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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Cinemas on the verge of closure
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 10-06-2002 06:20 AM
Had a pretty depressing experience yesterday evening. I'm spending the weekend with relatives in London and yesterday evening went to the 6pm show of Red Dragon at the Odeon, Wimbledon (screen 2). This old cinema (1937 single-screen, converted to 3 in the '70s and to 5 in the early '90s) is going to be closed in November when a new 12-screen multiplex opens above a supermarket just down the road.They're obviously running the building down and you can really tell it from the way the place looks and the truly dreadful presentation last night. When we came into the auditorium, the cleaners' lights were on and there was no non-sync playing. The walls were dirty, the carpet threadbare and the screen tabs looked like they hadn't been dry-cleaned in years. The film started 9 minutes late with no ads or trailers, but despite this the ushers kept letting latecomers in until around 20 minutes after the advertised start time, causing a lot of disruption. The focus was soft throughout (this could have been a soft print), the anamorph was fractionally out of horizontal alignment, and the picture was bleeding significantly onto the masking on all four sides. The print was already getting notably dirty for 100 feet or so around each reel end, despite the fact that this was a week-before-release preview day and that print would only have done 2 or 3 passes before I saw it. Several lab joins were left in the print, and there was an almighty 'crack' on the soundtrack (SR I think) at every join, indicating that there was either a problem with the pad roller or that the joins had been badly made. They'd also made a pig's ear of EQing the auditorium: I really struggled to hear the dialogue. All in all, then, a very depressing experience and I certainly won't be going back to that venue in the two months or so until it closes. Odeon aren't doing themselves any favours by operating the building in that state: while they're continuing to accept people's money they should be delivering a satisfactory product, which clearly is not happening here. If they really can't justify a higher level of outgoings on that site, they should close it now and wait their new cinema to be ready.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-03-2003 05:00 AM
Ken - you’re so right – the place makes little difference, it’s the people that count. I have now seen two presentations at the new Odeon and there were serious technical problems with both. The first was James Bond about a fortnight after the new site opened in November. There was an enormous queue to get in, the auditorium hadn’t been cleaned properly and the programme started 7 minutes late. During the lens change between bullshit and feature, the ‘scope plate wasn’t inserted properly, resulting in a large black bar on the right of the screen and picture on the masking on the left. Five minutes later this hadn’t been corrected, and wasn’t until I asked an usherette to get the projectionist to stick the plate in. I suspect that the plate would have stayed like that throughout the show if someone hadn’t complained. Finally there were noticeable cinch marks throughout the bullshit and feature, suggesting abrasion between emulsion side of film and platter surface.
Now I’ve just been to see Lord of the Rings, passing through Wimbledon on the way back from Christmas and New Year trips to the rellies. Once again, a large queue to get in and the presentation started late – 9 minutes this time. This time the bullshit started in ‘scope! Yup, anamorphic adverts for five minutes, until again I asked an usher to call the projectionist. He didn’t understand me, responding ‘You what?’ in an obviously non-English accent. Front of house staff who can’t speak English would be a great help in an emergency situation, e.g. a fire evacuation! Eventually I managed to raise a duty manager, who apologetically explained that ‘we’ve had nothing but problems ever since this place opened’, and said that the masking had failed. Well at least it failed in the ‘scope position! Masking stuck in 1:1.85 with a ‘scope feature about to start would have been a challenge… To be fair, the manager was very nice about it, and she can’t have been having a pleasant shift.
The 1:1.85 lens and plate was eventually restored around 8-9 minutes into the presentation, just as the ads were finishing and the trailers were starting. I can’t see how this can be anything other than projectionist error – even if the programme were started on a timer, surely [s]he should have noticed that the ‘scope lens was still in place when cleaning and relacing the projector? Presumably this 12-screen installation has automated lens changes: I can only recall making this mistake once in 10 years or so, even when doing all the lens and plate changes manually. When the feature kicked off there were obvious anamorphic focusing problems. For example, in the scenes of Liv Tyler speaking (what sounded to me like) Welsh, her face was pin sharp whilst the subtitles were so blurred as to be barely legible. There was a horrible, wide and deep emulsion tramline (it was green, ergo several layers of emulsion had been gouged out the film) running through about two reels, starting about 45 minutes into the film, and about 100 feet around each reel end was very dirty. Finally, although the sound EQ seemed very good to me, the volume differential between ads, trailers and features was enormous. In particular, the ‘Odeon’ snipes were so loud relative to everything else that I noticed people clamping their hands against their ears.
About the one positive point I’d make was that the auditoria are very well designed for sightlines and the seating arrangements worked well. On both occasions I asked for seats with lots of legroom at the box office (being 6”4’, Lord of the Rings in a centre seat is a recipe for deep vein thrombosis!), and was given reserved seats in the front row of a section which had about twice as much space as the rows behind it. But film can still be done wrong, even in a brand new installation. Furthermore, given that tickets in the new Odeon are now more expensive than the National Film Theatre, I can’t see myself going back there out of choice.
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Hugh McCullough
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 147
From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 02-12-2003 04:26 AM
I have just lately come across this thread, and feel that I must come to the defence of the old Odeon Wimbledon as I worked there.
The depressing experience in Screen 2.
The Odeon was built in 1933, not 1937, and closed December 2002.
I can not comment on the condition of the print of Red Dragon as I was on holiday when this film was shown, but it probably was delivered at short notice, and the projectionist was not able to check it properly. Not a lot of spare time when you are single manning a five screener, and showing up to five performances per day per screen, with no automation in four of these screens, and all five projection rooms were spread about all over the building. There were 88 steps between projection room 1, and 2.
The cleaners lights being left on was a common occurrence despite a written notice to the floor staff that they were to be turned off when patrons were in the screen. Us projectionists just gave up trying to get the floor staff to turn them off.
There was no non-sync because the CD player had broken down on this occasion. Normally there was music playing before the programme started.
Walls dirty, and carpet threadbare agreed, but how did you come to the conclusion that the screen tabs were dirty? They were left open, and could only be seen in their drawn back folded position.
The film probably started late because the person who worked out the time sheet allowed for trailers. If no trailers were schulded for this show then the film started at the feature film time.
You can not blame the floor staff for letting people in who arrive late.
The sound in this screen was Dolby A, and was set up by a Dolby trained sound engineer.
The anamorph being out of alignment was caused by the fact that the projector was not square on to the screen. Not a projection fault, but a projection room building design fault.
In answer to the query about the follower heads. These were installed in Screen 1, and were used about four times a year for running cutting copies of unfinished films. James Bond and The Full Monty being two that we ran.
I was the projectionist who quit when the new Odeon opened. I thought that a wage rise of £30 was certainly not enough to run another seven shows, and was also fed up with knocking my head against a brick wall trying to get things done.All equipment at the old Odeon was second hand.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-12-2003 06:08 AM
quote:
The Odeon was built in 1933, not 1937, and closed December 2002.
Allan Eyles' book on Odeon gives the opening date as '37. Given that it was originally the Regal, could '37 have been the date it became the Odeon (according to Eyles the first Odeon was in Worple Road opposite Elys, roughly where McDonald's is now)?
quote:
The cleaners lights being left on was a common occurrence despite a written notice to the floor staff that they were to be turned off when patrons were in the screen. Us projectionists just gave up trying to get the floor staff to turn them off.
I can certainly believe that. When I tried asking an usher to ask a projectionist to put the 1:1.85 lens in during the adverts in the new site, he (i) seemed completely disinterested, and (ii) quite literally could not understand what I was saying. I suspect that he could not understand even relatively basic English.
quote:
Not a lot of spare time when you are single manning a five screener, and showing up to five performances per day per screen, with no automation in four of these screens, and all five projection rooms were spread about all over the building. There were 88 steps between projection room 1, and 2.
As I wrote above, 'Odeon aren't doing themselves any favours by...', not attacking any projectionist individually. The fact that they did expect one person to operate five screens in this physical environment speaks volumes about how little importance they give to presentation quality, IMHO.
quote:
Walls dirty, and carpet threadbare agreed, but how did you come to the conclusion that the screen tabs were dirty? They were left open, and could only be seen in their drawn back folded position.
I'm sure they were closed before the start of the show I saw. I distinctly remember seeing what looked like a massive coffee stain. Given the state of them, it probably would have been better to leave them permanently open...
quote:
You can not blame the floor staff for letting people in who arrive late.
No, but you can criticise the management decision to continue admitting people up to 35 minutes after the advertised start time, especially in an auditorium with such a shallow rake that they are guaranteed to disrupt customers who can be bothered to arrive on time. If Virgin habitually delayed the departure of my morning train to work by 35 minutes in order to accommodate latecomers, it wouldn't go down very well! At all the City Screen sites I worked, one row of house seats was kept back for latecomers, which could be reached without disturbing anyone else. When those were full, ushers had instructions not to admit latecomers if this would make anyone else have to get up.
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The sound in this screen was Dolby A, and was set up by a Dolby trained sound engineer.
In that case the acoustics of that auditorium were completely hopeless. I struggled to understand the dialogue throughout the commercials, trailers and feature (this was from the front row, near the centre aisle).
quote:
I was the projectionist who quit when the new Odeon opened. I thought that a wage rise of £30 was certainly not enough to run another seven shows, and was also fed up with knocking my head against a brick wall trying to get things done.All equipment at the old Odeon was second hand.
I'm not surprised! As I suggested above, this is clearly a corporate ethos issue (by 'it's the people that count' I was referring to the middle and senior management who have made the short-term decision to spend as little on presentation as they can get away with) rather than just a presentation issue - as demonstrated by the fact that I've experienced technical problems in two shows in a new venue using (presumably) new equipment. I've worked in one or two fleapits with management that couldn't care less, and can understand that this must have been really frustrating.
I do understand that a lot of these problems were ones which the projectionists could do nothing about - but 99.9% of the people who paid their £6 per ticket probably would not even have thought that far; those who cared about the films they saw and the cinema they saw them in probably just wouldn't have come back.
It's a bit sad, too - I think the Odeon Wimbledon was where I saw my first film (and certainly the first that I remember). It was Fantasia, and would have been mid to late 1970s.
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Hugh McCullough
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 147
From: Old Coulsdon, Surrey, UK
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted 02-12-2003 11:45 AM
I fear that Allen Eyle's is mistaken. The Odeon, or Regal as it was then, opened in 1933. I have the Architects plate with the date, and some of the original plans dated March 1933.
More details of the cinema, and projection equipment, of all types, can be found on my web site www.cinephoto.co.uk
I can not comment about the tabs being closed in Odeon 2 because as I said I was on holiday that week. It's a long story, but we were told never to close the tabs in any of the five screens. If there was a stain on the tabs it was probably Pepsi dripping down through the floor of Odeon 1. It also used to run down the walls in the box.
The cinema was originally a cafe, then a Dancing School, then the cinema bar, before being turned into Odeon 2. I remember one of the builders asking me how thick we wanted the walls to be. His building drawing was on a sheet of A4 paper with just a line to indicate where the wall was to go.
When it was first opened we had mono sound. No complaints until we had stereo installed. The odd shape, and the ceiling moulding was not conducive to decent stereo sound., especially as one surround speaker was masked by half of a wall at the entrance. I suppose the Dolby man made the best set up that he could under the circumstances.
Fantasia was shown in No2 screen ( later renamed 4) in 1972
I have always thought that most of the troubles that we now experience started when the Showmen died, and the accountants took over. I tried to explain to one accountant that it was better to spend £1500 on new tab motors & gearboxes that would last at least 20 years, than to spend £500 on second hand gear that would last , with luck, 5 years. His reply was that the £500 spend would look better on the end of year financial report.
Just what you to do with that type of logic?
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