my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » Delivery bin (Page 1)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Author Topic: Delivery bin Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-29-2013 05:33 PM                        I will soon have a sort of a porch built onto the back of my theatre, and it seems to me that this might provide the ideal opportunity to add something that I've wished for on numerous occasions: A delivery bin that couriers and whatnot could leave stuff in if they happen to bring it when I'm not here. I am usually here, but I have occasionally returned from a errand and found things like a DCP hard drive case sitting on the sidewalk beside the door. This doesn't happen too often, but it would be nice to have some sort of a secure delivery bin for that stuff on the rare occasion that it's needed. I'm thinking of having some kind of a slot or a drawer built into the wall beside the door, with a bin behind it that's inside of the building, designed in such a way that you can put stuff in from the outside but you can't remove anything unless you are inside. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas or insights into how such a thing could be designed?  |  IP: Logged Adam Fraser Master Film Handler Posts: 499 From: Houghton Lake, MI, USA Registered: Dec 2001 posted 07-29-2013 06:28 PM                        UPS and a couple other suppliers have a key to our delivery room. There is no access to the interior of the theatre from this small room without a separate key. Has worked out very well as I live 20 minutes from my theatre. If you want to look into a one way door, maybe check the companies that make night deposit doors for banks.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-29-2013 06:38 PM                        Anything that requires a key to put stuff inside wouldn't be practical. It's only once in a while that the delivery guys would ever need it; I'm here 99.9% of the time and you can bet that if they did need the key, it would be back at their main office or in the other delivery guy's pocket. Plus there is a whole herd of different delivery people that may or may not bring something here during the course of any given month.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-30-2013 05:10 PM                        I just talked to the guy who built my stainless steel sink and he said that he has built delivery hatches like this before, so he'll be sending me a fax with a suggested design and all he'll need from me are the dimensions for how big I want it built. So I guess this is a solved problem. Incidentally, if any of you ever need anything custom built from stainless steel (sink, table, cart, cabinet, whatever) this is the guy to call. His workmanship is superb and his prices are reasonable. Fostey Stainless Products - Winnipeg Manitoba - Phone 204-237-9434  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-30-2013 07:58 PM                        Frank's solution seems workable if there is no way you can give access to an exterior door yet have the trucker not have access to the main building once in. A bank-type drop-slot would work, but only if you need just one-way delivery. If you need a carrier to pickup as well as deliver after hours (like we always needed with film prints), then a drop-slot would not work for you. Frank's idea of an secure box that could be left outside would work, but then the question is, would you trust a studio's blockbuster to a box like this? Do you think it could give adequate security and peace of mind against the incredible headache that would be visited upon you if an HD would get stolen while in your possession. Why not just hunker down and buy one of those small security safe with combination lock; they are very sturdy -- we have a few that we use to keep performers' valuables in the dressing rooms. They are pretty indestructible by "normal" thievery methods and not terribly expensive given what it might cost to have a custom box designed & constructed for you. The delivery company could be given the combination and so no key would be involved which, as you say, could present a logistics nightmare. When we had regular film deliveries, our trucker had a key and we never had any trouble, but then we used a small trucking company with just a few employees and our stage door didn't open to anywhere but a storage area rather than to the theatre itself, so that was an ideal and pretty unusual situation that most don't have. The prints were left inside and not exposed to elements, pimply teenage thugs or those notorious pirates the film companies claim sail the seven seas. A safe like this anchored to the building (aircraft cable? tempered steel chain?) seems like it is robust enough and solid enough looking to be a deterrent to all but very talented safe crackers.  |  IP: Logged Mark Hajducki Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 500 From: Edinburgh, UK Registered: May 2003 posted 07-30-2013 08:23 PM                     quote: Frank Angel would you trust a studio's blockbuster to a box like this? Do you think it could give adequate security and peace of mind against the incredible headache that would be visited upon you if an HD would get stolen while in your possession. Having a hard drive stolen compared with having a film print stolen will be a lot less critical. The cost is far less and there is no risk of piracy*. *Assuming that the DCI encryption is still secure.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-30-2013 09:52 PM                        What I am considering is indeed more like a bank drop slot than a simple box left outside. The slot will be mounted beside the door and it will actually go through the wall -- items put in the slot will end up inside the building. The slot will be big enough to accept a dcp hard drive, but small enough to prevent anyone from trying to crawl into it or anything silly like that. Anything that requires a combination lock or a key or anything else to place items in the slot will simply not work. There are at least five different courier companies that come here (Fed Ex, Loomis, Purolator, Nelson and one other outfit from Regina whose name escapes me at the moment), and probably more than fifteen different drivers. The drivers seem have enough difficulty reading the sign on the front door that says "For deliveries outside of movie hours, ring the doorbell at the BACK DOOR" that I don't want to complicate things for them any further. I have found "sorry we missed you" stickers on my front door literally inches away from that sign, and I have been here all day so I know nobody rang the doorbell at the back door. My alternative to providing a delivery slot like this is to continue the way that I do now, but as I said before I have on rare occasions returned from an errand and found a DCP hard drive case sitting on the sidewalk beside my door. While it may not provide ideal security, the delivery slot will certainly be more secure than leaving it on the sidewalk. Theoretically the delivery slot will be little-used anyway; I really am almost always here and when I know or suspect that a delivery is coming I make an extra effort to hang around. But stuff sometimes shows up that I don't know is coming in advance. I remember receiving both of the trailer drives and the movie one week by Thursday so since it appeared everything was here I made a trip to Regina on Friday to re-stock my candy. When I got back late Friday afternoon a DCP hard drive case was on the sidewalk containing a second copy of the movie that I had received the previous day. I figure a delivery slot with a big sign on it that says "DELIVERIES" should avoid situations like that; if nothing is ever put into it then so much the better. Again, it's pretty rare for something like this to happen but still...  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 07-30-2013 10:49 PM                     For many years here in the US, films in most urban areas were handled by a company called"Bonded Film Services". The drivers had keys too all the theatres on their route. Films to be delivered or picked up were left in the lobby. But some of the larger theaters I worked at had sort of a "night deposit box" door built into the front of the theater. There were heavy steel doors on both the exterior and interior sides of the box. Films "to go" were left in the box and the inside door was locked. The driver came overnight, opened the outer door, and swapped the old & new film cans. My favorite arrangment was at a big 70mm house I worked at which actually had a small "film elevator" built into the building. It took two keys to operate. The 'upstairs' part of the elevator was in the booth. I'd put the outgoing film cans into it at the end of the night, close the elevator door & go home. The 'downstairs' end of the elevator was a steel door built into the front of the theater building. The BFE driver would use one key to open this outer door, then use a 2nd key to bring the film elevator ( & film ) down to street level. After swapping out the old & new film shipping cases, he'd send the elevator back up to the booth & lock the outer door. Sure beat carrying those heavy 70mm shipping cases up & down stairs! (Although, technically, even if I didn't have the elevator, I wouldn't have had to carry them up & down the stairs. My union didn't allow the projectionists to carry film cans.)  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-31-2013 03:29 AM                        The theatre where I worked in College Station had that arrangement as well -- all the truckers had keys to the front door and would leave the film cans in the lobby, just sitting there. In the morning the porters would unlock and clean with no other staff in the building and the prints would just sit there for hours. Anyone with the desire could just open the lobby door and walk away with the cans. It always amazed me that no one ever did that until one day we discovered some drunk Aggies grabbed, not the feature, but the cartoon. We found the cartoon unraveled all 800 or so feet of it all the way down the highway. But of course those were different times -- BV (Before Video) -- who was going pirate a film in those days? There was nothing to copy it TO, even if you absconded with it.  |  IP: Logged Jeff Taylor Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 601 From: Chatham, NJ/East Hampton, NY Registered: Apr 2000 posted 08-05-2013 04:36 PM                     Somewhat ot, but this reminds me of some older houses which had an enclosed vestibule off the kitchen where the cooler was located. The outer door would be open so the ice man could put ice in the "refrigerator" without disturbing anyone, and the inner door to the kitchen was locked. I never heard of anyone having their butter stolen.  |  IP: Logged System Notices Forum Watchdog / Soup Nazi Posts: 215 Registered: Apr 2004 posted 07-10-2015 05:01 PM                 It has been 704 days since the last post.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-10-2015 05:01 PM                        I finally got my delivery box installed. I ended up building it into the side of my garage. The hatch opens wide enough to fit a Technicolor case, a Deluxe box and/or a standard mailing tube into the box. The box is designed to be a "secure drop" -- it has a kind of a wing inside of it so you can put stuff in through the front hatch but you can't get anything back out unless you open the door at the back. It's located beside the theatre back door, so it shouldn't be too hard for the couriers to find. I didn't want to put it at in a too-obvious location like the front of the building since someone would probably come by and put a cat in it or something. I have a fenced back yard so this is all behind the fence. Now I just need to figure out how to rig an indicator so I know when stuff is in the box. Perhaps a spring-loaded or weighted semaphore or flag of some kind that activates when you open the hatch... Should any of you fine folks want a delivery box like this, this is it: “Deposit” Delivery Vault (formerly “Curbside”)  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-10-2015 09:02 PM                        [QUOTENow I just need to figure out how to rig an indicator so I know when stuff is in the box.] [/QUOTE] Remote security cam in the drop box  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 07-11-2015 03:05 AM                     What about a simple Photoelectric sensor hooked up to a Raspberry Pi or some homebrew circuit if you're into that? But what I'm wondering, doesn't Technicolor and Deluxe ship their drives via registered mail over there? Do they just accept delivery into a black hole?  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-11-2015 07:08 AM                        Nice. There is/was some company that made an optical sensor for mailboxes that might work for you. It consisted of a solar cell and transmitter unit that would be installed inside the mailbox and a receiver unit with a beeper that could be kept in your house. When the mailbox was opened (and the solar cell exposed to light), the beeper would sound. Something like that might work for you if your deliveries are made in the daytime. Otherwise a microswitch on the door might work, assuming that random people don't walk by and use the thing as a trash can.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.