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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: THIS is why the exhibition industry is fading...literally
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Arnold Chase
Film Handler
Posts: 41
From: West Hartford, CT United States
Registered: Nov 2013
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posted 09-27-2015 10:48 PM
Every Sunday night I get together with a group of local guys to see the Sci-Fi and Action/Adventure films that our wives will never go to. Tonight our group went to the Bow-Tie theater in Hartford, CT to see Black Mass. As soon as the trailers started, we all turned to each other to say, "Does that picture look really dim to you?"
I obviously know what a 7 fl image is supposed to look like, and my best estimate is that what was presented was around 1 or 2 fl. Scenes that were in bright sunlight were hardly there, and almost everything in interior shots was gone. In addition, there was almost no contrast to any image. One of the guys left to report the issue, and he came back with the manager who told us that they were "working on the problem", and then left. As the second trailer played with the same pathetic quality, our entire group decided to leave the theater.
The manager was in the lobby, and suggested that we see another film, but the only title that was starting around that time received a 38% positive on "Rotten Tomatoes", so we asked for a refund. Since I am a trained Christie tech, I inquired as to specifically what the problem was. The manager informed me that the projector in that house was a "really old" projector, and something had broken in the lamp-house which needed replacement parts, but they were having a tough time getting them.
When someone in our group asked him why they would still sell tickets to a crippled showings, he said that the ticket people "should have told the customers there was a problem". The ticket people immediately said to him that they were never told that there was a problem, and he did not respond.
This is so wrong on many levels, as they would be hard pressed to make their movie-going experience any worse than it was. To allow this to go on for an extended period of time is inexcusable. BTW, this is the same theater that also had a dead center dialog channel out in one of their houses with for at least three months. I attended a showing in that house, and the only dialog anyone could hear was from what leaked out of the left and right speakers.
Bow-Tie ought to be ashamed of themselves for doing their best to hasten the day when theatrical exhibition ceases to exist, because the home experience is SO much better.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 09-28-2015 12:47 AM
Given that d-cinema xenons are more expensive and have a shorter life than their 35mm predecessors (based on the ones we use, I'd say very roughly around $2.50 per hour for digi vs. $1.50 for film, excluding the electricity cost), there was always the risk that this would happen. Even in the film days, the less, shall we say, fussy houses running their bulbs until they either blew up or flickered like the proverbial candle was a well-known problem.
Given that the collateral damage from an explosion in a digital lamphouse is likely to be a lot more expensive (reflectors cost more and the space more confined, with more components closer to the bulb), plus the control software in digital projectors having nag features to discourage the overrunning of bulbs, I'd have hoped that the problem would reduce, and maybe it has. But I'm not surprised that it still exists.
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