"I'm at the 11:45 a. m. screening of 'A. I.' at the Mann Village (a single screen first run theater) in Westwood. One hour and forty-five minutes into the picture, the framing goes askew. Chants of 'framing!' start.

"Time passes. Nothing happens. More chanting. Still no change in the frame. In the lobby, there's confusion. They tell us they're 'looking' for the projectionist. Five minutes later, I walk out of the theater, taking a refundable ticket on my way out.

"How appropriate: At a movie decrying the loss of 'human-ness' in the mechanized world, there's no human in the projection box."

Call me a curmudgeon if you will, but when I worked as projectionist such a situation would never have happened. It would have been unthinkable to thread out of frame, and heresy not to correct framing and focus, if required, right after the changeover!

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That's another theatre scratched off my list. My problem is that, with the exception of the Music Box, which doesn't show first run movies, I'm running out of movie theatres! It's just been one bad experience after another for the last few years. I saw Chicken Run at Webster Place, and the image was so dark that I walked in during the previews, and literally couldn't see the floor in front of me.

There was one time when I had a long run of back to back starts. Well, it just so happened that someone had shot a huge spit-ball onto the port glass of one of the theaters. I did not have time to go down and clean it, so I asked assistance from one of the floor ushers. (BIG MISTAKE!) I had specifically told him to use glass cleaner and paper towels, in fact, I left some by the "booth" door for him. Well, the dumbass used a filthy broom on that glass! It was a nightmare to get that glass clean-not to mention that he scratched it.

A.I. seems doomed to bad presentation at big theaters. I saw the film at a Fourth of July afternoon showing at the Ziegfeld in NY, and the first couple reels were trashed, bad scratches and filthy (tho after about 30 minutes or so it cleaned up, looked like at a previous screening someone spotted a problem and stopped the show to fix). The Zieg has lost a lot of luster since being taken over by Clearview, a New Jersey based chain notorious for some of the worst conversions in history (the chain's philosophy seems to be jam as many screens into a old single as you can, which results in some of the most astonishing off-axis projection you'll ever see). Sad.

Around here all the managers looked like they just graduated from Bizness College. A few years back when I heard everyone I talked to say that they were going to college and were majoring in business I wondered what they all would do. Now it seems they all run theaters. Not that it matters much to them. This is the bean counter generation. "Generation Beaners". Yesterday they managed McDonalds today theaters, tomorrow...? The content of what they do has no meaning at all, it's just the numbers in the ledger at the bottom of the page, or should I say spreadsheet. This is what happens when there is no love for the work they do, no dedication. Know what I mean? They would never sleep on the floor of their business so they could keep it going. Nor would they invest years of sacrifice to build a future. Long before anything like that the numbers would speak to them and say "we don't balance, time to give up" and they would. It's a different world now and anyone that "cares" and/or "sacrifices" is a dinosaur.
Sorry for the rant

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The next day I saw "The Mummy Returns", a scope picture. While the masking was great on the sides and top, the bottom masking didn't quite reach the picture. I think the masking was set for a 2.2:1 image. Almost, but no cigar. Though I could survive this, the lighting from the ceiling was distracting. I remembered that they had more lights out the day before in the same theater.

The third day I saw "Along Came A Spider", another scope picture. This time I was watching on a different screen. Same 2.2:1 masking problems on this screen. Framing was also off that the bottom of picture was on the top masking. If the top masking could have hidden this well, I might not have noticed. The projector needed to be reframed and pointed a little bit lower.

Each day when the movie started up, the frameline was always in the center of the picture. Fortunately (?) the projectionist anticipated this and was prepared to correct immediately.

When I got home, my wife and I rented the DVD "State And Main". No problem, good picture and great sound. While I may love the movie going experience, what's going to convince the general public to keep coming back? Something has to be worth the inconvenience to leave home and go out for entertainment. Shall it be Digital here vs. Digital there? Or will it be Digital here vs. A Great Movie Going Experience? If the latter can not be found, I'm staying home.

But the examples you cite of "Film Done Wrong" are a disgrace . Similar "sins" are likely to be committed against Digital Cinema in the name of cost savings. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, high-end HD "home theatre" will be the real competition in the future, and theatres will have to offer superior presentation quality to stay in business.
Seven Deadly Sins

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

The September 1926 issue reported in an article by F. H. Richardson on The Useful Life of Film: “The ultimate and only purpose of the motion picture industry, insofar as theatres are concerned, is to provide a program which the theatre will be able to sell to the public at a profit and to continue to do so indefinitely. The purpose of the motion picture is, in the main, to supply entertainment and amusement. …the motion picture industry will succeed exactly in proportion to the general excellence of the entertainment it provides. …consider what your reaction would be…to a feature in which there were long, wide scratches and thousands upon thousands of small ones, all so filled with dirt as to be either opaque or semi-opaque, with breaks in the action of the play every few feet caused by pieces of film having been cut out in the making of repairs to the print, and with an occasional bobbing up or down of the picture as a whole as a wide, stiff splice passes through the projector…”

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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