Hollywood ruining film prints on purpose (those red dots you're seeing) (2 Viewers)

[RodneyT]

Just a quick post after reading all the others.....

A few years ago i was one of those cinema-junkies who would go week in, week out to see all the latest blockbusters and smaller films just to get that "big screen" feeling. true, nothing beats a film in thunderous sound on a big cinema screen....

well, until i upgraded my own home theatre. I read an earlier post that made mention of the fact that nothing can compare with a cinema outing, not even the greatest home theatre in the world can compete with most of the multiplex chains getting around the place. But i disagree. And now, after going to the local 30 screen cinema earlier to see The Matrix Revolutions, i am even more inclined to stay at home and wait for the DVD version.

Fact 1: Two days after the release of Revolutions, the print that was used in our session already had a damaged audio track which resulted in 90% of the film being displayed in analogue instead of the more immersive digital track (I noticed only because the difference between the analogue and digital soundtracks was incredibly large)and the picture quality was nothing less than shocking. I noticed a fair degree of dirt and decay with the print already, and the overall presentation was substandard. I know how movies are supposed to look on a big screen. This didnt look anything like it should have.

Fact 2: After going to the movies every week for four years, and seeing the degeneration of print quality over that period, i made a decision to stay at home, where my own home theatre puts out better than average sound, and watch movies only on DVD. Of course, "event" films such as LOTR and Matrix, and hell, even Star Wars, warrant trundling along to the cinema and sitting with the rest of the sardines, but the majority of the stuff that comes onto our screens is hardly worth plonking down your hard earned for.

Fact 3: The DVD quality here in Australia of most films is superior to the local cinematic screening quality anyway. This makes my decision even easier.

Fact 4: Bootlegging gives money to people who dont make decisions about what movies are made, or even to those who make them. It gives money to drug dealers and seedy people like that. I would prefer to hand over my money to a studio that gives me a decent DVD transfer so that they can make more movies. Supporting pirates and bootleggers is just ripping the industry off. I wont do it.

Fact 5: If studios are indeed degrading the quality of their cinema prints to get at the pirates, then i will put my hand up to let them know that they have already lost one cinema patron, but gained a DVD fanatic. My home theatre is good enough to replace my cinema going experiences.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Pete Lee]

They were all over the theatrical showing of the Extended version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The one that's been out on DVD for a year now. In the Lothlorian section. On Galadrial's face. Cate Blanchett's face. Her face. Several times.

I just came from a screening of the extended version. I have to say, I only saw the dots once, in the Lothlorian section, but a split second before a cut to Cate Blanchett's face. It never appeared on her face though it is timed so close that it is easy to get the impression that it did. I never saw the dots anywhere else.

I also saw the "Return of the King" this past Thursday and I can say that the dots didn't appear anytime during the movie. I did see the movie at a special screening so it is possible the security measure may be added to theatrical prints but if anything, you would think that a print used at an screening before general release would be more likely to have the dots. So maybe it's a good sign.

 

[Robert Anthony]

This is what's surprising me:

...who needs trilogy tuesday when the theaters are running the extended editions of FOTR for this week and TTT the next week? Checking Fellowship out on like, Thursday, and then seeing Two Towers on the following Sunday sounds MUCH more preferable to spending an entire day inside a theater, starting at 1 in the afternoon and finishing at around 1 in the morning. I didn't know this was going to be happening--and I don't know if a lot of people did, either. Maybe the frenzy for Trilogy Tuesday wouldn't have been so fevered.

I love the movies, but I'd like to maintain circulation in my lower extremeties.

And this has got to be the most unrelentingly retarded decision a studio has made--Fellowship Extended made it's DEBUT on home video--who the hell is going to bootleg the theatrical print?

Do studios even decide if movies get printed or not or is it just a totally automated thing anymore? Do they just send the print off and the duplicators just automatically stick those dots on there, regardless of what the film or it's audience is?

I can't honestly imagine that New Line or the MPAA thinks they're REALLY going to catch people pirating a movie that's already in the digital realm.

 

[Pete Lee]

And this has got to be the most unrelentingly retarded decision a studio has made--Fellowship Extended made it's DEBUT on home video--who the hell is going to bootleg the theatrical print?

Logic doesn't stand a shot in the face of the hysteria gripping the MPAA and the studios. For example, the DVD screening ban -which has just been put on hold by a judge, hooray! - even applied to movies that had been released on DVD already. So even though the pirates can buy the movie DVD at Wal-Mart, the studios said you couldn't send out the DVD to the voters. Of course. There are some pirates who are too cheap to buy the DVD (sarcasm here).

 

[Robert Anthony]

Yeah, I know--I think I touch on that in the article I mentioned eariler in this thread--its' just that this version of the movie actually DEBUTED on home video. Banning screeners of movies already on DVD is very stupid, yes, but trying to stop bootlegging for home consumption on a movie that was edited, post produced and packaged and marketed strictly FOR HOME CONSUMPTION is just--it boggles my mind.

"We can't let the Extended Edition get out on video while it's still in theaters!"
"BUT YOU RELEASED IT ON VIDEO LAST YEAR."
"Oh YEAH? Well why don't you take your pro-thief agenda to Iraq with the rest of the communists! JOE! Dot that sumbitch up!"

Yeee-haaaa.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I saw FOTR:EE today, and there's only 1 reel that had all of the MPAA dots, and it's the reel with Galadriel in the Lothlorian forest sequence. The dots show up 10-11 times during that lone reel. The reel is used because there's plenty of brightness/whiteness on screen to make out the red dots which aren't obscured by other darker colors.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Fellowship Extended made it's DEBUT on home video--who the hell is going to bootleg the theatrical print?

"Sir, we've found out that millions of people were able to obtain a pirated copy before the release date. The good news is we were able to catch them."

"So the dots worked"

"Well no, the copy was made before the dots."

"How'd you catch them then?"

"Actually sir, its you. We found your signed order to release millions of copies to DVD and ship them to the street for sale. You'll have to come with me you dirty pirate."

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

"Actually sir, its you. We found your signed order to release millions of copies to DVD and ship them to the street for sale. You'll have to come with me you dirty pirate."

ROTFL

 

[Vickie_M]

Do studios even decide if movies get printed or not or is it just a totally automated thing anymore? Do they just send the print off and the duplicators just automatically stick those dots on there, regardless of what the film or it's audience is?

I'd like to know details like this too. All the movie sites have been frustratingly silent on this issue. I really would like to hear some directors speaking out about their movies being messed with. Ebert's "Answer Man" column addressed the dots this week again, but the screener ban and awards season have seemed to be the paramount issues elsewhere.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Crap codes -- excuse me, cap codes -- have enraged a lot of Answer Man correspondents. Will Sparks of Charlottesville, Va., writes: "I saw 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' yesterday and was disgusted by the number of times that I saw those hideous dots during the film, especially during the chase scene around Cape Horn. Do the studios think we're too dumb not to see them?"

Why are the dots so big and visible? Why not do something subtle and subliminal? Because the dots are intended to identify prints that have been pirated by analog means -- i.e., by being videotaped off a screen. Hollywood is in a paranoid seizure about piracy right now, spending a fortune on security guards who body-search movie critics while the real pirates steal from within the system.

 

[Qui-Gon John]

but superior in that I can have a better sense of what people are talking about when they talk about awards chances for movies and actors.

Sorry, but I could care less about the 'awards', they're a frickin' scam anyways. The Oscars are the worst, it's all a Hollywood version of "the good ole boys" mentality. I prefer to wait for most movies and view them at home, for all the various reasons mentioned and now for these stupid dot coding. Actually, once you get a few months behind the theatrical releases, every week there is new stuff to see, just that your whole cycle is behind the theaters by a few months or so.

 

[Vickie_M]

Sorry, but I could care less about the 'awards', they're a frickin' scam anyways. The Oscars are the worst, it's all a Hollywood version of "the good ole boys" mentatlity.

Well, no, they're not a "scam", but it's very common for people who don't pay attention to the awards season to have a very shallow view of it all (that's not meant as a put-down). It's a lot more complicated than that. At least you didn't say "the Oscars are a popularity contest!"

What the awards season does best, usually, is bring attention to smaller films that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. That's one of the main concerns about the "screener ban" which did stem from a good old boys mentality. This isn't the thread to go into either issue though.

 

[Krystian C]

First, they ARE degrading the quality of their cinema prints, at least in the United States. I haven't heard of these dots elsewhere.

I saw them for the first time during Kill Bill up here in Canada. Didn't notice them in Revolutions. Hopefully ROTK will not be too bad. Fingers crossed.

 

[Phil Florian]

Thanks for all the information. I consider myself the lucky one, then, and will hopefully not notice them in my viewing of ROTK next week!

"Phil, you want to send Seth $10 today".

(frantically searches for his address)


Phil

 

[Seth Paxton]

Being serious for a second Phil, you really are lucky at this point. Sooner or later you will notice, and once you do it will bug you just like people flip out on the details of their home theater setup once they start to notice imperfections.


Tying this in with cinema history, studios used to steal from each other all the time between in the 1895-1915 era. To protect their material different studios would mark their prints, though the method was different than intentional marring. Instead a studio would make a critical part of the film a marker that the film originated with them. For example, a logo for a business in the film that would be on a sign or the wall during a scene. Not out of place, but more like using the studio logo AS the fictional company's logo.

Or in other cases their logo might just be a artistic pattern in the woodwork, etc. One huge benefit to this was that they ensured that either the film would be destroyed if the scenes with their logo were removed (critical scenes were marked) or that their logo had to be kept in the film.

I'm not really sure why CAPS could follow something more like this. Intragrating the image with the coding rather than trampling all over it. After all, the point is to HIDE the markers so that the bootleggers can't do anything about it, but visible and unique enough for someone trying to identify the source to recognize it.

But WTF do I know, right? It's not like film history is common knowledge... :frowning:

 

[Jeff_HR]

many films already lose money

That's probably because the films are not compelling enough to interest the public.

As for the dots, well I have not seen a film in the theatre since "The Sum of All Fears", if this is the wave of the future for viewing films in the theatre then I will not be going again. I have more than enough movies in my library of Tapes, LDs, & DVDs that I don't need to go to the theatre. And besides, I think most films being released these days are junk that I don't wish to spend my hard earned $$$ on.

 

[Kami]

I saw a screening of ROTK last night and I'm sorry to say it has the dots as well. They were short lived and only appeared 2 or 3 times that I could see (and I have a good eye for them I think). Definitely not "Master and Commander" type dots but I did see them.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

I'm with you, Vickie. After ROTK I'm not going to the theater again until they stop with the intentional defacement of prints. Screw Jack Valenti!

 

[ChipPa]

I believe they are doing it to force the theater chains to convert to digital projection. I'll bet that the digital copies will not have these dots at all. They are not "needed".

It is my understanding that Seattle's Cinerama is a digital theater. If that is the case, then I don't think this is true. I saw Master and Commander and recently the FOTR:EE there and both had the blatant dots. It took me out of the movie in both occasions. In fact, I think I will email my beloved Cinerama to voice my opinion about this now (nicely of course).

 

[Jason Whyte]

"It is my understanding that Seattle's Cinerama is a digital theater."

They have DLP installation but Master and Commander and the Lord of the Rings releases there are 35mm.

Jason