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How do most of you receive your prints (taxi, truck), when (Wednesday night), time (7ish) and how much does it cost? Do you pay right there?

How do you pay the distributor? When do you pay the distributor?

Thx!

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"Would you like fries with that?"

We get non-circuited prints either by airborne or film service, depending on film company--companies who work thru Technicolor are shipped by airborne at $18.11 per print in and $18.11 per print out. Technicolor uses sky courier, a division of airborne for circuited prints--at that time we usually get a cab delivering/picking up (closest cab/airport is 2 1/2 hours away--hate to see those charges, as we still pay the same as above)

The companies not working thru airborne use ets and they in turn use film service, which costs me $74 for dropping or picking, no matter how many prints, in a week---but being single screens not often too many prints, so that is most expensive to me--I dread having Paramount, Fox, New Line, or Warner Bros prints because of the $74. I did hear some scuttle about Warner moving to technicolor--did anyone else?

I haven't heard that rumor, but I hope it is true and wish the other studios would switch over to Technicolor because of the cost factor, even though I pay considerably less than wimovieman for my ETS prints ($32 each way). The people at my ETS depot are really nice folks and I wouldn't want to see them lose their jobs though. I have had several prints circuited via taxi cab from Reno which is at least three hours away!

My prints usually arrive on Wednesday morning via a local delivery service contracted by Airborne and the ETS delivery guy. All parties send out bills. I pay the studios immediately after the last show of my run or weekly--whatever they want. Occasionally I have to pay an advance, but fortunately for the most part that is a thing of the past.

Technicolor does have problems, but ETS is not exempt from them. Technicolor has people on staff 24/7. ETS closes at 4:30 p.m. here and is closed on weekends--so they are generally closed whenever a problem arises. Technicolor can also describe or fax over head and tail frame info where ETS generally cannot. Because I often get prints later in the run, I have to use that service frequently as some moronic projectionists like to cut off the identifying frames, and/or attach the wrong heads and tails to the reels, or return one reel tails up with the head attached to the tail--which is very irratating.

Do you send them a report with attendance figures, passes redeemed etc. and do you pay by credit card, or Fed Ex cash or cheque?

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"Would you like fries with that?"

In the four plus years since ETS took over in my area - Philadelphia - I can say that I have almost never had a bad print from the local depot ETS. I would estimate that this was nearly 100 SECOND RUN prints and all good. During the same time I have had nearly 100 prints from Technicolor and nearly 80% of them have a signicant problem of one sort or another.

God help the second runs if Technicolor puts ETS out of business! (God help everyone - you don't honestly think that Technicolor would increase its staff or improve its service while handling twice as many prints. And we all know what happens to price and service when you have a monopoly)

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Where you stand on an issue depends upon where you sit!

[This message has been edited by muviebuf (edited December 03, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by muviebuf (edited December 03, 2002).]

We never pay any shipping costs or fees on
the prints we get here. That cost is all handled by the client. We have prints coming
and going, every day here.

Film Companies used to be Net 30, which means they want a check in hand no later than 30 days after the box office reports date. Since you fax the box office report out each week after closing the week on Thursday night, they want to be paid 30 days from that Thursday. Some film companies are changing to Net 14, which means they want to be paid no later than 14 days after that box office report.

We set up our business to always pay Net 14.

The Box-Office Report shows all tickets sold in each category, all passes admitted, and sometimes all refunds. Unless a particular category is off the film companies never comment on the categories. They just want to be paid based on the gross. The film companies do not bill unless you are very late in paying. The other thing is to keep very good records because film companies will lose your box office reports from time to time and ask for you to send them again.

So we send out checks each and every week. A movie theatre is a great way to redistribute wealth. It’s just not a great way to become wealthy.

The money comes in and the money goes out. One just hopes some sticks.

Large--I just had to comment on film companies losing B O reports---I just faxed a report for the third time to Disney that was run in Oct--plus one was mailed--4 reports for 1 play week!

Lost BO reports! Oh,YES. I am so sick of resending reports. Buena Vista does seem to be the worst at losing them.

Maybe they're just checking to see if the numbers change.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services
Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Telephone: 585-477-5325 Cell: 585-781-4036 Fax: 585-722-7243
E-Mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

John---that was a good statement--just reminds me of the pre-computer,copy machine days in my little circuit (about 4 years ago) now thanks to Mr Gates and Excel--everyone is the same, prior I had to hand write each copy and there COULD have been mistakes

I have always thought that re-sending your box office statement would be a service performed by your booker as long as you had sent your boxoffice to the booker. Alas, it seems not. I get those same requests to send my box report to the booker so that they can in turn forward it to BV. They both act as though they have never received it before. I find this frustrating as I will often receive a billing statement for that same 'missing' week in the same envelope. Since I fax my box report every single night to my booker instead of calling in the numbers I wonder where they got the numbers to prepare my billing statement. Hmmm do you suppose they received my box report? Where is it then? Do you suppose they could re- send it to BV themselves without making me refax it to them so they can forward it BV? Apparently not. What an insane business!

And I thought that I was the only one that constantly had to resend box office statements a 2nd or 3rd time. In my case Sony is the worst culprit. I really don't understand how one company can lose so many statements. Now that we have to send statements to one address and payments to another it is even worse. Back in the good old days (not even 10 years ago) everything went to the same address as Universal and New Line still do. But even then they would lose the statements. I would always ask them: "Did you recieve my payment?", and when they answered yes I would say: "well the check was stapled to the box office statement so you had to recieve it, what did you do with it?" They never could explain what they did with it.

As a booker myself, I keep a copy of all my clients B.O. statements, and the distributors always call me when they are missing one, and then I fax another copy to them. My clients never know that this constantly happens.

I still send all my box office statements with my checks to whatever address the checks are supposed to go and haven't heard any complaints. Does anyone still use those labels that DreamWorks sent out after 9/11 last year?

Dreamworks sent me a real nasty letter about 2 months ago threatening almost bodily harm if I did not send checks to one address and BO reports to the other---prior to that letter I was sending everything to 1 address.