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.

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.

Response to a comment.

This comment was left on on older post so I thought I'd respond here.

I know I'm kind of late to comment on this post but out of curiosity, do you get customers at the concession stand who are not going to see a movie that night? Not sure if this is something you can/do track. I just imagine there may be students in the UCC who just want a snack.

Yes, we sell a fair amount of stuff to people who aren't going to the movies. We sell a fair amount of popcorn to people studying or meeting in the building.

We stock some items just to sell to the general public. Red Bull and Rockstar are generally bought by studying students. We sell quite a bit during exams.

This is partly because we run at night. The variety store downstairs closes early some nights and isn't open at all on the weekends so we are the only place to buy some stuff except for vending machines.

During the summer we are the only place open at night at all on the entire campus except for the Grad Club so we get a lot of customers looking for food. We sell hot dogs during the summer only for this reason. Hot dogs are about the only thing I could come up with. Anything else like sandwiches have too short a shelf life for us to sell at a reasonable price.

At one point I planned to turn the concession stand into a mini variety store and carry things like gum but dropped the idea once I checked into it further.
For things like gum there's too many varieties and I wouldn't be able to carry very many. Plus I hate gum, it should be banned if people don't stop sticking it to everything.
Things like Potato Chips would cannibalize popcorn sales.
Pretty much everything else a variety store sells that we didn't already sell I didn't think we would sell enough of to get around shelf life restrictions.

Response to some recent comments.

Here are some comments made on recent posts and my responses. I figured it was easier for everyone to see them if I did it this way.

I would rather see Slumdog Millionaire on the big screen. Hope you decide to play it.

Western Film will be playing Slumdog Millionaire, even if it's a week or so after it comes out on DVD. I think there will still be enough interest.

Will you let us know how the movies did? Did your plan work?

This comment is in reference to my plan to play Revolutionary Road and Milk during Slack Week then switch the order the following week when the students were back. That way both films played for the early show at some point. Basically I would say it worked. Overall Milk did better but the total for each film each week was consistent with normal patterns. I'll have to remember this trick for future use if I have two suitable films at slack week.

thanx for answering bak bout this !--personally- wenever they've shown a bollywood film its been on a single day and invariably i've already got sumthin happenin-- also wen its hosted by a club then sumtimes u dont wanna go coz it feels kinda odd that ur not part of the club--newez-- hopefully we'll get to see sum indian films in the near future ! =)

I'm don't think I ever mentioned it on here but we did do another Bollywood film a couple weeks ago. The guys that had been putting them on contacted me again. I hadn't heard from them for a while so I figured they didn't want to do any more. Turns out they were visiting India?!
The show of Billu Barber did fairly well. Enough for me to keep doing them as long as the guys want to do them. They'll contact me next time there's a film they want to play.

The talking at WesternFilm seems to be a bigger issue than anywhere else, and this is true especially during the previews. Sure, the actual movie isn't playing yet, but there are people who want to watch the previews without the VERY loud chatter going on around them. I noticed that WesternFilm doesn't turn down all the lights until the feature film starts and I feel that is contributing to the problem.

There's not much we can do about talking during the previews. To me they are part of the film but a lot of people consider them nothing more than commercials. Part of the problem is I have to play them at a lower volume than the films. Trailers have different volume levels between them so often I'll get a loud one that necessitates turning them all down so as not to deafen everyone during the loud trailer. We readjust the volume for the movie. As for the lights, most theatres don't turn them all the way down for the same reason we don't. There's often still a lot of people coming and going during the trailers. I think we may keep ours little brighter but there's several reasons for this.
- For some reason we get a lot of people right when the trailers start or after they have started. We can have 10 people in the theatre at 6:50 and 80 at 7:10.
-We don't have any lights on the stairs beside the seats. The edging on the stairs actually glows in the dark if you look very carefully but it never worked very well or has worn out.
-We get a lot of older people and seniors.
-The damn tablets (little tables) on the chairs, most of them don't stick back out of the way even if pushed into position. If the lights are down a lot of people hit them with their legs. When the room isn't being used for classes any more come about January I may ask if I can take them all off. They do make good cup holders in some cases though.

Any questions I didn't answer feel free to post in the comments below.

Questions / Comments/ Complaints?

Every so often I put up a generic post for readers to use the comments function for feedback. Please post anything and I'll respond either in the comments in this post or do a seperate post.

Question? / Comments? / Complaints?

I put up a 'blank' post every so often so if anyone any of the above they can leave it as a comment without it getting buried in an unrelated posting. I'll answer any comments that are left.