Changes in attendance patterns

I've noticed a couple things over the summer I thought were interesting. They may or may not continue during the school year.

Fewer Children to kid's movies. - Even for UP which was a big hit most of the attendance was adults, the other kid's movies we played didn't do great. The matinees just barely broke even. I was planning to play ICE AGE 3 but I don't think I will now. I don't think adults want to see it enough.

Yet more spreading out of business over the nights. - When I first started at Western Film we had a fairly standard pattern, busy weekends and discount Tuesday, the rest of the week was fairly quiet. Over the last few years it spread out until most nights were at least somewhat busy. This summer it got even weirder. Sunday and Monday were often busier than Friday or Saturday?! Tuesdays aren't as busy but sometimes Wednesday or Thursday are busier than Tuesday.

During the school year I attributed this to more night classes plus students going out to other places on the weekends. For the summer I think it's people going away or whatever on the weekend and seeing the movies during the week. I kinda like this trend, it takes the same number of staff to man the theatre for 10 people or 60. If we get the same number of people spread over more nights then we have less problems with lineups or the theatre getting too crowded and people not getting to sit where they want.

In very general terms people seem to be willing to see films they haven't heard a lot about but have heard are good. I'm not sure how much this affects it but a couple people have said they decided to see a film because we were playing it on the assumption that it must be good. It makes sense, as a single screen theatre I'm not going to play a film that isn't good if people also haven't heard of it. I only play bad films that were big hits (I'm looking at you Twilight).

Next Week's Movies Sep 4 - 10

Next Week is one of the most important of the year. We try to get as many of the new students as possible to know Western Film is here and hopefully go to a film as part of thier orientation. This year I got two movies I consider to be perfect Frosh Week movies. Both have general appeal and are comedies good for going to in groups. THE PROPOSAL is at 7pm and THE HANGOVER plays at 9:20.

My current plan is the switch THE HANGOVER to 7pm starting Sept 11. I think I can get a third week out of it and there's probably a lot of people who want to see it but don't want to go to the late show for whatever reason. I'll decide on Tuesday what to play as a late show that week.

The Ugly Truth should be available, MOON is still on my list to play. Harry Potter may come off soon. I may try Star Trek for another week once the students come back. That's one of those films that can be watched more than once. I've seen the whole movie 4 times, the beginning 5 times and the ending about 8 while working.

The last couple weeks.

I've been bad about posting again. I'll go through what I've played the last few weeks in case anyone cares.

UP- I decided to try to do both evenings shows plus matinees for this one. The late show was surprisingly busy. The matinees did okay but we got mostly adults, not a lot of kids. I may bring it back.

STAR TREK- Did well enough it's second week that I may bring it back during the school year.

PUBLIC ENEMIES- did okay

TRANSFORMERS- was surprisingly quiet, not dead but not what I would have expected.

FUNNY PEOPLE - didn't do very well, I understood why after I watched it. How can so many funny people make a movie that's not very funny and way too long.

AWAY WE GO. - this was a bit of an experiment. I had an opening after Funny People and no other new movies were available. I wasn't sure how to full it as the show would be rather late starting because of the length of Funny People. My first choice was MOON but there weren't any prints available. If AWAY WE GO had not been available I would have put in UP for another week. In retrospect I should have switched the order and played AWAY WE GO at 7pm and FUNNY PEOPLE for the late show. AWAY WE GO probably would have out grossed Funny People then.

THE HURT LOCKER - another bit of an experiment, got a lot of great reviews but awareness was low. It actually did better than I expected and it's a good sign that people will take a chance on good movies.

BRUNO did okay but I expected more. The people that did come tended to laugh a lot.

THE HANGOVER- did quite well for a 10pm show. I'm bringing it back from Frosh week as the late show and plan to play it again the following week at 7pm to give people a chance to see it who don't want to see the late show.

These movies I rejected.

ALIENS IN THE ATTIC- Fox was unusually nice and was going to let us split it but it wouldn't have done any business.

I LOVE YOU BETH COPPER- Fox plus wouldn't have done any business.

A PERFECT GETAWAY- a okay little action film but wouldn't have done any business.

Next Week's Movies Jul 31 - Aug 6

I already knew My Sister's Keeper was available and had been planning to play it as the 7pm show. It didn't do great first run but we have had a lot of people asking about it so I expect it will do well. For the late show I decided to bring back Star Trek, it did really well its' first week. The late shows did okay that week with it playing for both shows.

The only New film that would have been available for next week is Public Enemies. I decided to hold off on it for a couple reasons. We had already been telling people Sister's Keeper would be playing and I couldn't play both the same week as both need to be the 7pm show. Public Enemies is also fairly long so I'm not sure if I will play anything after it.

It could get interesting as Up is also available the following week. Disney sets the dates we are able to get movies in advance. They usually leave a week between when the films leave first run and can start at Western Film.

I was trying to decide whether to play Public Enemies or Up the following week. Both have to be the 7pm show so they need to be separate weeks. It doesn't really matter which week they play though. I would have liked to have UP this upcoming weekend since there is a holiday Monday and we could have had extra matinees but it's not available until the following Friday. I checked to see if anyone else had booked the theatre during the weekend afternoons as that would affect my decision. No one had so that's not a problem. I figure the only thing I should do is try to play Up the week with the lowest kid's film competition. Opening it against Harry Potter would have been a bad idea for example.

According to the booker, The Proposal is getting close to coming off and The Hangover may come off soon to my mild surprise.

Interesting article about how 1989 Batman changed the movie business.

The title pretty much says it all. I remember the hype around Batman was something that seemed new. Everyone wanted to see it. This article from Salon.com has some interesting things to say about it.

The main change it created was the emphasis on the opening weekend and movies making a lot of money in as short a time as possible. Previous to this films tended to play a lot longer in theatres. Even as late as Titanic which played in theatres for about a year. Of course the availability of home video started affecting the theatre business about the same time.

Next Week's Movies Jul 24 - 30

As mentioned in the last Next Week post I already knew Year One and Taking of Pelham 123 were available so I booked those two in. The only new film available was My Sister's Keeper which I'm going to play next week.

I think I may start getting backed up with new films available. I wish more movies worked as late shows. There's some interesting small films I'd like to play like Away We Go but the 7pm show usually needs to be a Hollywood film.

Feedback requested on something I hate doing.

One thing I hate doing is changing the phone message on the Movieline. It usually takes several tries and hence a lot of time. A while ago someone suggested putting a synopsis of each film on it but the message is already several minutes long.

It's also where I get into some interesting situations, for example next weekend we have a Bollywood film called Kambakkht Ishq, I have no idea how to pronounce that.

I once asked the IT department if there was any thing similar to a hit counter for the phone message to give me an idea how much it's used but I guess there isn't.

If anyone is curious I'd like any comments on whether the message sounds okay. There's a couple things I tend to do that I think may be annoying but maybe no one notices. I won't say what they are so I don't influence your opinion.

The phone number is 519-661-3616 then hit 1 for the movie listings.

Response to comment.

This comment was left on one of the Next Week posts:

Star Trek, then Night at the Museum.... I feel like I just watched their trailers on cable tv. What allows movies like these to come to campus so quickly?(I'm thinking the answer is likely either my lack of a sense of time or something to do with the industry. Perhaps they were set up from the start to quickly be put up for sale on DVD?)

During the summer the high number of new blockbusters released tend to push films off faster than at other times of year. When Harry Potter opens on 4 of the 12 screens in a multiplex they have to drop something to make room. It also depends on the film. Something like Transformers 2 is heavily front loaded, it will have made about half it's total gross on opening weekend. It won't play more than few weeks first run. It's also a long film so that encourages theatres to drop it as long movies make less money since fewer showings can be done in a day.
On the other hand there are films like Up and The Hangover. Hit kid's films like UP tend to drop down to matinees only and play for a couple months. The theatres like the 3-D ones as they can charge extra. A movie like the Hangover is one of those occasional word of mouth hits that just keep chugging along. Recent examples were Juno and Wedding Crashers. Hangover has had some of the lowest week to week drops in grosses of recent memory. A big action film will typically drop 50-60% in it's second week. The Hangover has been dropping only about 20% a week. I'm planning to play it during Frosh Week but there is a possibility I might not be able to get it by then.

The DVD window is now about 4 months so that doesn't come into play except for the occasional film that's still playing in theatres when it comes out of DVD. Regular readers of this blog will probably be able to guess which studio tends to do this the most...Fox.

Next Week plus the last couple.

I've missed a couple of the Next Week posts which normally I'm pretty consistent on so I'll put up a kind of summary of what the last couple would have said.

The week after Angels and Demons played I booked in Terminator Salvation. It was the only major film available that week. I decided to try playing a late show and see how it would do. The movie overall did okay but the late show didn't do very well.

The Week that just ended I played Star Trek. I did a late show and this time it worked. Star Trek was the busiest movie we've had in a few months. I'll probably bring it back if there is an opening in the next couple weeks. Angels and Demons might also return. A mildly weird thing happened. I was told Pelham 123 was available but didn't book it because I wanted Star Trek. It ended up still playing at Westmount. I don't know if Sony has decided we are in different zones and will let us play the same films at the same time. They may also have made a mistake or Cineplex may have changed their minds and decided to keep it. That last one could have gotten interesting if I had booked it in.

The week of Jul 17 - 23 I booked in a couple different films for the first time in a few weeks. Night At The Museum 2 was available. Since it's from Fox I asked if they would let me split it with Wolverine which is also their title. They said I could but had to pay a higher percentage. I could have waited longer and they probably would have dropped down to the usual percentage. I didn't wait for a couple reasons, I wanted to get Wolverine played before it gets too much older and we have a Bollywood film scheduled for next weekend afternoons so I wouldn't be able to play matinees of Museum if I played it that week. As Museum is basically a kid's film I figure playing matinees are important. I have this nasty feeling both films are going to bomb but I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

The only other film available for next week was Year One which I think will do as a late show. So currently the following week will probably be Pelham 123 at 7pm followed by Year One as the late show and the Bollywood show on the weekend afternoons.

The only other movie that looks like it will come off soon that I want to play is My Sister's Keeper. I figure Up will be at least a month and Hangover we may not get until late August.

One film that came available during the last couple weeks was My Life in Ruins which I had never planned to play. It's from Fox so I couldn't split it anyway. They really have got to be kidding sometimes.

Drag Me to Hell probably was available but the booker didn't even mention it to me as she knows we never play horror films.

Not really movie related but really funny.

I found this on another blog and I haven't laughed so much in a while. My excuse for putting it up here is that the song and video have been in so many movies and parodied so much. I still like the song though...

I doubt this will play in theatres but I would see it if it did.

Found this wacky trailer for a Japanese film that probably defies description. Apparently it doesn't come out in North America until 2010. Probably will go straight to DVD but I think it would be fun to see in a theatre with an audience.

Quick Post.

Someone mentioned tonight that I should update the blog more often. I know I've been bad lately. It was largely due to a relative (two actually) being in the hospital for about a month. I had to take my Grandmother up quite often to visit which usually meant going to bed 'early' for me. Late nights is usually when I did blog posts. There wasn't any one to be his executor so I said I would do it so my Grandmother wouldn't worry about it. It's amazing how much time it takes to be an executor, and he didn't even have a lot of assets.

I'll try to be better.

Pulp Fiction playing at a theatre in London but not Western Film.

The presence of the Pulp Fiction trailer on the 50 Top Trailers list below reminded me that it's playing in London on Jun 26th at 11:30 pm. Empire Cinemas Wellington 8 has been playing old films once a month. Last month was Grease and the month before was Ghostbusters.

I haven't decided whether to go or not. I've seen it so many times.

I don't normally mention films playing at other theatres for competition reasons but I figure this is a special case as it's only once a month and we aren't offering the same types of films currently.

I went to the last couple and there were a fair number of people there. Apparently they did Fight Club the month before but I never heard about it. How annoying, I love that film.

They are doing the screenings the last Friday of the month so check their website for details.

Next Week's Film Jun 26 - Jul 2.

The booker told me last week ANGELS AND DEMONS might come off so I held off on booking in Wolverine which I knew was available. Angels was available so I booked it in. I thought for a bit about whether or not to play a late show but decided not to. It's a long film and caters more to adults who tend not to come to the late show.

These films were also available.

LAND OF THE LOST: I can't believe this came available after only two weeks?!, talk about a huge bomb. If I get a dead week I might throw it in but I don't plan to play it.

IMAGINE THAT: another huge bomb and too aimed at children for us to play it anyway.

WOLVERINE: I'm so pissed at Fox and their rules. This film has been off screen for two weeks and the only reason I couldn't play it already is because they make us wait two weeks. I ended up playing TWO LOVERS this week just to fill the space and it has rewarded me by being one of the worst attended movies ever at Western Film. It's a good film but the studio didn't do a good job promoting it and people haven't heard of it.

There is a possibility STAR TREK may come off for the following week so I didn't book Wolverine in. As I mentioned in a previous post I don't really think we will be losing much if we don't play Wolverine at all.

I just spent an hour watching Trailers.

IFC.com has this really cool list of the 50 Best Movie Trailers. I watched quite a few of them. It's interesting to see how creative some of the older trailers were, some were practically short films. The trailer for Psycho was almost 7 minutes long?! Imagine how well that would go over these days when most trailers are 2 -2 /12 mins long.

#42 was the first trailer I thought of when I read about the list.

There are a couple I would have put on the list.

Needful Things: This is the only version I could find online but I'm almost sure there was a version using the same music but with no dialogue. I've always loved this piece of music and I remember going out to watch the trailer over and over again when it played in the theatre I was working projection at. I don't think I would have done that if it had the dialogue.





Needful Things (Trailer)
Uploaded by Tower-of-Dark. - Check out other Film & TV videos.



CLIFFHANGER: Again this isn't quite the right trailer. I'm pretty sure there was a trailer for this film edited to match almost perfectly with the same piece of music as the Needful Things trailer. I guess I'm either remembering things wrong or there are unusual versions of some of these trailers. There is a possibility they were Canada only trailers but I don't know if they would have made trailers for use just in Canada.

Next Week's Film Jun 19 - 25

Again there wasn't anything new coming off so I had to be creative. This week there was a print of TWO LOVERS available so I booked it in. It's got low awareness but Sunshine Cleaning was in a similar situation and did surprisingly well here. It's also a good movie.

If that hadn't been available I was going to book in 17 AGAIN. I wouldn't have expected it to do well but I might have been surprised.

Wolverine is available to start Jun 26th but I decided not to book it in yet. The booker says Angels and Demons will probably come off since Transformers 2 is opening. I'd rather play that than Wolverine. I wouldn't be particularly upset if I didn't get a chance to play Wolverine. It's Fox with all the conditions that go along with that. While it wasn't a terrible movie it got a lot of negative buzz, I've noticed movies in that situation don't seem to do well at Western Film anymore. I think the fact it's a big movie would outweigh that but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong.

A hard decision is going to be whether to play a late show of ANGELS AND DEMONS or WOLVERINE. I know my staff will want me to so they can get more hours but will enough people show up to justify it? I was way wrong on the late show for MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. The late show was a complete bust. We did 5 people on Tuesday?! Something I wouldn't have thought possible since it's our discount night and usually the busiest.

New Trailer for 2012.

I have a soft spot for disaster movies and no one makes them better (or worse) than Roland Emmerich who is best known for Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

His new film coming out in November deals with the end of the world as prophesied by the Maya. The teaser trailer was interesting, it showed a mountain monastery getting pummelled by a mountain high wave of water. The new trailer is currently only on Yahoo and it doesn't have an embedding function. The new trailer shows much more of the destruction but still doesn't show exactly what causes it. My thought from the teaser was a comet or something hitting Antarctica and instantly melting all that water. I think I'm still on the right track but it's maybe multiple objects?

A lot of people think the movie will be bad but I don't think anyone can say it won't be worth watching for at least the absolutely awesome looking special effects.

The scene in Independence Day where an alien ship blows up the White House is one of the most famous destruct ions in movies. There's a scene near the end of the trailer that may outdo that one, this one involves an aircraft carrier.

I'll be in line to see this opening weekend.

Answer to Comment about video/film projection.

This comment was left on a post. I'm not sure if anyone reads the comments on older posts so I thought I would repost my answer as I think some will find it interesting.

QUESTION: This is a naive question on my part, but why are movies still in film format and not digital? I am sure there is a reasonable explanation, but it seems cumbersome to have huge reels to take care of.Also, with all the CGI and digital enhancing that goes into a movie these days, do they have to transfer everything to traditional film in the end to make the reels?

ANSWER: Video projectors that can make an image even close to the quality of film are still about $100,000. More if you add 3-D. The problem is there's not any real difference between film and video presentation to the general public and so there's no real advantage to the theatres to make the investment in new projectors. 3-D is really the only driving factor there.The Studios will save hundreds of millions of dollars by not having to strike film prints and ship them around but so far have been dragging their feet on helping the theatres convert. This doesn't make much sense to me.The other issue is going to be all the small theatres that can't afford to convert. Most movies are shot on film, converted to digital for editing then put back on film to show in theatres. Some films are shot with digital cameras. Eventually it will all be digital but how long that will take varies widely depending on who you ask. I think in about 3-5 years it will be hard to run a theatre that hasn't converted.

A Projectionist's Nightmare.

I got this picture off a projectionist's forum. This isn't at Western Film, it's a print of Angels and Demons somewhere in Australia. That's the film all over the floor, where it's not supposed to be.

The piece of equipment in the middle is called a platter. It consists of three revolving discs about 4 ft wide. On the bottom one you'll see a film as it's supposed to look, nicely wound in a big spool with the beginning of the film in the center and the end on the outside.

When a film plays off a platter it pays out from the center, goes over some rollers, through the projector and back onto one of the other discs. It wraps around a ring placed in the center and ends up looking the same as it started, just on a different disc.

What happened here is somehow the film was not going back onto the platter but was just spilling onto the floor. There's several things that can cause this, mostly projectionist error but sometimes it can be a equipment problem. Even something like a momentary power drop out can cause this. That's why you'll always see the projectionist at Western Film go into the booth after the power blinks, even if the film seems to be running normally.

The scary thing is the average film is 12,000 ft long, that's a lot of film to try to wrap back up manually.

James Cameron's Avatar

James Cameron is one of, if not my favorite directors. He's never made a bad film, even his weaker films are better than most movies and he has made several downright classics (Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens, Titanic.

His next film is Avatar which opens in the fall and supposedly will change the movie business again. I'm looking forward to it but I'm being sure not to get my hopes too high. No matter how good the movie is it will be compared to Titanic and how well that did. It's not a fair comparison as the combination of elements that allowed Titanic to be come the biggest grosser of all time will never be repeated. It's been 10 years and the movie business has changed. Titanic was still playing in theatres a year after it opened. I don't see that ever happening again.

One of the big variables with how Avatar does is the number of 3-D screens available. The movie apparently employs some of the highest quality 3-D ever done. But at this point there still only about 2000 or North America's 40,000 screens equipped for 3-D. The 3-D is so important to this film that Cameron says one of the reasons it took him so long to make this film was waiting for the technology to catch up to his vision.

The link is for a really interesting article at Totalfilm.com which summarizes what is known about Avatar which is surprisingly little. The movie comes out in 5 months but there's been no trailers, posters or even good stills. I think most of the illustrations in the article are from the video game, not the film.

I'll probably be in line opening night, how about you?