick one studio you deal with and change the billing address for your TES account to them. Then, they can either fight them when they show up, or just pay them w/o noticing . [ No, I don't really think this is a good idea... ] --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-15-2002 04:45 PM                    Yeah, that's it! Guess how I got it? Because...you're....made of wood? I've never seen a bill from TES. And the only proper bill from Airborne I've ever gotten (and paid) was for a missed pickup (dry run as they call it). Even that is problematic, particularly if the room is dark some day and I don't want to come down just on the chance that Airborne will be there in their window asking for something. Many pickups are arranged for; certainly the Sky ones are. But the other ones are totally unpredictable. One presumes that it's supposed to be the next weekday after a screening but it only rarely turns out that way. I went over several examples with TES once and what we discovered was that some studios put the booking into the system as a run of several days and there is no way for me to know when they think the run ends and generate a pickup order for the following weekday. In another case I wasn't planning to come in one day so late afternoon the day before I checked with TES if there were any pickups for the next day so I could set the print out. No, they said. Next morning I checked with a friend at Airborne who looked at his computer to see that yes, they would be by that day for a pickup. Apparently the pickup order was put in their system in the middle of the night, whether by TES or the studio we don't know. But it makes it difficult to outguess them. In all fairness to TES, they are usually friendly and efficient. I deal mostly with the Special Screenings desk and they've been great. But I wish their systems people could have my account marked so that if someone tries to bill shipping to me at least a warning would come up that this is a likely error and they better double check. Seems to me there would be many uses for such a feature like say there is a theatre somewhere that doesn't show Scope...it could flag it if someone is sending them a Scope print. Or if some release has only a limited number of DTS disks...and the theatre doesn't use DTS.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-15-2002 06:44 PM                     Because you're made of wood? Lignum vitae all the way, Steve! To the core! I assume that Airborne gets your address from TES...it's hard to imagine it happening any other way. Anyhow, TES is generally happy to provide you with information as to long playdates are. It's become almost automatic for us to go and verify the start and finish of playdates, since the Swank->Studio Booker->TES pathway has been extremely lossy lately (I'm really unclear whose fault it is; but we've had prints show up 3 days early, prints want to grow legs two days early, etc.). I wish their systems people could have my account marked... Features like that require programmers to work on ancient legacy systems. They're probably spending too much time futzing around with the stupid Vignette scripting for exhibitor.technicolor.com... I doubt there's much call for such features, though. Are there really people who don't show scope? And prints with limitted DTS discs -- does that really happen? (maybe it happens before the prints are final...) --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 12-15-2002 06:58 PM                    Well, yes, since half my prints come via Airborne they kinda gotta know where I am.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 12-15-2002 08:31 PM                     Well, maybe for you. For a lot of us, billing address and shipping address are very distinct concepts... I shudder to think what would happen if anyone sent something USPS to our shipping address... --jhawk  |  IP: Logged

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