Reader Brenden went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night, and spent the last 10 minutes of the movie watching it with no audio. Rather than stopping the movie and handing out free passes, the theater just let it play with no sound, then refused to rewind it.
Brenden writes:
I went to see Indian Jones at the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn MA. I won’t comment on the movie, for those who haven’t seen it, but 10 minutes from the end, at the big climax the sound goes out. Totally. The movie is still playing, but now in silent mode. The house lights flicker for a second, then stay off. After a moment of audience murmurs someone comes in the back of the theater and announces “We just lost power for a minute. (there had been a storm going on), we’re going to re-wind it to the point the sound shut off”. That seemed to work for everyone, so we quieted down.
A minute later we started to realize they weren’t shutting off the movie, they just let it play. The longer this went on the more people were talking. They let it play right to the credits, when someone finally got up and asked again. Then they told us they wouldn’t be rewinding it. Luckily there was another theater that started a half hour after our show, so most of us went there, and afterwards lined up at the customer service counter and got a free ticket.. but still.. Come on!
Well, that’s just not how you handle that at all. Boo.
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As someone who used to work as a projectionist at a movie theatre, I can tell you that the “How Stuff Works” video article posted above is INCORRECT when they say the film automatically rewinds. The platter system used for showing film reels has no rewind function on it whatsoever. The platter can be stopped and manually moved back a few seconds worth, but certainly not for 10 minutes+ worth of film. The film is threaded in such a way that when it is time for the next show of that film, it is ready to be threaded exactly the same way as the previous show was, no rewinding necessary.
Digital projectors CAN be “rewound”, since it is equivalent to playing a DVD or a video file off your PC’s hard drive.
So if you know you are watching a film projector, and your theatre chain uses the platter system (which I’m sure nearly all of the theatres that still use film do), it cannot be rewound for the 10 minutes that the manager claimed. As bad as it would cost them financially to do so, they should have handed out refunds/rainchecks to anyone who requested one. At least they allowed the OP into a later show free of charge, which is really all that was necessary.
When I saw The Truman Show, the power in the whole theatre building went out at the very end, literally as Truman was turning around to address the person talking to him about something very important. (I tried to phrase that so it wouldn’t spoil anything if you haven’t seen the movie, but trust me, it’s a climactic moment.)
There was a HUGE thunderstorm outside and the power was clearly not coming back, so they gave us free passes and that was really all they could do.
Happened to me back in the 90s when I was a kid (and, embarrassingly, watching Clueless) and the sound got severely out of sync with the film. Luckily, it was within the first twenty minutes or so, so they just stopped the film and re-started it. I’m guessing you can’t actually rewind.
Although films are delivered on 2000′ reels, they are spliced together to go on a cakestand and there is no way to rewind those.
Splicing the film and rethreading the projector after the film has jammed in the gate is a different matter. Any competent projectionist should be able to do that. I suspect that the problem was what caused the film to jam in the gate.
Each frame is only 1/24th of a second and you should not need to take out more than three frames, so its not a show killer.
Loss of the sound is somewhat weird, you sometimes end up with a bad print that may be noisy on a particular reel. But to loose sound completely is somewhat odd. Of course these days the digital sound tracks are somewhat more complicated. It is quite possible that the last reel was just faulty.
I know of systems that let you show the same print in different theaters simultaneously, that is with 100′ or so delay between each. Thats just over a minute. Creating a delay of 30 minutes or so would be pretty tricky. I guess you might be able to do that with a cakestand system but its not a trick I would want to rely on with the one I used to use.
The problem is that the platter can only move at one speed. Either you control the speed of the platter so that the film payout is synchronized on the inside of the loop (the dancer) or you have to synchronize to the film takeup on the outside. The two speeds are different because the film moves at a constant rate per second and the interior and exterior circumferences of the film platter are different.
I guess there is probably some sort of multi-sprocket film delay device. But to delay the film by 30 minutes you need to store 2700 foot of film in a delay line. That is a lot.
That is too bad. Indy dies in the end and the sound is critical for enjoying the movie.
Gee, this makes me feel so bad for the fact that I haven’t gone to a theater since X-Files in 1998 and prefer to get 90% of my movies off bit torrent.
Rewinding films is not possible for several reasons:
1) They’re on gigantic 6ft spools that feed one way only.
2) Projection machines are not designed to rewind film.
3) There is no ‘projectionist’ up there watching anything.
Usually what happens is that on Wednesday a projectionist will come in and begin splicing together the 5-10 small canisters for a single movie. Once that’s done, they’re put on giant spindles and set to play continuously. It’s designed like a giant mobieus strip so the theater managers don’t have to do anything. So when the reel breaks, there isn’t anyone there with any technical skills to fix the problem.
@wgrune: I agree. The dialog and writing was so bad in this movie that I think it might have been better to be completely silent… with subtitles, in Spanish.
What a pathetic attempt at a fourth movie. This piece of trash doesn’t deserve a place in the epic series of Indiana Jones. This is my opinion, but I have a feeling most of you will be disappointed as well.
Giving this one 2 out of 10.
As been stated, unless the film is digital, it cannot be rewound without a ton of effort.
The number of projectionists vary from theatre chain to theatre chain. Some will have a projectionist to run the entire megaplex, others won’t have any on duty during parts of the day.
With the amount of automation now, its easy for a single projectionist to run (aka thread/start) a megaplex (10+ screens) by themselves. On Thursday nights a small team of projectionists will be need for the assembly & disassembly of the films for the coming week.
Catastrophic stoppage of a film is rare. Much more common is playing the film out of focus, dirty, or having to play a ‘scratched’ film due to mishandling by the projectionist.
@satoru: It’s designed like a giant mobieus strip so the theater managers don’t have to do anything.
That put all sorts of wonderful and terrifying pictures in my head.
I use to work for the Regal Entertainment Group many years ago at a theater, that at the time, was only 6 years old. The equipment upstairs, which I was secretly trained on how to splice, start, and stop films (i wasn’t a manager, but the manager who no longer works there trained me because we were good friends). Basically, like everyone is saying, most films are on a big platter. There are 3 usually 3 platters, and btw, most places still use this system. One platter contains the spliced film, which is about 2-3 canisters of film for a 2 hr. movie. It is fed through the projector, and the the film is wound up on another platter, so it can be re-fed through and switched to the other platter. The third platter is for a second film, if the theater doubles up. Theoretically, to rewind such a film, you would have to take it off the projector, and then go through a mile or more (accurate estimate based on frame rate of projector, and length of movie) of film, BY HAND, and find the EXACT spot you left off… with most frames looking almost identical, re-spooling the thing, then starting the projector. The process would, in theory, take about 2 hours minimum. You would be better off watching it over again. Add in that if your at a multiplex (i’ll use the one i worked at as an example), there are 18 projectors that have to almost be constantly re-spooled, started, and tended to if there is any problems, and usually only one projectionist (if things get really bad up there they usually took the manager off the floor if available to assist).
We didn’t use digital projectors to much, only for the “20″… the previews before the previews if you will. Pretty much everything was downloaded into a computer, and it just ran automatically… I only saw one actual movie played on that projector, and the process for loading it was inserting it into a CD tray on the 35 mil. projector, and flipping a switch, there was no rewind or fast forward (which you can FF on a 35 mil. projector) that I saw on THIS system, but were talking about one theater out of many here.
@blackmage439: Did you not want those 5 minutes back? Because they were the only worthy ones.
Hmm… I have had this happen in a movie before and I swear they rewound the film. Or maybe they just restarted it… I don’t really remember how far along the movie it was.
Me and my son watched this exciting move in theater 7 of Cinema World in Melbourne Florida yesterday. The projectionist accidentally started the wrong movie and we watched the first 5 minutes or so of Labyrinth. The manager came in and apologized and started Indy from the beginning.
The movie was fun, far fetched escapism at it’s finest.
Yeah, you can’t rewind the movie. I worked in a theater for more years than I care to remember. Usually when something like this happens, free passes are the standard. Thankfully the one time the theater did lose power, I was on evacuation duty and did not have to manually turn the platters.
wow the same thing happend to me in Edinburg, Texas at the Carmike Cinemas midnight showing. We had a full house and the movie was running with sound but no picture. The whole crowd went crazy and was on the verge on a riot. The theatre managment was rude and told us there was no way for us to watch the movie again,well that upset the whole crowd who started to shout and cuss in the lobby . Thirty minutes later a digital theatre was magically opened, in all my years i had never seen such an angry crowd, just had to add my little story to this one
I was at a presentation about sound with Tomlinson Holman, who started the THX sound specification, and what he said at the time was if you have a bad experience in a theater, ask for your MONEY BACK. Giving free tickets doesn’t really cost the theater anything since you will be still be buying soda, popcorn, hot dogs and etc. Having them have to give you your money back will cause a negative on there balance books, and people higher up will notice that.
@scoobydoo: You cannot be serious. The fact that they let the last 10 minutes run with no audio already should initiate an automatic refund. Not a free movie, but a refund. A free movie is something they offer when they waste your time by having to rewinding the movie. A refund is something required when they don’t let you watch the full movie. They should have had someone fix it on the spot. When the people went into another theater to watch the ending, that was not the movie theater telling them to do that. That was customers realizing they weren’t being offered anything and took it upon themselves to sneak into another theater to see it. Technically the movie theater could have had them arrested for doing that. And for rewinding the movie, yes they can easily do that. Whether it be a tape or a digital file. Most likely they didn’t want to throw off the start of the next movie. A tape must be “rewinded” after each use anyways because when it plays through the projector it ends up on the opposite reel with the end on the outside.
We went to see “The Incredibles” at a new AMC multiplex when they ran the first 10 minutes of “Finding Neverland” by mistake. They did us right by getting the right movie running, handed out passes to everyone, then, since the previews for Incredibles included a Star Wars preview, they ran the preview after the movie so we could see it.
wow sorry man that sucks for you, but hey atleast the movie kicked ass!
Ditto what many other have said here – theater projectors cannot rewind the “platter”, unless it’s a very old theater that still uses movie reels.
The biggest problem is that theaters are now staffed with minimum wage operators with zero technical background. Misfocused movies, dirty projection lenses, and miscalibrated sound are standard experiences.
Honestly, I got myself a video projector for my basement, and the picture/sound quality is great, even off standard DVDs. I’m done with theaters.
Home theater systems really are getting better these days than the seriously outmoded theater film technology. HD on a big plasma screen gives a person the depth and clarity of a film shown on a big screen. Plus, you don’t have stupid oafs kicking the back of your chair, getting their fat heads in your way and texting all their little friends.
Movie theaters do have powerful digital sound that is hard to beat because of professional digital processors and the sheer power of gigantic speakers. But the digital sound is bound to go out periodically because every competitor — Dolby, Sony, DTS — crams their own format down the film strip alongside the picture. Plus the traditional optical backup sound track has to be crammed in there too. Not much space there between the pic & the sprocket holes. You get a projector that’s sloughing off flakes of film, the flakes could effect the sound; scratches could damage the track. Every digital track has to pass through its own kind of sound reader. The reader has to be in perfect alignment…
Theaters were supposed to switch over to digital satellite years ago. Guess they never got over their fears of signal piracy or something.
@hallam:
Wow. Thanks a lot dude.
What? This many posts and still no snarky comments about the spelling of “Indian Jones”?
When I seen Iron Man the theater shut it off when the screen went to black. I knew there was more footage after the credits and the theater refused to give me anything for it at first and told me there wasn’t anything after the credits. I got on my blackberry and went to a message forum where everyone was talking about the thing after the credits and showed it to the manager and was like “oh so are all these people lying?” He then gave me a free ticket and a coupon for free small popcorn and soda. Still wasted 20-30 minutes of my time arguing with the guy about it.
I had a similar situation at the Carmike in Savannah, except the opposite, no picture only sound. they did rewind it after they replaced the dead bulb…which they are supposed to do before the thing goes out…
I’m surprised to see how many projection people we have in here. Just another one chiming in.
If the power dropped for a second the Cinema sound processor likely dropped out or perhaps it was in DTS and lost the time code sync. If someone up there had been properly trained in the booth there they would have power cycled the Sound Processor.
Someone as well should have immediately killed the projector as well until sound could be fixed. But this is why I only work 19 hours a week at a 20 year old ghetto plex theater. Its the only one in my area that is’nt operated by some big micro-managed no fun chain. But there is still the fact that due to companies not caring for the romance and art of projection film is looked down upon for reason just like this.
Film can be done right, and its not really that hard. These companies just don’t care anymore.
he should be thanking his lucky starts since the ending he made up in his head was probably 35 times better that the real one.
@wgrune:@redkamel: I was going to say the same thing, especially about the last five minutes.
Also chiming in about how film projectors can’t be re-wound. Also, this person went in another theater anyway (isn’t that technically against the law?), and also got free passes. Why are they bitching about it like nothing was done? Sheesh.
@hallam:
>I know of systems that let you show the same print in
>different theaters simultaneously, that is with 100′ or so
> delay between each. Thats just over a minute. Creating a
>delay of 30 minutes or so would be pretty tricky. I guess
>you might be able to do that with a cakestand system but
>its not a trick I would want to rely on with the one I
>used to use.
>The problem is that the platter can only move at one
>speed. Either you control the speed of the platter so that
> the film payout is synchronized on the inside of the loop
> (the dancer) or you have to synchronize to the film
>takeup on the outside. The two speeds are different
>because the film moves at a constant rate per second and
>the interior and exterior circumferences of the film
>platter are different.
I’ve seen a multiplex delay system in action that could do up to a 40 minute delay. It worked by feeding the film from the first projector to the inside of one platter, pulling the film from the outside of that platter directly to the outside of a second platter, and then feeding the film from the inside of the second platter to the second projector. This way the difference in speed between the inside and outside of the platters was canceled out.
Are the airbrush artists on strike or something? Harrison is looking downright embalmed.
Indiannna wantz braaainnnzzz!
@67alecto:
when i went to see ‘gangs of new york’ the film stopped and melted with 15 minutes to go. still have never gotten about to seeing the end of it… got free passes and popcorn though, woo!
Even though I know it has already been said about fifteen times, does OP actually expect a projectionist to be able to “rewind” a film? Obviously, he doesn’t know how projecting works. Now, the audio, on the other hand, IS downright unacceptable. If a projectionist where I work did that and the owners heard about it (Small town, about 50000 people, owners are local, theaters are independant), that person would NEVER forget that, if they even had a job afterwards.
Now, to all of the people that complain about how bad movies in theaters are: we still use film on all except for one of our screens in this town and we are damn proud of it! Any time there is a movie going, there is at least one projectionist that is working and all of the projectionist (and owners) know what to look for in a print to see if something happened to it. The owners are huge movie buffs and are seen very regularly; if something big goes wrong, they will find out about it and whoever did whatever went wrong will never forget it.
About what happened, there should have been at least rainchecks offered so that people could go and see the movie again, just for the ending. Our copy of Iron Man burned up and the manager/projectionist (yes, the managers have to know how to run/focus/fix projectors around here) on duty, after splicing it, stood and gave every single person that went to that showing of Iron Man a raincheck to see it again for free, even though they saw the whole movie.
Sorry if this is a little long-winded.
Greetings from Casper, WY.
Write to the theater directly. This happened to me during the last 20 min. of the Emperor’s New Groove (yes it’s been a few years). Regal ended up sender free passes and coupons for freebie popcorns and soda.
Showcase Cinemas in Woburn, MA..eh?
I’ve seen many, many movies there in my life and I must admit they have TERRIBLE staff who don’t give a crap about their customers. I still go there due to lack of a better alternative mega-cinema.
Speaking as a projectionist it is not easy to rewind.
Rewinding a film is like trying to put toilet paper back on the inside of a roll.
It can be done but it is time consuming and it probably would work out better the way they handled it by just going to another showtime (and then passes).
@crabbyman6: Wow I had a problem with Lord of the Rings as well. They just plain stopped the movie right at the end credits. They did this because they we herding in showings for this movie. I was really sad about it because I am a big fan of movie scores and the music was fantastic. In fact it won the Oscar for best score that year.
After I left I asked for the manager. When he finally arrived I asked if my wife and I could go see the end in the theater that started 30 minutes later. He went away for a while and came back saying that they were going to stop the movie in the same spot. I asked for tickets so that I could see it later when the rush was over he said okay and then never showed-up again and we left.
PS: I forgot to add that the theater had no problem showing 15-20 minutes of trailers and ads before the movie.
Something similar happened to me When I went to see Spider-Man 3 midnight showing
About halfway though the film the movie flipped upside down and played in reverse . To be honest after seeing it correctly , I will say that the upside down reverse version was much better than what I saw at a later date .
Oh yeah after the movie was over we all got free a free ticket and free consessions gift certificates .
“Paramount has intentionally silenced bits of the soundtrack of ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ in order to deter and track piracy.”
Story: [www.boingboing.net]
I was a projectionist for 4 years, and I can say that it’s not really an easy process of “rewinding” the movie. It CAN be done, but it is a lengthy process and the staff shouldn’t have offered to do it. Basically, you have to cut the film to where you think it messed up, and spin it back inside the part of the film that hasn’t run its course yet. It’s only advisable at the beginning of a movie (and I mean like, maybe 12 seconds into it).
@Runik:
What happened was that the idiot projectionist that built your print put that reel on backwards, which will play upside-down, when he built the print. Its proof of ULTRA sloopy skills and you shouldn’t go to that theatre ever again.