TCM/Fathom 2018 (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

This showing is packed!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'm surprised (pleasantly) - I've only attended several Fathom events and there have never been more than a dozen people at any of them. And a dozen was for the busiest one...

I saw a 70mm print of Sound Of Music last month, so I'm probably set for that title for a while, but it was great to see it with an audience for the first time. I hope you have a similarly enjoyable show today Tino!

 

[PMF]

Fathom is promoting a 2 minute intermission for The Sound of Music.

2 minutes seems rather short; especially for the advanced seniors.

 

[PMF]

This showing is packed!

Such excellent news. Hopefully this experience will lead audiences to supporting other classic films.
Saw "South Pacific" in the same week of the IMAX "2001". Both were great, great experiences in their own right.
Thanks for the heads up, Tino; now I know to get there earlier than usual for tonight's show.
P.S. HTF is also one of my favorite things. After all, what's not to like?

 

[PMF]

I'm surprised (pleasantly) - I've only attended several Fathom events and there have never been more than a dozen people at any of them. And a dozen was for the busiest one...

I saw a 70mm print of Sound Of Music last month, so I'm probably set for that title for a while, but it was great to see it with an audience for the first time. I hope you have a similarly enjoyable show today Tino!

Josh, was your 70mm viewing of a restored print? And are you able to provide any insights at what we'll be seeing at Fathom?
Also, is it known if this unexpected "SoM" booking at Fathom a promotional indicator of a future UHD release?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I have no information regarding this Fathom presentation. The 70mm print I saw was struck in 2015 according to the information that the museum showing it provided.

 

[Wayne_j]

I'm back from the 2PM screening. Looked great but I wish they raised the volume some. It was strange seeing 2 70mm Rodgers and Hammerstein films within a month of each other presented in scope instead of 2.2:1. Audience was about half full. Half the audience missed the beginning of the 2nd half because they left for the 'intermission'.

 

[Tino]

I'm back from the 2PM screening. Looked great but I wish they raised the volume some. It was strange seeing 2 70mm Rodgers and Hammerstein films within a month of each other presented in scope instead of 2.2:1. Audience was about half full. Half the audience missed the beginning of the 2nd half because they left for the 'intermission'.

My screening was about 90% full. I thought it looked spectacular. Sound was fine.

Yeah that 2min intermission. Right. The audience was filing in 5 minutes after it restarted.

 

[bujaki]

@Tino: Did you have the overture, entr'acte and exit music? Did you hear that thunderous slap on the apron? What color was Maria's hair: blonde, red or teal? There have been numerous posts about these issues that must be addressed post haste! Thanks.

 

[Tino]

@Tino: Did you have the overture, entr'acte and exit music? Did you hear that thunderous slap on the apron? What color was Maria's hair: blonde, red or teal? There have been numerous posts about these issues that must be addressed post haste! Thanks.

Ha

No
Yes
No
No
Reddish blonde?

 

[LeoA]

Great movie

Only 4 others besides my mother and I at the 7PM showing in Watertown NY though. Got there a half hour early expecting a decent turnout, but there sadly was no need.

Two minutes? Start training now for the sprint-and-pee.

I didn't quite make it back in time from my free popcorn refill.

 

[PMF]

I agree with Wayne_j; the volume seemed a bit low.
To answer bujaki, there was no Overture (and didn't know that one existed) or Exit music (short of the credits).
The art of Roadshow presentations seems to be all but lost, as the Intermission went straight to the Entr'acte.
It's unknown to me if this SoM presentation had a 2K and 4K DCP option nation-wide; as I sensed my theater was in the former.
Is it that I am used to "The Sound of Music" at its current 50th anniversary transfer? Or am I looking for something more to exceed; both in its color palate and sound; than that which actually exists?
Overall, I wouldn't discourage anyone from going; as this is theatrically the best I've seen it in years.
In terms of the ratio? After the Intermission, the picture was slightly matted on all four sides. Not certain what that was about; but definitely not a deal breaker.

On a final note, I am encouraged to see that "The Sound of Music" was showcased again within a three year period, rather than our being caught in those 5-7 year cycles of waiting. With so many screens contained within one multi-plex, I still wish that these venues would further embrace it all by offering these classic titles to audiences for a full week. Sundays and Wednesdays are not at all like a Thursday, Friday and Saturday; so I wish they would give it a try. But, hey, the flip side of this all is that there are more classic titles being offered per year than ever before (per month, come to think of it). And that's the most encouraging step of all.

 

[Bob_S.]

I think there would be a larger turn out for some of these films if they did a little bit more advertising. I only knew about the LOTR showings from reading it here. Otherwise, I would have missed it and would have been rather pissed. We are going to see SOM Wed. at 7pm. Sunday had all the good seats taken. The Sun. 2pm showing only had the first 2 rows left!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think there's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on with attendance on these things:

-The screenings are often poorly attended, which limits the amount of money they can gross
-Because they don't take in a lot of money, there isn't a large budget for promotion/advertising
-Because there's limited advertising, people don't hear about them in time to make plans to attend
-Because they aren't well attended, Fathom can't justify renting out additional screens to add more showtimes and/or more show days

I think these screenings are kind of stuck in that cycle. Then you have people like me who have attended them, and found that the presentation quality can be poor, and that they can be shown on the smallest auditoriums in the theater, which make them less desirable to attend. Then you have other people like Jake, who recently reported that a Fathom ticket costs more than a standard ticket at his multiplex, which makes the selections less desirable to attend.

For all I know, maybe Fathom has crunched the numbers and determined that the cost of promoting these events would exceed the extra revenue that a larger audience could bring in. Maybe Fathom is able to get a good deal on renting out the screens on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but would be unable to get a similar deal for more popular weekdays.

I think in general, the public is uninterested in repertory screenings en masse in 2018. There are obviously always going to be exceptions to this, but in an era where any movie that Fathom shows is already widely available on both physical and streaming media, and viewable at home in high quality for less than a single ticket would cost, this is understandable to me.

I appreciate the effort to bring classic films back to theaters, but I think it's an uphill battle to attract an audience.

 

[Tino]

Are all Fathom showings TCM events?

The only ones I have attended are TCM sponsored and have all looked great ( Jaws, The Big Lebowski, The Sound Of Music).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think all TCM events are promoted through Fathom, but not all Fathom events are TCM.

The last one I saw was Star Trek II last year, and it wasn’t sponsored by TCM. The quality of the screening was very poor, of lower quality than the Blu-ray which had just been released that year. Picture quality was washed out and overly compressed, and the sound was anemic, if I’m remembering correctly. When I had bought the advance ticket, the theater had scheduled it for their largest auditorium. When I showed up on the day of the show, it had been moved into their smallest. So between that disappointment and then the poor quality that followed, I pretty much decided that I was done with Fathom.

They often run really great programs, but the idea of paying to see a film I love with poorer quality than what I already have at home doesn’t appeal to me.

 

[Tino]

I think all TCM events are promoted through Fathom, but not all Fathom events are TCM.

The last one I saw was Star Trek II last year, and it wasn’t sponsored by TCM. The quality of the screening was very poor, of lower quality than the Blu-ray which had just been released that year. Picture quality was washed out and overly compressed, and the sound was anemic, if I’m remembering correctly. When I had bought the advance ticket, the theater had scheduled it for their largest auditorium. When I showed up on the day of the show, it had been moved into their smallest. So between that disappointment and then the poor quality that followed, I pretty much decided that I was done with Fathom.

They often run really great programs, but the idea of paying to see a film I love with poorer quality than what I already have at home doesn’t appeal to me.

Stick to the TCM showings then.

 

[Todd Erwin]

I think all TCM events are promoted through Fathom, but not all Fathom events are TCM.

The last one I saw was Star Trek II last year, and it wasn’t sponsored by TCM. The quality of the screening was very poor, of lower quality than the Blu-ray which had just been released that year. Picture quality was washed out and overly compressed, and the sound was anemic, if I’m remembering correctly. When I had bought the advance ticket, the theater had scheduled it for their largest auditorium. When I showed up on the day of the show, it had been moved into their smallest. So between that disappointment and then the poor quality that followed, I pretty much decided that I was done with Fathom.

They often run really great programs, but the idea of paying to see a film I love with poorer quality than what I already have at home doesn’t appeal to me.

Back when I lived in civilization, I found the smaller, independent theaters that ran "Flashback Tuesdays" had better presentation quality, likely because they were renting a DCP from the studio/distributor directly, and not having to rely on Fathom's program feed with all of its promos and extra "features."

 

[Jake Lipson]

Then you have other people like Jake, who recently reported that a Fathom ticket costs more than a standard ticket at his multiplex, which makes the selections less desirable to attend.

As I have indicated before, this is normally the case. The standard ticket price for a Fathom screening of an old movie here is $13.59, which is $12.50+local applicable tax.

However, for the last two Fathom TCM films I went to, my Cinemark seems to have overridden them, since I paid standard matinee ticket prices of $7.61 each for both Sunset Boulevard and South Pacific. But they're not consistent. West Side Story in June, and The Sound of Music, were $13.59 each and I didn't go to them. Other theaters in my area, such as the AMC I don't go to anymore, had Sunset and South Pacific at the inflated Fathom pricing, so it does appear that my theater just elected to give a discount on them. I probably wouldn't have gone for $13.59.

As far as further outreach about these screnings, Fathom and TCM do a lot of direct marketing -- I've seen lots of ads for The Sound of Music on Facebook this week, for example, and I usually get about two or thee emails from them every time they have an event coming up. But I've already identified myself to them as being interested in their content, so I can't say if those Facebook ads are reaching people who don't already know about these events. They also screen ads almost every time I go to the movies early enough to see the preshow prior to the trailers, but there usually aren't a lot of people there during that.

Last year, Fathom presented Howl's Moving Castle as part of their Gibli Fest series. I love that movie and I hadn't seen it in theaters since its initial release in 2005, so in that case I went ahead and ponied up the extra money to see it for $13.58 (the price has gone up by a penny this year for some reason), although it's the exception and I don't always do that At that screening, there were maybe 10 people there. Then, last week, my arthouse (an independent theater which doesn't have a Fathom contract) showed Howl's Moving Castle as part of their rotation of "cult classics." At the arthouse, because it's an older movie, tickets were priced at $6 (or $5 for members.) Because I had already paid $13.58 to see it last year, of course I had no problem going and paying $5 to do it again, especially since the arthouse programmed it on their biggest screen. When I saw it at the arthouse on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, that screening was packed, I would guess 80% or more full in the largest auditorium.

I think this proves that there is an appetite for classic films on the big screen, but the way to do them is to price them accordingly with the reality that they are widely available on disc and shouldn't cost a premium in theaters. Fathom makes it difficult for me to justify going on a frequent basis when the cost of the ticket regularly matches or exceeds the cost of a Blu-ray for the same film. But I'd be happy to regularly pay $5 at my arthouse for older films.

Unfortunately, my arthouse usually only shows the cult classics at 10pm, which is too late for me -- the exception is when they have a Gibli title that is also appropriate for kids to watch, then they do morning screenings too, which is when I can go.

I'm more willing to pay Fathom prices if they are showing something that's new and exclusive and hasn't been released on Blu-ray yet -- for example, they've shown a few Broadway shows in recent years that were filmed for Fathom release, and those are usually around $20 a pop. I'll do those one time. But that's not something that's widely available on disc for cheap, so it's easier to justify the increased cot in those cases.

 

[PMF]

I wrote to Fathom concerning "The Sound of Music" with the question concerning 4K and 2K.

They were kind enough to respond and clarify:

"The file provided to the participating theaters was a 4K file. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if theaters played in 4K or 2K as theaters can place this event in any auditorium and projectors are not the same from auditorium to auditorium."

So, I guess its up to our own detective work to inquire with the theater that we elect to attend. Meanwhile, I hope to give it another shot for Wednesday's showing; as I believe that my Sunday auditorium had been projected in 2K and I would like to experience the next level to further my understandings of the varied posts and diagnostics.