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And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

~Manny.

I got the AFI trailer from a collector among some older trailers he was selling, which is not much help, but I would imagine if you contacted the AFI, you might be able to purchase it from them or surely they would know how it was distributed.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but AMPAS puts out a yearly list of the short subjects and in the past offered a reel for that year's nominated shorts on 16mm. They discontinued the 16mm reel but now offer it on video (ugh). Most of these quality shorts don't have distributors, but for the art house that wants to do some grunt work, you can get some good results by contacting the filmmakers directly. They usually have prints that they circulate and most times they are overjoyed that a real theater wants to play their work. The down side is, that only a handful of this material is available on 35mm; most is on 16mm. Which is why it is always nice to have an Eastman 25B in the booth.

The titles so far have been:

Think More, Use Less

Health & Environment

Hidden City

Neighbors, Speak &
Water Planet

Mother

Power of One

Connections

Wonderful World

When I was a kid hanging out in the theatre that my late father managed I remember the Canadian national anthem being played at the end of the performance. For a while we even played God Save the Queen.

I haven't seen an anthem played in a cinema for 20 yrs. Hearing that some of you do play it in your houses I wonder why. Is a cinema a fitting venue for that, or for that matter is a baseball or hockey game?

Anyway , that's my rant.

It proved impossible to obtain a (copyright cleared) recording of the UK national anthem on its own, and in the end we had to buy a CD box set of all the world's anthems just for that one 2-minute track.

Looking through the lyrics of some of the others was quite fun, though - especially the anthems of some of the African dictatorships, most of which were about praising the glorious <insert name here>...

That's pretty neat stuff there. I've sent in a request for the Beta tape. I love running stuff like that.

Can anybody in Los Angeles tell me if the LA Times Calendar Section still runs those trailers?

Let's see...the series included...

Special Effects (the guy in the coal mine)
Foley Artist (the woman doing footsteps editing)
Aerial Stunt ("the physics are right here!")
Gloria Estefan in Concert
First Day (the new gaffer looking for a "spinner," which is just a coffee stirrer)

...any others?

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And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

--jhawk

Thanks for that phone number. The website made no mention of 35mm film (just videotape formats).

I'm going to call them to place an order tomorrow.

What exactly did you get in that variety pack. I've got 20 screens, so I'd like to have an idea of what to ask for in order to cover them all.

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And, hey! Let's be careful out there.

As I said, Kodak donated the film for producing and distributing the environmental trailers, so 35mm prints definitely were made. I'm sure the ECO group would welcome theatres wanting to play 35mm prints. The videos provide a way of previewing the content, but don't do justice to the high production values in the film prints.

We received 3 Spirit of America trailers and were told to play them in some of our smaller houses. No time frame was given. I played them for about 2 weeks. Eventually we lost the movies they were on, and I never bothered to place them anywhere else. I think I have one left. Anyone who wants it, it's yours. Let me just check to make sure we don't have to play it anymore. BTW, it's Flat.

A well-done PSA can hold some of the same value as a good short. Since I haven't actually seen these yet, I can't comment from personal experience in this case, but if the audience is amused or inspired to think in interesting ways, that's probably good enough.

Well produced PSAs are also very much applauded and, as I said, produce a very positive image for the theatre. The PSAs from One Earth are exceptional works with spectacular production values and IMHO, are as much Academy Award material as any of the other shorts that win those awards. WHY WE ARE HERE and MOTHER are outstanding, compelling pieces of filmmaking. We are happy to put them on the screen, and the audiences reaction is always postive -- many times they get applause.

I may have told this story before, but once a patron complained that we wasted her time with all the "junk" we showed before the feature. That junk as she called it took hard work to obtain and book and was part of our whole presentation. I pointed out to her that all of our ads and press material make it a point of saying that we have programmed preshow music, and then we show cartoons and award-winning shorts before our feature films. We even give the starting time of the feature in addition to the starting time of the entire show. Then I told the box office people to memorize her face and never ever let her in our theatre again. My co-director told me we couldn't legally do that. How unfortunate.

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