Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: shorts

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 09-15-2002, 05:27 PM:

For those who run shorts before the feature film: what do you run? do you stick with cartoons or are there other good sources for shorts which are generally appealing? where do you book shorts, now that Kit Parker is gone? do you advertise the short title or other information, or just the feature title (maybe with a notation about "short shown before every feature")? what comments (positive or negative) have you heard from customers about the practice? how often do you change the short?

I'm trying to convince a theatre owner who is currently showing first-run art-house/crossover product to start running shorts. We're running a Droopy Dog short (nice IB Tech print!) this weekend and so far haven't seen much reaction from the customers, which is unfortunate since this is sort of a trial to see if the idea "works" in this market.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-15-2002, 05:46 PM:

Try booking classic Warner Bros. cartoons. Droopy Dog? No wonder you're not getting a reaction. Get some Bugs, Yosemite, Road Runner, Foghorn or that singing frog in there.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 09-15-2002, 05:54 PM:

I just don't think the Merry Melodies cartoons are very funny anymore for adults. At the drive-in, the kiddies may like when the coyote gets hit with a boulder, but the toons are just not topical for adults anymore. Depending on the product being run, you may need to find a source for more modern fare. In the early 1990s, a Cincinnati arthouse would run "B" movies at midnight on the weekends preceeded by a cartoon snipped from an animation festival print they bought. I specifically remember being introduced to Ren & Stimpy at that theater.

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 09-15-2002, 06:02 PM:

We ran a short on a film a while back. The contributing factor was that the feature film’s editor directed the short. We advertised that there would be a short and we announced it in the box office. But every day when the short would start, some idiot would invariably come out the box office and complain that we had the wrong film on.

Conversely we did very well on the Oscar Shorts program that contained the entire Oscar nominated live action and animated short features.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-15-2002, 06:23 PM:

We have been off the screen for over a year at Brooklyn Center Cinema except for CinEvent and sneak previews, so I haven't been booking shorts for some time. But when we were running a regular schedule, we got WB cartoons from Kit Parker and now I would imagine WB will book them for you. And Brad is right -- when that WB logo hits the screen and the instantaneously recognized WB cartoon logo music plays, we ALWAYS got applause and hooting and hollering, even from the shows mostly comprised of senior citizens.

We also hosted the Student Academy Awards and the ones I thought would be good for our audience, I would make note of the filmmaker and contact them later to book their short. About 2/3rds were 16mm releases and the rest 35mm. Today there probably will be a lot of video-only entries....patooie.

Used to be that if some good 16mm titles were available, you could avoid all the leg and paper work of approaching individual filmmakers and simply book the yearly compilation of the winners that the Academy made available. Unfortunately, and much to my dismay, the Academy no longer makes this compilation available in 16mm, but only on video. Kodak is a cosponsor and I say a curse on both their houses for abandoning film as the medium of choice to make these films available.

Yes, release the video if you must, so that these films can be seen by more people (evidently more have video projectors now than motion picture projectors), but at least strike a few 16mm prints for theatres that still run film. Lots of art houses have 16mm capabilities and now we cannot show these cream-of-the-crop student offerings.

Eastman Kodak should be ashamed of pulling out of 16mm for this prestigious aspect of the Academy's mission. How expensive could a few 16mm prints cost that Kodak as a sponsor couldn't cover that expense? In fact, I always wondered why EK didn't make a few 35mm prints of the winning films that could be circulated around the art house circuit, perhaps even getting a few chains on board to include them in their programming. Same with the yearly grown-up Academy Award short subjects. You would think an organization like AMPAS could cover the cost of making the nominated shorts available to art theatres at a reasonable cost so that the public would actually get a chance to see these supposedly high quality award-winning films.

Depending on how ambitious you want to be with this, you could try to attend film festivals wherever they are close enough to you and evaluate the short subject entries. When you see any that you think will work for your audiences, get the filmmaker's information. Usually they are flattered, happy and thus eager to let theatres run their work.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 09-15-2002, 09:39 PM:

Lately, we've been booking shorts from Apollo Cinema, and in general we've been happy with them. They're the same folks who did the Oscar shorts, and they have a pretty good set of 35mm shorts at reasonable prices.

Here at MIT, we basically show 2 films/weekend, and we assign a given short to two movies over the course of a term, and run them that way. So if you come to both movies in one weekend, you don't get stuck seeing the same short.

Our audience opinion is extremely variable. Some really like shorts, others dislike them, and others get annoyed when they're more than 5 minutes. There are a lot of different opinions. Of course, part of it is cultural (as is a lot of stuff around here), and we'd gotten out of the habit of doing shorts for quite a while until we resumed last Spring.

As for advertising, well, again, we're a special case, but we advertise the shorts on our web page and our weekly email, but they're not well-publicized on our term calendar or weekly posters. I think this is perhaps less a conscious decision and some lameness at work.

Crowd dynamics are weird. For instance, when we showed The Accountant (long) last term, it was pretty much uniformly disliked by females and liked by males.

Anyhow, you should feel free to come by and check out our shorts some time, Scott.

--jhawk

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 09-16-2002, 12:41 AM:

I think the short is essential to position a rep or specialty theater's show to the audience as being theatrical, different from slapping a tape or DVD in, & of a different character than just trailers & feature at the first run houses. I think you'll find that even if there's no specific, immediately observable reaction it will be a big part of the magnet for repeat customers.

We never advertised the shorts individually, except with "What's Opera Doc" which we tipped via fax with awards info, etc. to the local classical radio station & they talked it up for a week at a level like they have for a week when an opera is opening.

I think you should put up the name of the short in any print advertising where there's room, but understand that the name draw may be insignificant as opposed to the effect of instilling the perception that the particular show & house are something more than usual; one line is enough - 'Also, MGM cartoon "Dawgs Experimenting Dangerously With Gravity" !' I think an audience enjoys having the 'extra', & even if they didn't particularly care for this one, it doesn't poison their minds against shorts. They take each one on a "Well I liked that one" or "I didn't particularly care for that one" basis.

The Droopy Dog cartoons, like Road Runner cartoons, were of extremely good quality early on, just brilliant (they were MGM cartoons directed by Tex Avery). Some of the later ones are lame, formulaic tired & unispired; plus, women (a large part of rep audiences) are the least fond of physical humor without strong character personality, etc. I'd just plug the studio & title, much like the original exploitation materials often did (except for Bugs Bunny & other big 'stars').

Posted by Jeff Logan (Member # 1163) on 09-17-2002, 12:43 PM:

We've experimented with running cartoons and/or 3 Stooge comedies at various times with appropriate features. The one thing we learned is that you MUST advertise them. Adiing a simple line like "PLUS! Special Droopy Dog Cartoon!" works well. This should go into your newspaper ad, website, and somewhere on the front of the theatre, snipe the 1-sheet or whatever. This makes it become a bonus in the public's mind. Otherwise, modern audiences don't remember or weren't around in the good old days of always getting cartoons and short subjects. When they see a short come on, they think it might be a subtle advertisement or "infomercial." Some patrons become irate. They think they're getting a commerical rammed down their throat and/or think their time is too valuable to waste on this unwanted, surprise filler. Advertising the short in the ads and at the front of the theatre, usually changes this perception.
If you still get a few complainers, don't let them deter you from giving the 99% of patrons who appreciate the short a value added bonus for attending your theatre.