Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Stupid Investment of the Week

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Operations » Ground Level » Stupid Investment of the Week (Page 2)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Author

Topic: Stupid Investment of the Week

Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 11-20-2008 09:07 AM

Like most all theatres (or at least ours) we never know what's playing on Friday until Monday afternoon. We did nothing more than our standard weekly newspaper advertising, website promotion and our weekly movie email list.

We regularly send in our "off-beat" promotions to the local weekly Entertainment magazines (the ones that promote movies, concerts, restaurants, etc.) to see if they might pick up a story about us. In the case above with Grease and Dirty Dancing they did.

Nashville Scene Article Link

quote:
Drive-In Double Feature: Grease & Dirty DancingBy Jim Ridley
Published on August 15, 2008 at 3:40am
Who wouldn’t drive 30 miles to see this once-in-a-lifetime pairing of classic guilty pleasures on a giant outdoor screen? Well, OK: Grease seems closer to unwatchable every time we watch it, with its cast of high schoolers who must've been held back about 20 grades, but the underrated Dirty Dancing remains a super soda-shop malt of a movie. (And even Grease has Stockard Channing's smokin' hot Rizzo, who hipped a generation of tweens to the glories of brunettes.) Watertown's wonderful Stardust Drive-In offers them on a double bill—which means you can watch John Travolta's big drive-in number at a real drive-in! OMFG! My head might explode! Best part: at the drive-in, you can dance. Have the time of your life...and nachos! Directions available at stardustdrivein.com; show begins at dusk.
Aug. 15-21; Sat., Aug. 16; Sun., Aug. 17, 2008

| IP: Logged

Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 08-15-2009 12:37 AM

Getting decent prints is the only issue with running rep, at least in larger markets. The trick is marketing -- you can't do what the chains do -- just rely on the marketing campaigns that the studios run, cause there aren't any. You have to do all the selling yourself. If you know what you are doing, rep can stand on its own two financial feet. In fact, we have found that there are plenty of people out there just itching to find alternative films that are not just the same 5 - 10 top grossing titles that are playing in every multiplex at the same time in every neighborhood. We have always done well playing older classics plus alternative stuff like independents and foreign titles. Of course, print availability and quality are the big bugaboo variables that are the question-marks in running a rep house. And it gets harder as years go by to get decent prints, at least from some of the studios.

With a chain as big as Regal, no reason they couldn't just pay to have new prints struck for them and then bicycle them around to their theatres which are running the Flashback series. It would only take one or two prints to circulate and make a good profit for them. Then again, this would all be contingent on how long a print passing thru the Regal gauntlet of booths would be able to last unscathed. It would only take one garbage booth to ruin their own prints.

| IP: Logged

Kenneth Wuepper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1026
From: Saginaw, MI, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 08-15-2009 06:42 AM

Frank,

I like your concept of buying your own prints to cycle through the circuit. Perhaps it is time for the rep theatres to unite and buy our own print and share the cost. If the print got trashed, we could certainly fine the culprit and get some results.

The problem would be that the film companies would book your print between your circuit showings and that is where it would get trashed.

KEN

| IP: Logged

John Wilson
Film God

Posts: 5438
From: Sydney, Australia.
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 08-18-2009 04:23 PM

If you're paying for your print yourselves, perhaps the distributor would allow you a window (say, one year) where your circuit would be the only one able to play that print. That has happened here several times. One of the outdoor cinemas paid for a new print of JAWS a while back and had it exclusively for the summer.

You'd get a sure year of untrashed print (hopefully) but all bets are off when that year expires and it can go anywhere.

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.