Yesterday we started getting phone calls from Technicolor... "Did you ingest Bourne yet?" Yes... why is there a problem? "No, no. just checking. Have a nice day. " And then we get another call just like it an hour later. Later we learned Bourne was in trouble in digital theatres all over the country. Not in ours but in many digital theatre and not one problem in a 35mm house.
Here's a situation: Film Journal and Box Office are so thoroughly in bed with NATO and the distributors and manufacturers who buy all those CONGRATULATIONS TO JOE BLOW! ads which without those ads the publications cease to exist. So we will not read about problems with digital systems in our industry media leaders. Screentrade may do a better job but seriously: when have you read anything about any problems with digital systems?
As I have said in the recent past we like our new digital system very much thank you. We've had some glitches up to last night. On one screen a weird alligator/watermark image on the screen you can only see on white/ blue sky images. But we were working that problem out. It was being paid attention to by Sonic. Then I was watching To Rome With Love on another screen and the image stuttered like a high speed slide show. Okay... could not get it to do it again... but still unnerving.
Friday night: opening night of The Campaign. We start the show and it's in black and white. Trailers, show, the whole thing. We stop the show and tried everything before losing opening night shows. Right now we are trying a upgrade of software but this is what is exactly clear about digital cinema. This is a nascent innovative technology that is inherently unreliable due to the speed of development and the level of security we had with 35mm is gone. We have not lost an opening night in 35 MM in 18 years. Six weeks in we just lost one of our premier weekends. We're working on it but it is essentially a giant pile of electronic goo that is absolutely unknowable. The degree of reliability is so far... low and below acceptable. Having spent more than 190,000.00 we are less safe, less able to show a movie. I'll let you know how this glitch turns out and how many shows we lose.
Meanwhile: please join me in chronicling lost shows, nervous phone calls about how did the ingestion go? and any other problems with the roll out. Whatever manufacturers, integrators, installers, and NATO tell you it's unreliable and the test failures are being tested out in our theatres. And we pay for it.
Forums 
