Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: What have your experiences been with free admisison movies

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 08-08-2013, 02:10 PM:

We're just wrapping up our second summer of a series of free admission kids movies. This year we had a slate of 10 movies - all animated movies from the past 3-4 years.

We advertised for the doors opening at 9:00am with the show starting by 10:00am, but we start each auditorium as it fills - usually the first starts about 9:30. Then we wind up starting the last around 10:15am.

During these shows we offered a fun pack for $4.00 ($1.00 off the normal price) but with soda only and no butter. If they wanted Icee it was our normal price of $5.50 ($0.50 upcharge for Icee).

A few things we've found is that we seem to have a lot of people who show up late. We advertise the show starting by 10:00am, but the bulk of the people show up between 9:45am and 10:15am. We also find that filling the earlier auditoriums becomes a challenge because people know we'll open more. People will either wait in the lobby until we open the next auditorium, or they will take a seat and then move to the next auditorium. Almost every week I'll find the earlier auditoriums wind up with 20-30 people less than we had when we opened the next.

We have made a point of thanking people for stopping at the snack bar because it supports the free movies. Our per capita averages $3.50-3.75. We're averaging ~550 people each week.

As far as movie selection, we're finding that a popular movie does not translate to the most popular kids shows. This year our most popular was Escape from Planet Earth. Other movies were The Lorax, Despicable Me, Rio, Ice Age 4, Madagascar 3, The Smurfs, Rise of the Guardians, Hotel Transylvania, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Between last year and this year, our most popular movie was The Lorax last year, but we played it about a week before it came out on DVD.

I'm just curious to hear thoughts and experiences from others who have run free shows/series. Including what movies were the most popular.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-08-2013, 02:51 PM:

I used to do a free show every year on a Saturday around the first part of December for Santa Claus day. Santa would be here at the end of each show to hand out candy canes and talk to the kids as they left. The local Chamber of Commerce paid for the film rental cost and provided Santa and the candy canes.

For the first two years after I first opened the theatre, I had two free admission shows each year, at 1pm and 3pm. But then the crowds got bigger and two shows weren't enough any more; I started having three shows, 11am, 1pm and 3pm.

This continued up just that way until 2010, but over the course of time the crowds started getting less again and I went back to having just two shows in 2009 and 2010.

In 2011 the Chamber didn't want to sponsor the free movie any more, so a local real estate agency paid for the film rental, put a sign in my lobby while the shows were on, and the agents shook paw with everyone on the way out after the show. The Chamber still provided Santa and the candy canes. However, once again the crowds were less than ever before and I could actually have done it all with one show instead of two.

Last Christmas nobody from the Chamber or anywhere else bothered to ask about having a show for Santa, and to my surprise none of my customers or anyone else asked me about it either. So there was no free show in 2012, and I don't think anyone noticed. I guess that means I've played my last free show for Santa. Which doesn't really bother me since it was always a tremendous pile of work for very little gain anyway; I really did it for the "nice guy" factor.

The biggest mistake that I made doing this was the first year when I gave away free popcorn. NEVER AGAIN will I give away free popcorn. People took it just because it was free, of course, and after the shows I was cleaning up popcorn with a snow shovel. Literally. I can't remember how many garbage bags I filled when shovelling popcorn, but it was more than just a few.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-08-2013, 05:33 PM:

We had the exact same experience with free popcorn a long time ago, except it was worse: The sponsors wanted to have unlimited free popcorn AND soda. We just kept count of the number of cups we used and billed them accordingly. We made great money but I never saw such a mess in my whole life. We vowed that day to NEVER do that again.

As for free shows.....we've had at least one every year during the Christmas season. We always have at least two matinees, but only one is free -- the other one is a dollar a seat usually.

The crowds for these types of shows have been dwindling here, too. I couldn't figure out why, figuring nobody would want to turn down a free show....but then last summer, we were visiting some relatives and I overheard my nephew asking his daughter, "What do you want to watch? Toy Story, Brave, Wall-E, Despicable Me, Ice Age, etc.?" I thought, THAT's why the crowds are disappearing...they have a huge variety at home to watch for free, so why haul a two-year-old to the movie theater to watch one movie she doesn't even get to pick herself?

So I guess we need to play up the angle of "Get the kids out of the house, Mom!" But not quite sure how to do that effectively.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 08-08-2013, 05:47 PM:

So is is not longer "free movies for kids." It is "free time for Mom, take the kids away to the movies, Dad" Louis

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 08-09-2013, 08:56 AM:

We've been doing $1 children's matinees for 30 years, so practically free. We also have 50¢ soda (9oz) and popcorn (2E box). We cater mostly to daycares. Shows are Thus & Fri at 10 & 1. As as single screen we don't have the luxury of an overflow house. We usually do about 200 per show (385 seats). Average audience is 3ft tall. This year AMC did not do the kids matinees, so we got all of the overflow and had to turn busloads away in the first few weeks. And yes, it is the biggest mess to clean up. We do between the shows and the janitor gets the real cleaning after the second show.

Things I've learned: Daycares are not a good place to place your kids. The keepers rarely know how many kids they have. Many of them arrive 10-20mins late and expect to find 30 seats together--in the dark. They can't do simple math (20 kids plus 20 popcorn and soda=$40). As for the kids, besides being really messy, they would be perfectly happy if we just turned the lights on and off a few times.

We've gotten more walkins this year, there must have been a birthing spree in the neighborhood a few years ago.

In general, we treat this as a public service and the people who attend are usually happy we are doing it. It does turn a profit, but a very annoying profit.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-09-2013, 09:24 AM:

My experience with free stuff in general is that people tend to not value it because it is free. It also tends to attract people who are "cheap" (i.e. free movies generally do low concession business) and people who have nothing better to do (resulting in mid-show walk-outs). Audiences at free screenings tend to be rude, too--I have never seen more cell phones lit up during a movie than at a free screening that I did a year or so ago (at an art museum, no less!).

I like the $1 ticket thing better--it is essentially the same thing as "free," but the fact that it costs something probably helps to keep the riff-raff away. There is no doubt that this creates additional hassle with selling tickets, making change, and keeping boxoffice reports, though.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-09-2013, 12:12 PM:

We have also done a promotion where we run a matinee of a hot new movie and it is sponsored by a local organization. We most recently did this with "Monsters U." We give them as many tickets as we have seats; they decide on a price at which to sell them (or they can give them away if they want to); and we bill them based on our actual ticket prices for the tickets we receive at the door. It's a win-win-win...the organization looks good for discounting or giving out the tickets, we get a full house of willing concession buyers, and people are happy.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-09-2013, 12:25 PM:

What do you do when a group of people show up and say "I forgot to buy my ticket from Joe So-and-so, but I want to come to this show anyway."

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-09-2013, 01:48 PM:

We don't advertise the showtime to the public -- it's up to the sponsoring organization to do that, so everybody is pretty much "in the know" about the tickets. What happens often is, people will bring in six or seven tickets but only have three or four people so they'll tell us to "donate" those extra tickets to people who need them. Gotta love small towns.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 08-09-2013, 01:56 PM:

Mike
We have done similar things in the past where a private group buys out a show and then hands out the tickets. What always amazes me is the people who are obviously not in need of a free ticket that show up. It's one thing when it's been a business doing this as a thank you to their customers. It's another when it's just about giving free tickets to people. The example that sticks out in my mind was The Passion of the Christ.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 08-09-2013, 02:49 PM:

One Showcase Cinemas District Manager used to do a monthly "senior citizen" matinee for $1, which included a small popcorn and small soda. I guess that qualifies as free. The films were generally 40's-50's classics, and there were drawings for small prizes. It was a total success, and being seniors the popcorn stayed off the floor. How many of them became regular moviegoers--the object of the exercise--is anyone's guess.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 08-09-2013, 04:33 PM:

The Hollywood I work at does a "Canned film Festival" 6-7 weeks in the summer time. Older kids' movies, and it's a can of food to the local Second Harvest food bank per head for admission. We do ~500-600 a week typically. Tuesday mornings at 10am... normally 4-5 auditoriums worth. It's pretty much a disaster, but the concession profit is all gravy seeing as how the radio station pays the film rental

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 08-09-2013, 04:55 PM:

One problem with free, but still ticketed, events is that people obtain tickets but don't turn up. Since there is not disadvantage to them they don't cancel their ticket (and sign up before the fully know if they can attend).

If the tickets are distributed via the internet few sites seem to have the equipment to prevent multiple copies of the same ticket being used.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-09-2013, 10:22 PM:

Yeah we tried doing the "get your free ticket at local businesses" once, with a note on the ticket saying seating was limited, arrive early. We gave each participating store about 100 tickets, and some gave them all out, some only gave a few out. We were braced for having to turn a bunch of people away but wound up with only about half-a-house. So we decided not to do THAT again. If we're giving out actual tickets they have to be paid.

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 08-10-2013, 12:28 AM:

Not worth the trouble.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-10-2013, 08:56 AM:

Used to love the free shows. Some of the kids were in awe of our theatre because I am sure that they had never set foot in one in their lives.

Several years ago, we had to ban a certain group from coming. After the show in question, we found torn cut seats, popcorn everywhere from a fight that happened, and a soaked screen from all the drinks they threw at it. The 'teachers' denied that their kids were the problem, but we never had it happen again once they were thrown out.

When we started charging $1 for the same shows, business went down, and concession sales fell.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 08-13-2013, 02:22 PM:

This year, instead of doing the typical movies that you listed in the first post - we ran some older titles. Now most of these titles were pretty obscure. But here is where the advantage of this kicked in: We lucked out on some of the rentals, and paid less than the typical rental fees for the films. Most of the bulk of people that came in were with day cares, y.m.c.a.s, and other groups. So while certain days had virtually no people - other days I had to run the titles in up to 4 auditoriums - because of the groups.

So our take on this was that certain, older titles, did have some type of appeal - but it really did not matter what film was playing - most of the people were appreciative that we offered free films. I think it helped that we ran a popcorn/soda deal at the concession stand also.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-13-2013, 02:39 PM:

On one of the re-issues of "Wizard of Oz," our booker didn't think we should play it but we had an opportunity for one of those paid-admission-by-a-sponsor shows, so we used Oz for that. I was not expecting too much since the movie is on TV all the time, but we had a nearly full house. People love "free."

Posted by Mike Williams (Member # 1140) on 08-18-2013, 07:06 AM:

So - I have not been in the industry in about 8 years and have not helped run a theater in about 12... but I still lurk here sometimes (it DOES get in your blood)

Some of my fondest memories are running the summer kids shows at the Regal Palace 18 in Miami 15 years ago. I ran them every year until I moved to Knoxville to work at corporate.

The admission was free and we ran 2 movies (G and PG rated)on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

We would interlock 15 of our 18 screens on these two prints. Usually the G rated got 4 or 5 houses and the PG rated got 10 or 11 houses. We would usually fill every house.

We started in April/May by sending mailers out to every day care, church and summer camp in Miami with our movie schedule and then do it again right before school let out. We would then call some of the centers that we know might attend or attended last year.

On average, we would have between 1800-2000 kids arrive by bus and maybe another 200-300 arrive individually. Tuesdays were always a little busier than Wednesday.

The night before, we would have the concession people assemble as many of the cardboard kid pack trays and have them staged on the back counters of both concession stands.. then the fun part:
At 6am the morning of each show, I would come in and set up both interlocks. This took almost an hour and everything was double checked.
Around 8:00, the staff would start to arrive to open both concession stands. We would fully staff both of them. First order of business was to get the poppers running and get EVERY STATION ready for the rush.

By 9, I had 2-3 ushers arrive for crowd control. At least one employee would come in just to direct school buses and stand outside(at the request of the shopping center we were in - they wanted buses parked in the back).. By 9:15 buses started coming in. The lobby and concession area would be full of screaming kids for almost an hour as buses arrived and kids went to the concession. By the second week, things would always become more organized.

At 10am, we would start both interlocks. (usually after saying a couple prayers [or a drink] [Smile]

I would always make sure there was at least one other manager/projectionist in the booth to babysit but we were BOTH up there when it started. In the 5 years I ran the kiddie shows, we only had one interlock problem and it was toward the end. The first projector tailed out and missed the shutdown cue and killed the interlock. Of course, the last projector was still 2-3 minutes before the credits started. Luckily, we recovered it pretty quickly once we figured out what happened.
Of course, with old prints, as soon as we received them, they were carefully put together and test run in an empty house - that was well worth the extra time.

By the time the shows were ending - we would have the concession people start cleaning theaters and closing down the back concession stand. We would direct most of the kids out the back doors directly to their buses.

The kids shows were pretty successful for us. Since the admission was free, we encouraged the summer camps to bring money for popcorn and a lot of them did. We pushed the kiddie packs, which at the time were $3 I think.

The trick was reaching out to the summer camps and day cares. That was the game changer.

The per cap was somewhere in the $2-$2.50 range sometimes more. We ran these on Tuesday and Wednesday every week.

On the crowd control side - we never had any huge issues. We made sure we knew who was chaperoning and running each day care and had their numbers.

I bet with digital projection this could be successful in a lot of places.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 08-18-2013, 09:11 AM:

Mike -

Some of my fondest memories were not the same as yours. I remember running free kids shows down in Florida. Interlocking up to 4 auditoriums at the same time. Locking the front doors, as we had reached our maximum capacity. Looking out those doors and seeing all those kids with frowns upon their faces.
I guess you didn't have to clean the theatres afterwards? Yeah, that'd have to be the worst memory... EVER.