From time to time I get called in to fix someone else's mistakes. The latest case involves 3 different parties that worked on the theater to create this particular set of issues. It started off with an AV dealer who is know for sub standard work and a small local theater interior start up with little or no experience. The third party is another small local theater interior company with some experience. The story as I got it from the client is that the AV dealer and first interior company did some things which left the room looking like a Hodge Podge of colors that did not match, very plain, a carpeting that was not the one selected and a ridiculously deep seating platform in a very shallow room. The platform had to be cut into at the sides to slide the seating back in order to have more that 5' of distance from a 104" diagonal screen.
By the time I visited the room, the clients list of complaints was very long. Some of the changes made by the second interior person did seem to help the look of the room some what but not the functionality. The client has over 1,000 DVD's and wanted access in the proscenium as well as the AV gear. Where the first person made MDF black shelving units which allowed many discs to be placed in it, you could not see where any single title was so interior person #2 added slide out holders and to finish the front where it was left completely open added a sliding curtain. The problem that remained is that though somewhat hidden the access to the discs was nearly impossible to deal with and the AV gear on the left side was slid into the shelves with some components on their sides to get everything or almost everything in place. One of the components which was the device that allows for storage and access to some discs was hidden behind a built out piece of furniture under the screen along with the 2 subs and center channel speaker. This piece of furniture weights about 80 Lbs and was not designed to have any reasonable access. So the bottom line with the proscenium was no real access to anything, made of substandard materials, cumbersome to work with in any way and looked like an amateur did the work.
The second interior person tried to make the room look better by purchasing a bunch of different pressed wood elements and painting them gold and applying them to the soffit, columns and ceiling. It caused the room to look like it was designed by Kmart. They also replaced several panels on the curved rear wall but the new panels were very short which made it look like they ran out of materials. At the end of the day, anyone walking into the room could see that almost nothing matched. The walls and soffit are a mauve with dusty blue carpet, tan seats, dark blue crown, brown wood columns and panel frames, tan and burgundy fabric in the frames, black front with some wood elements at the bottom, a black ceiling and little gold elements all over the soffit and ceiling.
What the client wants now is for all of the equipment to be placed into a proper rack with access and has agreed to move the discs to a storage unit because they will now purchase a much better disc management system designed to burn the discs and then play at will. They want the room to have the gold appliqués removed and the entire room repainted. The proscenium will be replaced with one which is designed to be functional and more elegant. They want a functioning motorized curtain instead of the curtain panels which are designed to be pulled out of the way to access items. They want the short panels replaced with proper sized panels.
The sad thing is that with the money the client has already spent doing the interior and then doing things to fix the first persons work, they still have a Kmart look and have to add 10's of thousands of dollars to get it to the place that they wanted to begin with. It's hard for clients to know who the real professionals are as there is no accreditation for this line of work but there should be!
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