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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: KDM Hell
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-07-2017 01:14 PM
If Deluxe/Technicolor is handling the KDM issue, there is very rarely a serious problem. The worst case scenario is a phone call a couple of hours before showtime, but they will respond with the correct KDM pretty much instantly.
The only times I've had a close shave with Deluxe/Technicolor were:
- Once, when they couldn't raise anyone at the (again, smaller and arthouse) distributor that had hired them to authorize the issue of the correct KDM.
- Once, when we replaced a server/media block and moved the former one to the other auditorium in the same building, Deluxe/Technicolor failed to record the correct serial numbers in their system correctly, and there then followed a few days of having to call them to have a KDM issued for the correct media block serial.
If KDMs are not handled by Deluxe Technicolor, however (and especially if you're dealing with a DIY-er using DCP-o-Matic, and who doesn't really understand what he or she is doing), it can be a nightmare, especially with smaller arthouse distributors, and those in a different time zone to yours. We lost two festival shows last year because a KDM was issued in Europe for their local time, for a very tight window, and without the issuer realizing that we are nine hours behind them. In one case, the KDM was only actually emailed to us (by an automated system, I suspect) after it had closed! No-one was able to answer our calls or emails, because it was 2am in Athens, and it was a small distributor with no 24/7 phone support.
Another thing to watch out for is if one distributor handles two separate movies with the same title. We had this last week when playing Orson Welles's The Trial. Rialto sent us the correct DCP drive, but a KDM for a 2004 Filipino movie of the same name. This was caught in time to issue the right KDM, but is still a potential danger point; and is one of the reasons why I encourage the other projectionists here to use the UUID when identifying a given CPL in phone/email exchanges, not the ISDCF name: it reduces the chances of confusing two DCPs, especially in situations where multiple versions arrive on the same drive, such as an unsubtitled OV and an English-subtitled VF. We've been issued the wrong KDM in those situations, too.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-10-2017 11:39 AM
quote: Carsten Kurz
Out of curiosity, how many different KDM senders does everyone deal with in different countries?
The answer to that is going to depend on what sort of theater you are. A typical Harkins or AMC 10-plex will probably get all of them from Deluxe Technicolor. At the other end of the scale, theaters like ours (which are very arthouse and festival heavy) will receive KDMs from 40-50 different issuers each year, located everywhere from Punta Arenas to Novosibirsk (I'm not joking: I have received KDMs issued in these two places), some of which will be one-offs who we will never deal with again.
Even so, I'd say that about 70% of ours come from Deluxe Technicolor. Most of the ones that don't are festival related (the major arthouse and rep/classics distributors in the US tend not to encrypt their DCPs), and the big festivals tend to hire someone whose job it is to wrangle them, make phone calls to Sodomistan in the middle of the night, etc. etc. The gnarly ones are the festivals that our own programmers organize, for which the KDM hell falls on us.
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