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Author
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Topic: Cinema service & design companies & LHAT
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-28-2003 01:50 AM
This isn't so much a booth issue as a cinema service & design issue.
Are there any cinema service & design companies which are members of the League of Historic Theatres (LHAT) ?
http://www.lhat.org/
LHAT is an organization ostensibly to provide support to folks who operate "historic theatres". Typically the situation is that the people operating the theatres are individuals in various non-profit foundations with experience mostly in management or fundraising & are not very knowledgable in issues concerning operation of the theater.
So they pay a yearly membership fee to join LHAT, with other theater operators.
The problem is that LHAT is a vendor-based conduit for information. The information supplied to the theater-operating members comes from VENDORS who pay a membership fee as a "service provider".
http://www.lhat.org/join_now/service_provider.asp
So the polarization & information flow is vendor to people at the theater. As you can see, this arrangement produces a flow of only that information which may profit a member vendor. Also, if information is needed that is not in the expertise of any member vendor, that information is brought to the theater-based member.
The monster cock-up of this arrangement came to full fruition a couple of years ago at the LHAT conference in NYC. One of the seminars was "Digital Cinema", in which apparently a vendor pushing LCD video projectors told attendees (managers & XO's of theatres) that film was obsolete, & that their video projectors had "no scratches, no film damage" etc. The result was a couple of theaters represented by technically-uneducated managers were snowed, bought the projectors, killed film projection at the theaters, & began presenting films in video. Attendance dropped to nearly nothing, but reversing the theaters' new video policy cannot be because 1) some of these people really can't tell a bad picture like their audiences can, & 2) that problem of management which is motivated by fear of being seen as being wrong. The damage is apparently irreversible.
So while these video projector people are giving this snow job to the LHAT member theaters, are there any real cinema companies which are members of LHAT?
It's really sort of important, because the organization has a LARGE number or member theaters that only do their professional association & reading (outside of fundraising & management issues) through LHAT. The only theater information they have is what they've learned there.
I dropped my LHAT membership because it became apparent it was sort of like payola for vendors to have access to historic theatre operators, that information not presented by paying vendors could not be presented, & that monstrous damage was being done. I'm still fuming about it.
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-29-2003 01:49 AM
I'm sure that Adam's forum will be an excellent resource (I've had the same idea which came from these same directions).
But I wonder if it will be effective in communicating to the one minute manager types who are not really in the "theater business" & when they have an issue just call one of the companies they've seen in an LHAT magazine article, & consider the issue "handled". They don't really associate professionally with other groups & information for managers, arts councils, fundraisers, etc.
It really does look like there just needs to be some higher profile for real cinema folks in LHAT. The highest profiles of vendors in LHAT are restoration studios, & even though several are extraordinarily good, it's gotten inbred because they're the "historic restoration" companies that have long lists of venues they've done *because* they're in the LHAT magazine, hold seminars at the convention, do mailouts on the LHAT mailing list, etc. It also has become apparent that some of the manager-types who "handle" by using LHAT as a reference also do it by cost - & chasing the "good" restoration companies are the companies associated with LHAT that work cheaper but leave technical wrecks behind them. They're selected just by going down the list of folks in LHAT until they get to someone cheap & often clueless.
Many of them are movie theaters, & I would like to spend Kodak's money to sign Kodak up & set a PR guy in charge of LHAT. As soon as John Pytlak will leave Mr. Eastman's checkbook out somewhere I can get to it.
The odd thing about the LHAT "Digital Projection" seminar & the theaters that were persuaded to dump their film projection equipment for video projectors is that some of the LHAT directors are actually from theaters with good film programs & know that they're making money from them. It really looks like they couldn't speak up & point out inaccuracies & shortcomings because the video projector vendor paid his money to run his game.
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-29-2003 02:53 AM
They're doing it AGAIN!
The calendar for the July 2003 convention:
http://lhat.org/conference_theatre/education.asp
Check #28: "Managing the Digital Cinema"
Click on it, the hated Javascript brings up an info box about the "workshop".
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"TRACK: Historic Cinemas
AUDIENCE: Emerging small & large theatres, historic cinemas, boards of directors & staff, consultants
LEVEL: Emerging, intermediate
FORMAT: Presentation with digital film
LEARNING POINTS:
Learn how digital exhibition can benefit your program
Learn what technology is available and how it can fit into your theatre
Learn about the distribution of digital product
YOU WILL UNDERSTAND: A session about, and demonstration of, large screen digital multi-media systems. The emphasis will be not only on entertainment programming but also on business opportunities, such as corporate presentations & distance learning activities, that such technology can provide for historic theatres.
PRESENTER: Barry Rebo (Chairman), Ira Deutchman (President & CEO), Giovanni Cozzi (Vice Chairman, all of Emerging Cinemas
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Here's Emerging Cinemas web site:
http://www.emergingpictures.com/
And LHAT & Emerging Cinemas have crawled in each others' wallets:
http://www.emergingpictures.com/press_lhat.htm
http://www.larta.org/pl/NewsArticles/020717_HR.htm
Note that EC's "returning" movies to these theaters has meant REPLACING film projection in venues that had projectors already in place.
"Emerging Pictures will supply its digital cinemas with feature films that are distributed by traditional film studios, films that are acquired at film markets and festivals as well as other unique sources of original programming."
On a 40 foot screen in one venue, not some little conference studio!
Here's Emerging Cinemas' .pdf PR brochure
http://www.emergingpictures.com/ECbrochure.pdf
Accompanied with quaint pictures of old projection scenes & equipment like magic lanterns, it STARTS:
"Today, most movies are produced using film stock.
However, many new films, documentaries, concerts are now
produced us ing digital video equipment. Some programs are shot
using digital cameras at s tandard (SDTV) definition, while others are now using digital high definition cameras (HDTV). The
programs are then usually trans ferred to film, so that they can be projected using the standard celluloid film projectors that are ins talled in mos t cinemas . A mechanical process feeds the film in front of a high brightness lamp source and the image is thus projected onto the screen. We all know that this process can create beautiful images on the screen, but there still are some aspects of the projected image that could be improved.
Because of the nature of the mechanical process, for example, and depending on the quality and maintenance of the projector, this traditional method of projection can shift the image up and down the screen by as much as 6-8 inches. In addition, over time, as the number of projections grows, the film starts degrading- colors start changing, scratches appear- in fact, the overall picture and sound quality deteriorate.
"Today, digital technology provides a solution for these quality issues. Recent advances in digital technology have now made it possible to capture, store and display images with extremely high quality.
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And they're taking this to management types who have no technical understanding, & whose training is to get technical information from technical "experts" - in this case, EC are presented as the experts. And with no discussion or rebuttal!
Powerpoint projectors replacing 35mm equipment showing a summer's worth of movies dropped attendance per show from 750 -1700 to less than 100(!) at one of the theaters that bought this BS. And of course it cannot be conceded to be a mistake. They'd like the money back, but it's not as essential as control to damage to image at a local level. Things get mighty different at the level where theaters have revenue that is not just at the boxoffice. They save their butts by claiming low attendance is due to "lack of public support", certainly not by admitting that they've screwed up & nobody wants to buy the mess they're selling as "quality".
LHAT is gutting film attendance from historic theaters.
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