Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Booking Films

This is topic Booking Films in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000107

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 06-23-1999, 03:10 PM:

I'm a gear-head. I do well at running and fixing machines & stuff like that. I only know a little bit about how films are actually booked for a theatre. I only know that 'corporate' books our films for us.

Since I also work at two other small places, I may need to know who to call, etc. to get films. I know there are catalogs. (New Yorker, Kino, Kit Parker, etc.) What I'm really interested in is starting a summer film fest either at the college I work for or at the local Warner Theatre.

I was wondering if I could get a print from somebody who collects them and call the dist. and ask for permission (and pay $$) to play the movie.

Anybody know anything??

------------------
K.Y.S.O.T.I.
Randy

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-23-1999, 03:28 PM:

You certainly can NOT use a collector's print and pay the studio the money. They will freak and give you all kinds of hell.

You can however book a film and let them send their beat up crappy print and just quietly let their print sit in the cans while you play a friend's collector print in it's place. I've heard of titles where the studio only had 16mm prints and the theater booked that and played a good condition 35mm collector's print.

As far as booking a repertory film yourself, try Swank. I don't know their number, but surely someone on the forum does.

Stay away from anything Kit Parker films distibutes as they have no idea how to take care of their films. Every film I've ever gotten from them (a lot, unfortunately) has been mutilated and completely unwatchable. When getting a replacement, they "personally inspected it and deemed it MINT" and yet there is black, green, yellow scratches, torn sprockets holes, a festival of splices, etc. You get the idea. Swank is pretty good though.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 06-23-1999, 03:51 PM:

Yeah, I've had a few run-ins w/ K.P. films.
We were showing a film (Karakter) and it was beat. It had major platter scratches. It looked like you were watching through a chain-link fence! :O

We called for a replacement and they sent one can to us and the other to some place in Cleveland. (I'm in Erie, PA) The other 1/2 had to be re-shipped on U.S.Air and I picked it up at the airport 45 min. before showtime.
I got it built with 10 min. to spare.

We had to get the video of the movie and set up the video proj. as a back up. I started the print and then waited about 2 min. before starting the video proj. (Leaving the lamp of the vid. proj. off) This way, if there was a meltdown, I could just go to video

Whomever had the print last, broke it down and just used masking tape to stick the heads and tails on, leaving stick-um all over the print. Not having any time to screen the print, I didn't find the stick-um until the print B/W'ed! It was only down for 3 minutes but the pain in the A$$ factor was high!

In the end, the quality of the second print was only slightly better than the first.

Don't these people have any clue? I heard that they have next to no storage space. They just send the prints from place to place and nobody at the company even sees them.

Anyhow, I hope to have either a Clint Eastwood (Spaghetti Western) theme or a Sci-Fi (Most influential in the Genre) theme.
I'm afraid some of those movies would be hard to come by. That's why I ask.

------------------
K.Y.S.O.T.I.
Randy

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-23-1999, 05:37 PM:

Where does the 35mm Swank film come from? I've only run Swank's 16mm prints, most of which were in quite decent condition, but I had thought that the 35mm titles were just shipped out of the regular places (ETS, Technicolor, etc.) and Swank just did the billing. Do they "electronically inspect" the 35mm prints that are booked through them, too? Criterion Pictures carries 16mm titles from various distributors that don't use Swank (much of the old Films, Incorporated library, in fact), and their 16mm prints have been quite good; I believe that they keep their own separate 35mm inventory, like FI did.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-23-1999, 08:23 PM:

The last I heard was the studios would give a few prints to Swank and they would handle everything from there. I know Paramount is doing that for sure.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 06-24-1999, 02:47 AM:

For non-profit & educational 35mm & 16mm exhibition, you'll probably go first to

Criterion Pictures http://www.criterionpic.com/

Swank Motion Pictures, Inc.
http://www.swank.com/

I think generally that they have a separate rate schedule for non-profit & educational exhibition, & something a little steeper for purely commercial exhibition.

So for your project, you might want to start by setting up something like a non-profit film society, & pay yourself a salary as projectionist, and maybe another as director of the society.

It's the way stuff is done in that non-profit world.

Also, for prints, you can also call the studios.

------------------
William Hooper <wjh@mindless.com>
Junk drawer: http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/theater/3622