Grandview Theatre Insight

This is the first in what I’m sure will be a long running series of  things/events/people/behavior that attract my attention.

I find it odd that people sign up for our mailing list, but immediately unsubscribe when they receive their first email from us.

-David

We’ve removed this post, as there is a certain doubt that people reading the original post will take it as it was meant, an illustrative example of the behavior theatres — indeed, all companies — have to deal with, including threats of physical violence. Our concern is that people may mis-interpret the post to indicate that we don’t care about our customers and are unable to deal delicately with difficult situations.

We had nothing but positive reaction to the post, so thanks to all who talked and wrote to me about it.

-David

I’m going to take a few minutes and talk about how animated films have turned into giant stunt-casting boondoggles.

Waaaay back when, most people had no idea who provided the voices of animated characters, though some of the more famous had names attached, e.g Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, etc. But could anyone identify them by sight. Most likely not.

Occasionally, a “known” actor might get attached to a role, but generally because they had some unique characteristic to their voice. Good examples of this type of voice casting are Wally Cox (Underdog),  John Fiedler (Piglet), Edward Everett Horton (Fractured Fairy Tales narrator), Paul Winchel (Tigger), etc. But again, not many people would necessarily know them, or call them big stars.

And then, there were the people in the trenches who did a lot of work while remaining relatively anonymous. People like Jean Vander Pyl, John Stephenson, Hal Smith, and many others.

Even Disney films typically used professional voice talent. I can only think of a couple of nameable “stars” in their older, classic animation — Rod Taylor and Andy Devine.

At some point, that changed. I think it can probably be traced to Disney re-animating (pun intended) their moribund animation studio. I think the casting of Robin Williams in ALADDIN was the beginning of the end for professional voice talent in animated films. Since then, we’ve been treated to countless animated films — from many studios — most of which showcase two or three major names as the main characters. These actors generally have nothing special about their voices and little of significance to contribute, but are used to increase the box office of a film by having their name attached. Think Mel Gibson and Christian Bale in POCAHONTAS, Tom Hanks in TOY STORY, Jason Alexander, Demi Moore, and Kevin Kline in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, and many others.

Which brings us to MEGAMIND, which we presented recently. The movie was cute and had its moments, but there was no reason — from a creative standpoint — to have Brad Pitt, Will Ferrell, and Tina Fey provide voices for the film. When divorced from their bodies, they bring nothing unique to the movie. After all, what is Brad Pitt without his quirky emotive ticks? Kids certainly don’t care who’s providing the voice, so the parents are the ones clearly being targeted by this stunt-casting.

Instead of bringing on someone who can create a voice for a character, say someone like Billy West, they bring in someone who has to basically be themselves. If you credit Will Ferrell, you want people to recognize his voice.

I’m not sure we’ll ever make it back to using professional voice talent in animated fare, but I can hope.

-David

We’ve come to a point in our business plan where we need to determine the success of failure of several things, including advertising in the local paper(s).

Recently, AMC Theatres stopped virtually all of their print advertising, with little or no effect on their attendance. The vast majority of people in the “prime demographic” get their showtimes online, either via a web browser or a smart phone. Smart phone applications from vendors like Fandango, and MovieTickets.com, make ticket purchases virtually instantaneous.

We undertook a couple of non-rigorous tests with our print advertising to gauge the impact our ads were having. Using a fairly simple metric, we made slight changes in the ads that would impact how early someone would arrive for a film. If someone were to come at a particular time, we would know they had seen the ad. Don’t worry, we did in such a way that if the person did use the paper, they would not miss the film.

We did this for two films that were very busy for us. The results were actually worse than we expected. We had thought we might get something like 30% of attendees relying on the print ad for showtimes. But, we had no one show up at a time that would indicate they had looked at the ad. This was over the course of two very busy weeks.

Now, both of the films in question primarily targeted the 18-34 cohort, most of whom have never not had access to a computer and/or cell phone. And many of those people don’t read the paper. By the time the paper arrives, they’ve already gotten the same news online the night before.

On the cost side, our print ads are the most expensive form of advertising, and cost us a substantial amount every month. Our television advertising is a fraction of the cost and reaches more people. In fact, we often have guests arrive and say that they’ve come because they saw one of our television ads. We hear that rarely with regard to our print ads.

So, what is this missive leading to? Well, we may be dropping print ads altogether. If we have a film that appeals to an older demographic, we can always run ads for the duration of that film. In the end, we still save money over an annual commitment.

Looking back, the money that has been spent on print advertising could quadruple our monthly television ads. It could have been used for some part time staff, or equipment upgrades — like a new screen — etc.

We’ll let everyone know what the decision ends up being. The best way to stay up to date with our features and showtimes is to sign-up for our email list. See our front page for a sign-up link.

David

Having originally started as a silent movie theatre, the Grandview Theatre now sports digital audio!

I spent a good part of the week before Harry Potter installing new audio equipment, including two different digital audio processors.

What does this mean to our guests? While digital gives a number of benefits, including stereo surrounds, the biggest benefit is the separation between the three front channels (left, center, right) located behind the screen. With digital, each of these channels is discrete, meaning that audio being sent to each of those speakers has not “leaked” into an adjacent channel. This makes dialog — generally anchored in the center channel — much more intelligible.

As anyone who had been here previously could tell you, dialog intelligibility had been a big problem in the theatre.

So, we hope you come see HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 at the Grandview Theatre, now featuring digital audio!

David

Jennifer and I watched THE AMERICAN Saturday and thought it was great. This is not a BOURNE SUPREMACY-style spy film. It’s very deliberately paced and keeps up the tension throughout the film. I don’t want to get into detail, but this is more along the lines of the old Michael Caine “Harry Palmer” films, or, perhaps more closely related to Fred Zinnemann’s DAY OF THE JACKAL.