Movie Theaters Continue to Rip-Off Patrons with Incompetent Projection of 2D Movies

by     Posted 2 years, 23 days ago

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While theater owners moan and make empty threats in response to the studios’ premium VOD Service, they’re doing nothing to make the moviegoing experience any better for patrons.  The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr discovered that theaters are bringing the poorly-lit experience of 3D to their 2D movies.   Theaters are misusing their digital project equipment and leaving in the 3D lens when they should be swapping it out if they’re showing a 2D movie.  Burr found the issue not only at the AMC Loews Boston Common on Tremont Street but also at Regal Fenway where regular brightly lit 35mm prints of Water of Elephants and Madea’s Big Happy Family where playing against their own poorly-projected versions.  The problem across theater chains appears to be Sony’s new 4K Digital Projectors and leaving them on when playing a 2D film

Hit the jump for more on how theaters are taking your money and not giving you the quality picture you paid for.

movie-theater-01A professional projectionist explained the problem with the lenses:

He explains that for 3-D showings a special lens is installed in front of a Sony digital projector that rapidly alternates the two polarized images needed for the 3-D effect to work.

“When you’re running a 2-D film, that polarization device has to be taken out of the image path. If they’re not doing that, it’s crazy, because you’ve got a big polarizer that absorbs 50 percent of the light.’’

So how can you tell if you’re getting the correct brightness level?

There’s an easy way to tell. If you’re in a theater playing a digital print (the marquee at the ticket booth should have a “D’’ next to the film’s name), look back at the projection booth.

If you see two beams of light, one stacked on top of the other, that’s a Sony with the 3-D lens still in place. If there’s a single beam, it’s either a Sony with the 3-D lens removed or a different brand of digital projector, such as Christie or Barco.

So why aren’t theaters fixing the problem?  For the same reason they don’t do anything about patrons who are chatty or text on their cell phones: it takes time, money, and manpower.

James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, “and if you don’t do it right, the machine will shut down on you.’’ The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn’t made and “audiences are getting shortchanged.’

sony-digital-projector-4kFirst off, if you’re not listening to a movie projectionist named “James Bond”, you’ve already failed on so many levels.  But no one is asking theaters to retrofit theaters or change the entire way they do business.  The fix is a couple of competent employees who should get paid a little extra for their expertise and skill with the 4K projectors (pictured right) so they can do what movie theaters were designed for: showing movies.  While theaters make their business at the concession stand, no one is going to the snack bar of an AMC or a Regal Cinemas for the cuisine.

When reached for comment, both AMC and Regal, the nation’s largest theater chains, were half-hearted in their explanations.  Here’s what a spokesman for Regal had to say:

“Patron response has been overwhelmingly positive toward digital cinema and all of the associated entertainment options provided by this technology.”

Really?  Are people going up to the managers and high-fiving them for the awesome projection job?  I’d like to see that.

And here’s a comment from Dan Huerta, Vice President of Sight and Sound for AMC:

“Obviously, if we know there’s a 2-D movie that’s going to be shown through a 3-D lens, we would have to make sure that the manager or a technical person could make the call.”

So it’s not the company’s fault.  It’s the responsibility of the manager or “technical person” (which is what I’m sure it says on their business card), and to an extent, I agree with that.  But it looks like neither company is willing to address the problem on a wide scale and are either pretending it doesn’t exist or passing the buck on to individual managers (as if the managers didn’t take their orders from corporate).

The obvious solution would be for patrons to complain every time they see an under-illuminated picture.  I’ve pretty much given up on getting theaters to project 3D films at the correct luminosity.  The bulbs are expensive, theaters are cheap, and they don’t expect the majority of audiences to know any better.  But when it comes to 2D, this is a problem that comes down to sheer laziness.  Nothing new has to be purchased.  The expertise costs money but so does any profession.  Why promote incompetence?

And yet consumers have to shoulder some of the blame because they may not notice or even care.  Also, do you really want to get out of your seat, track down the manager, and stop the movie so they can adjust the lens?  The better solution is to sit through the movie and then afterwards complain to the manager about the issue.  They’ll most likely give you a free pass in order to shut you up.  But if they have to give out enough of those passes because every screening has them getting bothered by unhappy patrons, it might just make them change their ways.  Or they’ll just jack up prices at the concession stand because that’s the only thing they’re good at.

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Comments:
  • JoshL

    It’s sad, but well trained projectionist with an art for the craft are no longer used in commercial theaters…and more often than not you have managers who don’t even know how to run their own equipment.

  • Tol

    Firstly, next time I go see a 2D film I will check how many beams are coming out of the projector.

    Secondly, in this day and age, why the hell have they made the change out of a lens such a pain in the arse.

    Thirdly, I ain’t bought food or drink at a movie theatre in years. It just seems dumb of them to charge so much for such cheap and horrible fare.

    And nope, I have never felt the need to pat anyone on the back for giving me a wonderful projection of the movie, as I don’t expect anyone to give me a pat on the back for doing my job properly.

  • JLC

    There may be another issue here they’re artfully avoiding. One of the perks of digital projection is that it’s easy to move films from one auditorium to another. That way, if, say, Bridesmaids is doing better than expected, the manager can move it into a larger theater that was originally supposed to play Thor that night to get the extra seats. Thor is in 3D, but Bridesmaids isn’t. So maybe they just “forgot” to swap out the lens.

    • Ex Movie Theater Employee

      Actually, these new digital projectors can hold up to quite a few digital prints. They all come on a hard drive, therefore Thor 3D and Bridesmaids could be on the same digital projector.

      • JLC

        No doubt. But my point is that the film playing in a particular auditorium might change to cope with demand, without changing the lens as required. “Hey, the 7:00 show of Bridesmaids sold out. Should we put the 9:15 in #2? Yeah, but Priest is there now; we need to change out the 3D lens. Don’t bother- no one will notice.”

  • Arsegard

    Swines!!! I hadn’t been to a theatre since inception (and that experience was awful)

    But last week i buckled and went to see THOR in 2D because i heard the post 3d was badly done, also £10 to see a 3d film is extaution!

    Anyway, there was only 1 2D showing per day, £7.50 still (was £5.50 a year ago) the 2D looked terrible! blurry, dull and the sound was low with poor surround. I thought at the time it was a trick to make people pay extra to see in 3D and spend more!

    Shame because theres about 5 big movies that i want to but wont be seeing at any theater anytime soon.

    I will wait to rent all films on bluray, in 2D from now on, and so will millions of others.
    Congratulations hollywood/theatre chains, you managed to kill cinema before the Pirates did.

  • The Smartest Man In Zee World

    Wake up! You’re not going to accomplish anything if you complain to a theater manager. They’re just there as a proxy for the big whigs who do drive the fancy cars and have the nice house(s). Theater managers and employees field complaints from pissed off costumers and send those complaints to corporate, but corporate doesn’t give two shits because it’s coming from management who they can move around or force to leave. SO the thing to do ignorant people out there who love to come off feeling good about themselves by bitching at someone who basically has no control whatsoever about certain things like prices, 3D, etc. is to contact each theater chain’s corporate office and bitch TO THEM and do the same thing for Sony and all of Hollywood. Do you complain/bitch at Best Buy if your DVD was damaged? Did they physically make that product? NOPE. Did a movie theater personnel make Pirates or Thor (or even in 3D to take this a step further)? NOPE. Then why should they be getting badgered left and right? This accomplishes nothing and I think people know this because Hollywood has us by the balls where you can go out and buy yourself a flatscreen HD TV and get NetFlix and spend much less than you would going to the theaters for one day per week per year. The money still goes to them that way, so why should they worry if people stop going to the theaters right?

  • r2

    Collider forgot to add that a projector bulbs are supposed to be swapped around 5-6000 hrs. In order to save money, Regal, AMC, and Carmike are known for not swapping their bulbs until they hit 10000 hrs. Over used bulbs plus managers being lazy and not removing the 3D lenses is where the problem starts. On a Christie 2K projector, removing the 3D lens is the easiest and one of the first things a manager learns about the projector. On 99% of 4K projectors the lense changes are done automatically according to the movie schedule but most likely old bulbs are still being used lowering the picture quality.

  • aaronsullivan

    Haven’t noticed this yet, but will be looking out for it. I find it hard to be snarky and hateful towards Movie Theaters, though.

    Studios have forced theater owner’s hands towards making profits from anything but actual ticket sales. Really places the value in the wrong place. Movie theaters would have had to adjust quickly and expensively to advancing home technology if they were to remain relevant to the same number of people they used to. Unfortunately, continual pressure from studios forced them to get less and less from each ticket sale and made that impossible.

    Now we have theaters that are uncomfortable and run by people making minimum wage bending over backward for any food and drink gimmick (and 3D) to keep from going under as less and less people find it attractive. (The most common theater upgrades I’ve seen lately are big screen monitors advertising what foods you can buy.)

    Movies used to be respected, but they have been SO devalued that most people don’t even understand or appreciate the benefit and enjoyment of seeing one with an audience.

    Instead of pushing 3D, studios should relegate a much bigger share of ticket sales to the theaters (the studios make a bundle on the home market now, anyway). Or, if the studios wanted more control, maybe they could take a percentage of that ticket and tally it up to provide digital projectors to theaters or other improvements like the sound system or seating or whatever important technology they want to push.

    Make Movie Theaters a great night out for more people, and they will pay for it and respect it more.

    Just sayin’.

  • Phil Beta

    Sony has always used the easy way to solve the underlying problems with almost every product they make (we’re talking about a lot of products here).

    Adressing the projection issue, I never really liked the approach many studios are taking in moviemaking. They should still use film, and add visual effects by means of scanning and printing.

    God, I just can’t tell how much I dislike James Cameron and Sony right now!

  • l4b0Mb4

    Me and my wife recently went to watch Priest at 9:30pm…only to have something ‘mess’ up with the ’3D’ Projector, so our movie was moved to 10:40pm and another theater…while the ‘hotter’ Fast Five was instantly substituted in the theater we were supposed to be in @ 9:30 and immediately sold out.

    I suppose we were bumped for the previously sold out Fast Five and the 3D issue was a farce…which really aggravated us considering we had already purchased our cokes/popcorn/etc. only to find out we being forced to watch our movie an hour and some change later. All the while they didn’t tell us until we walked up to the actual movie.

    Even worse, we couldn’t stay due our babysitter needing to leave at a specified time (3 kids can be daunting). AND this was the first time me and my wife had a date in over 6 months. A ruined night. Theaters and their managers are there to serve their customers if they have a bad experience…and if I’m getting crappy ‘luminosity’ then I (and everyone else) should bitch to the managers, NOT the chains. That’s their job.

    We were given our money back and 2 extra passes for the trouble, but honestly, that meant nothing considering it’ll probably be another 6 months until we get to do that again. A damn shame, really…especially since we went back and looked through our bank transactions online and saw we spent $800 in 2010 @ this same theater–taking our kids, mainly.

    • The Smartest Man In Zee World

      Wake Up! When you see a drunk person on the street do you go up to them and tell them to stop drinking or do you go find a cop? Yeah, I thought so. Where do I even begin? Grow a pair and take some time out from posting stories about yer kids on Facebook and send Corporate a nice letter and rat out the managers. If they did this to you and how many other people were in Priest what makes you think that you personally put a stop to it by just venting to a manager? Come on. They won’t change their ways, unless if Corporate knows about it. And let me tell you, I am sure that Corporate condones it all the way, but if Tommy Tutone and his familia want to see Priest 3D then they’ll take you very seriously and send you some more passes and maybe you’ll even change things. Once again Corporate is the enemy, the people who work there don’t give a shit, hey yeah, they’re probably forced by Corporate to cancel a show of something that isn’t selling out to open up a new theater for ones that do sell out. Did’ja eva think ’bout that?!!?!!?

      Write a letter and let us know what happens. Peace brother! It’s aight. I’m just all heated up you know from ‘roids. I do pushups in the aisle during matinee screenings of Fast Five. Gets me pumped up.

  • joe kerr

    3D makes people watch movies the way they did in the 70′s.

  • sloan

    first of all, who watches movies in the theater anymore, except for the really bad ass one’s? Just watch that shit online. And second, well actually I’ve been drinking and I sort of forgot what my second point was…. oh yeah. Isn’t it crazy that people wrote like thirty eight page responses to this article? Who in the fuck is going to read an entire comment from some asshole that’s a whole page long? Uh oh, now I’m fucked…

  • Kurt

    I’m not even sure where to start with this. From the so called “Expert Projectionist” quoted in the story to all the comments from people.

    First off, Sony makes the worst Digital projector on the market. It is a nothing more then a paper weight. It isn’t user friendly, the software is horrible. If you have an issue with it, you can’t fix it untill someone from Sony comes out to do said trouble shooting. Barco right now is making the best User Friendly machine, any “popcorn pusher” as so many like to say can use it with little training. As well as producing the best quality image.

    As far as “The Smartest Man In Zee World” comments, you seem to have a real issue with theatre managers. You say that theatre Managers don’t give a shit and they don’t care about the patrons that come to the location. I can’t speak for all companys and all theatre managers. But of the 140+ managers that I know and have worked with in the past 8 years maybe 5 have had that attitude and they didn’t last long. This business is all about customer service and support. Just because you’ve had a bad experience at your local AMC, does not make everyone that does this profession a “Sheep” following corporate through the hills.

    r2 – I don’t know where you got your “numbers” from but you must of pulled them out of thin air. No lamp can go to 10,000 hours. On average the lamp in a digital projector is changed out at 1000-1500 hours. If it goes more then 500 hours past that your not going to have a picture. As an example, IMAX GT lamps are changed out every 1200 hours on the dot. These are two 15,000 watt lamps and they are run for 12-14 hours straight every day. They are not shut off between shows like a digital projection system or 35mm system. The strikes on a lamp do more harm to the lamp then running the lamp.

    I’ve written enough, but once again another half truth story about the evils of the theatre managers and how they are out to screw the customer.

    *Kurt

    • The Smartest Man In Zee World

      Wake Up, Kurt! If you had read my first post up top, you would see that I respect theater managers and think they are in a long line of people who take a lot of shit for Corporate Rules that fuck customers, while those Corporate folks are never seen at all. It’s the way the whole world is run nowadays. Let’s not forget who makes the rules here, ok? Do you think each individual theater makes or shifts the rules around? No, if they did they would get fired. I know that a lot of stress of that job comes from things that they have no control over. I overheard a few managers talking while I was waiting for Matilda in the toilet. She was blowing me in an evening showing of Marmaduke. Anyways, as I am waiting for her to come out I overhear these managers talk about how they constantly get shit on by customers and that they can’t do anything about it like in the Priest example. Corporate tells them to do whatever is necessary to make more money and that conflicts with customer satisfaction like in that specific example. Customers complain to managers and they understand that they’re upset. Corporate doesn’t care about it, until a letter (or a shitload of ‘em) shows up on their cherry oak desk and people threaten to not show up. This “not showing up” doesn’t really effect the manager’s pay there at all. How much of that $800 that Tommy Tutone spent per year does a manager see? Probably nothing. Now if corporate got that letter they would shudder in their Vanilla scented boots and make sure that that couple still goes to their theater because their bonuses go out the window. Capiche?!

      It’s kinda like the Army. Is the Army in charge or the President? Yeah, I though so. This is the new war being waged by Corporate America. They want you to hate whoever represents their Corporation, while they hide in the dark and whack off while playing Dig Dug on Atari.

      Sloan, I got my eyes on you bro. So you’re over there on your couch pirating movies, eh? Think you’re a big guy? You wanna destroy the whole movie industry as we know it? You pirate movies, the movie theaters shut down, then you’re left watching nothing because the studios will pull all of the crappy quality pirated movies off so losers like you will have to go out and get a job to pay for Red Box. Do you want Kurt to lose his job? He seems like a decent bro. I’d bust a guy’s face, if I saw someone spit on him while he buttered someone’s popcorn. Not to mention: IT’S CALLED STEALING!! Hey, the more that I think about it I’m the most ethical person on here.

    • r2

      you are right,at 10000 hrs the bulbs arent supposed to work. Somehow they still do and the bulbs are literally black,the picture quality is horrible and its very dangerous. I got this info from Christie Digital which happens to the provide the projectors and tech support for our theater. Can you imagine if we had to swap bulbs every 500hrs? Theaters would not be able to afford it and would increase the concession prices even more. To make it cost efficient we swap ours around 2-3000hrs keeping the settings at normal usage.

    • Bubbie

      Whoa, whoa, get out the way with that good ifnrmoation.

  • The Smartest Man In Zee World

    “Just because you’ve had a bad experience at your local AMC, does not make everyone that does this profession a “Sheep” following corporate through the hills.”

    Whoa!?! I never said anything about being at AMC. Where did you pull that precarious info out of? I liked you Kurt. You were my bro. I must have skimmed over this, as I was shaking my protein shake. You got All My Children on the brain? My mah’s upset that they cancelled that show. She’s 83 and knows more about what’s going on than most people out there. For example, she knows that Alex Trebek had to shave off his mustache as a measure of National Security.

    These “Sheep” that you speak of probably want to break free from the Corporate Shackles and be like Luke Skywalker and Neo and be more about customer service than Corporate wants them to be. They need to lead the Rebel Alliance. Did’ja eva think ’bout that? Don’t be puttin’ words in my mouth. You should know this one. I’m sure that most managers bitch and moan because “Corporate Says So” behind closed doors. When I wanna oil up my bod at the gym and grunt loudly I am told no because “corporate said so”. We just gotta stick together and we’ll pull through it all.

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