Military industrial complex site/UK’s first multiplex cinema The Point in Milton Keynes (you decide)
I am working towards starting my own cinema and this is the latest in a series of ruminations/hubristic statements towards working out how it could be done.
Over the last year, I’ve been doing freelance work for a mixed arts space. It’s fair to say their cinema is not at the centre of their work, so part of my role is to give a forecast on upcoming titles and to offer them thoughts on likely box office. While I’m frequently wrong (I’m gratified to see we made more money on Return to Seoul than The Little Mermaid), I also resist this approach to audience development with every fibre of my being. This post is an attempt to define why looking at a cinema’s success through the lens of ‘what films are released’ stops us addressing core issues with audiences and the spaces where they gather to watch films.
Every year at the major exhibition conferences, the industry comes together to hear about the tentpole ‘products’ that’ll be driving audiences towards ticket buying (and more importantly, concession buying). I regularly attend the version of this that doesn’t involve international travel, but does involve being stuck in a cinema watching trailers all day. Undoubtedly, films and anticipating new inspiring films is why people want to work in the industry. It’s what pushes us to get up in the morning and hit the coal face, sparking the sputtering engine of enthusiasm (sometimes to a full head of steam). And this article is not taking a revolutionary ‘films=maybe bad?’ stance. But when I’m watching the eightieth trailer that day, my hesitations grow ever stronger about chasing the latest butterfly rather than buckling down and doing the long, hard work.
Besides personal interest and passion, it’s tempting to look at cinema-making through individual films. With the arrival of digital, there’s a constant smörgåsbord of titles released to cinemas, meaning that there’s a temptation to think that all audiences can be served year round. Ironically, trying to serve as much of this material as possible is counterproductive to genuine audience development. There is rarely a consistency of product for minority audiences, meaning that the virtuous circle of cinema attendance never gets off the ground. Cinemas very regularly have the experience of hosting a one off event, discovering that there is a vibrant local group who they never see in the cinema, then lament months later they never see them again. This is what the release calendar creates: mostly hundreds of missed opportunities, with a few unicorns that can never be repeated. As other art forms know – ones that have to get involved in the grubby world of actual art creation or regular curation – real audience development lives elsewhere than things that land in your lap readymade. Setting an agenda of who you want to attend and seeking out material for them (rather than waiting for the distributors to throw you a bone) is the bare minimum of building an audience.
Of course, that’s even if you’re showing specific films from the film release calendar. As I’ve written about elsewhere, independent cinemas have gone through a watering down of programming over the last fifteen years. That means we’re not only competing for the audience for films like Barbie and Oppenheimer, we’re also feeding into and mirroring the model that the studios are propagating. That model is one set by market capitalism and backed up by creativity last studio heads. It stands to reason that this approach – which must feed what share holders want – begins to follow the boom and bust, growth at all costs methodology of neoliberalism. This is not a business of a thousand flowers blooming; this is a winner takes all concentration of power that demands more reassurance of the illusion of constant growth.
Ultimately, this path leads nowhere. Look at a film like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I haven’t seen it and don’t have any intention to in theatres. But surveying the ballyhoo about its box office failure, there’s an end of days quality to a legacy franchise that somehow justified $300 million in production spend flaming out in its opening weekend.
But, just as recessions and market crashes are an inevitable, even desired, consequence of neoliberalism, this is the consequence of putting more and more eggs in individual baskets, rather than spread betting. No creative endeavour – even if the amount of creative risk is supposedly mitigated by using stars, rote plots and IP – is a sure bet. Saturation marketing – the market’s answer to the uncertainty of creativity – no longer works, both because the exponentially higher cost and difficulty of reaching audiences, but also because of their breadth of options for entertainment.
If you’re betting this big, inevitably one fails. With tentpoles raising higher and higher, with fewer smaller poles supporting them, with advertising budgets spiralling upwards, with a tighter and tighter, algorithmically ‘assured’ approach to which IP are exploited, eventually audiences tire of what they’re offered. There are already signs of audiences tiring of superheroes.
And we shouldn’t hope for Mattel to step forward to save us if Marvel isn’t drawing numbers anymore. The truth is that audiences will become interested in what we offer them. Look at any box office top five from 1970–1990 and wonder at the number of adult focused films that were world-beaters. Humans have not fundamentally changed in this period, but what they are served up has. So our job as independent cinemas should be to work around the distribution calendar, not for it. Indie cinema programming sometimes feels like big rocks of IP, with sand or gravel sized pieces of indie film programming as aggregate in the cracks. I acknowledge the rocks are necessary from time to time, but we should at least make our jobs to make the gravel and sand the cement of our business (to grossly overextend a metaphor).
In business, reducing the amount of exposure to factors outside of your control is the wise path to tread. What will never be in your control in indie cinemas is a supply of product that is high-quality, well-marketed and suitable for your audience. The rarity of all three factors coming together is vanishingly low. In any given year, there will likely only be one or two Top Gun: Mavericks or (at the indie scale) five or six Aftersuns. Films that review well, audiences are aware of in advance and that please them to the extent they will tell their friends. Then cinemas need to retain the film long enough to see results from these three factors coming together.
If this is hen’s teeth rare, the task then becomes how to mitigate against these factors, how to thoughtfully pivot away from what the market is offering you, towards levers you can pull rather than whether that lands upon you. How can this be done?
For me, the core is encouraging a cycle of habitual moviegoing in audiences and habitual improvements in your workflow (and a mentality of that backs this up from your staff). From my experience, cinemas seldom invest in systems and there’s an overall caution to address strategy from the top. It takes an overall willingness to change the pipe wholesale, and most cinemas would sooner try to hope that the trickle is a little stronger from the latest blockbuster.
Here's five quick routes (that take a lifetime to actually do) that I think cinemas should turn towards rather than the latest shimmering geegaws. None of these are revolutionary. In fact, their very ordinariness is what makes them hide in plain sight. They all take a lot of long, hard work to yield results. Some of the reasons they’re overlooked lie in indie cinemas’ lack of resource (because everyone is overstretched and unable to have the headspace to build strategy) and money (because continuity of staff is harder when wages are low, meaning any long-term thinking goes out the window on the magic carpet of P45s).
Improve systems
The least exciting item on any cinemas’ agenda is to knuckle down and make it easy to find out what’s on, whether the film’s for you, what the experience will be like if you come and how you can get tickets as easily as possible. There’s literally a thousand boring, difficult ways to refine this process, and sadly every one will benefit you year round, regardless of what you show. Audiences expect more (especially when you’re charging a booking fee!). Email to login, guest checkout, easy to use discounts and upsells, membership perks, loyalty schemes, dropped baskets… all of this is standard in every other realm of e-commerce, and not in cinema.
Show older films
It was fairly dispiriting to see cinemas draw a complete blank on programming with the rug of the Film Distributors’ Association calendar pulled out from under them during the pandemic. Assuredly, there has been little audience development for what was open to them of late – very small indie titles that were willing to chance a release, plus also most of the history of cinema if you’re willing to pay the Park Circus fees – but starting that process didn’t seem to be either a short-term or long-term prospect. And there seems to be a measure of relief that we’ve got back into lockstep with a regular release of ‘tentpole’ titles, rather than plotted a new course. If you show films outside of the release cycle, you’re less likely to be at its whim. Indie cinemas should be doing this as bread and butter anyway to stand out and build some specific audience. But every slot you take away from Big Release Schedule is a move towards specificity for your community. It’s expensive, it takes time, but it’s really one of the only ways to get people to care about your space.
Outreach and re-engagement
Taking the fight beyond the cinema doors is essential work. Why do locals not come to your cinema? What can you do to ask this question in a genuine way? What can you do to do your work outside of the space, in dramatic, compelling ways that build a first contact? What are small ways you could start new dialogues? Then there’s re-engagement: why are people not coming and out of the habit? Cinema is a reinforcer of itself. What can we do to push people to go to one film again, with the belief that one film leads to many?
Build genuine love for the art form
Cinema marketing usually flows towards SELL SELL SELL and in a resource light world, I understand why. But what if your cinema was the source for making films cool again? Cinema teams are full of people who are passionate about cinema. Why is there never a feel of that in cinema social channels or emails? Allow audiences to eavesdrop on cinemas and build a sense of why this work matters to you beyond what you’re showing this week. Cinemas should have a point of view and build trust. Who are the personalities on your team who want to show off? Cultivate them and get them in front of your audience!
Offer something that has nothing to do with movies
As is evident from how hard they’ve fought with streamers over the theatrical window, multiplexes have nothing if they don’t have exclusive access to content. Indies have more to offer. But how frequently is this part of the picture? Any cinema should be doing events that your average bar could offer e.g. quiz nights, social events, beer/wine tastings. And they should be marketing their space as a place to hang out as well as the movies.
If you work in a cinema, am I way off base? Or what stops this being the core of your job? I write these articles with the hope of building community, so hit me back in the replies.