Too dark!
 

We watched Master and Commander yesterday at the dollar theater. The projectors were turned so dim that it looked like the whole movie took place in the fog, or at night, or by candlelight. We both wound up with headaches from squinting.

It really sucked.

Something that I didn't expect was how difficult it is to read emotions when the picture is dimmed. When you have, say, a three-shot, you have to focus intently on each face individually. In normal movie viewing, you can take in all the faces at once.

Similarly, the fight scenes towards the end were incomprehensible. When the cuts are only 10 or 15 frames long, you can't make out what you're seeing before the next picture. We could make out that a bunch of people were fighting with swords, but the flow of the action baffled us. All we knew is that it suddenly stopped, and that the good guys won.

Complain to the manager. It's common practice for projectionists to dim the projector so that the bulb lasts longer. As a result, the picture is not nearly as bright as it should be - they still get our money and don't have to buy new bulbs as often.

It's really bad in films that use darkness to great effect. In those films, darkness isn't as imposing as what shows up AGAINST the darkness - and if the bulb's down low, you won't see it. It's worse with prints that have been run through a projector millions of times...

One reason I gave up on the dollar shows. Corners are cut everywhere - my DVD of Adaptation looked a lot better than the print I saw, and it had SURROUND SOUND too...

Re: Too dark!
 

I know exactly what you mean. I go to the dollar theater several times a month because my sister-in-law manages it, but sometimes it's downright annoying. The biggest example I can think of was 28 Days Later. There were a lot of parts that I didn't really know what happened in until I bought the DVD.