I mean, what the fuck! 15 bucks for tickets, 5 bucks for popcorn and half a FUCKING hour of previews and ads, a sanctimonious message about how pirating movies is illegal and a toll free number to dob your friends in, and TWO more trailers before the movie starts??
I WISH I was exagerating. The entire theatre was grumbling near the end of the neverending avalanche of sales pitches. When the don’t pirate movies ad came on some guy yelled “sorry!” and everyone cracked up.
Pissing off audiences with 30 minutes of ads is not going to make us sympathetic to any studio or theatre chain’s piracy woes.
Not to mention the idiocy of annoying a theater full of paying customers with an anti-pirating ad. That’s like berating someone about shoplifting while they’re at the register paying for their stuff. :smack:
But I like previews. The commercials we can do away with, I’ve overpaid as it is I don’t want them making more money off me. The previews, however, are part of the cool movie-going experience for me. Also, if not for the previews, the asses who come in late would be walking in front of me while the actual movie was running rather than walking in front of me during previews.
And I agree with the OP. Telling movie patrons “Don’t Pirate” is senseless as we’re the ones paying for overpriced tickets and *not *pirating. :mad:
Ah, but Cheesesteak, that’s where the pirating takes place. Guy pays his $10 to see the thing and whips out his handy-dandy camcorder. Then makes copies and sells 'em for $5 each.
(There might even be pirates in there who didn’t pay to get in. I know, perish the thought!)
I like previews too, but when the movie is supposed to start at 8:10 and there are still previews running at 8:30, that’s a bit much. I say show all the previews you want between shows, but start that movie at the time you say you are starting the movie. As for the people coming in late, how about not selling tickets after a showing starts?
What, and miss out on kids kicking my seat, stale popcorn drenched in butter-flavored motor oil, and the utter joy of hearing strangers converse? Perish the thought!
Yup, just like it’s a peculiar feature of most copy protection mechanisms that they seem to serve largely to piss off people who’ve already bought the bloody product. I remember one particularly bad game that had a code lookup sheet with strings you had to enter every time you played the game. That was bad enough, but to make the sheet impossible to photocopy they’d printed it all in the palest blue you could imagine, which instantly faded in the sunlight, meaning the game only worked about 1 time in 10 because the codes were unreadable. Oh, and if you got the code wrong three times, the game locked. LOCKED I tell you. Jesus. And the copyright warnings you have to sit through when you buy a DVD? Gnnghhhh!
dantheman, you’re right that the first round of piracy takes place in the cinema, but the pirates are hardly inconvenienced by the notices, are they? I imagine the numer of pirates who have a sudden change of heart when confronted by the FACT notice is relatively small. And given that the stoicism of the cinema-going public is legendary (how many threads do we have about people sitting through films with sociopaths, doing little more than tut?), I don’t see folks rushing to dob in the guy at the back…
Yeah, it probably doesn’t bother them in the least (the pirates, that is). But hey, that’s where the pirating is taking place, so I can’t say I blame the theater for putting their warnings there.
Most moviegoers, stoic or not, probably wouldn’t notice someone videotaping the movie. I mean, the theater’s dark and crowded, and all the guy has to do is put the camera between two seats, one would think.
Sadly, they’re in the process of testing this. You get some “first class” chair in the middle of the theater for like $18 bucks or something. I’ll see if I can dig up a link.
Watching some DVD’s recently, I found my self wondering, “I’m in Minnesota. How much do I really need to worry about Interpol getting on my case?”
I’ve always thought they could have an hour of previews as a scheduled thing, completely separate from the actual movie. When there are previews out things like Star Wars or LOTR, people would gladly go see previews.
The theater by me has “Director’s Hall”, where you get a roomier comfy seat, and assigned seats (it’s a separate theater). I don’t think it’s worth the extra price ($2 more per ticket), and I kind of enjoy watching the last minute arrivals get annoyed that there’s not 8 seats together (better than watching the damn commercials).
And given that the stoicism of the cinema-going public is legendary (how many threads do we have about people sitting through films with sociopaths, doing little more than tut?), I don’t see folks rushing to dob in the guy at the back…