Making a community cinema add up
How much does it cost to run a film society? Reviewing last season’s accounts has been a good opportunity to assess one (important) aspect of maintaining a community cinema.
Overall, we had a small loss (£267), our first for about eight years (see table in the article on the 2008-9 accounts). Still, excluding grants and restricted funds, our reserves are looking reasonably healthy:
The loss was partly due to the small loss incurred by the comedy film festival, partly by a small number of films not breaking even, and partly by the purchase of some new equipment.
Let’s look at the film festival first:
| Costs | Income | |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance | 53 | |
| Marketing/publicity | 914 | |
| T shirts | 387 | |
| Film hire | 999 | |
| Hall hire | 330 | |
| Workshops | 1749 | |
| Other costs | 370 | |
| Total costs | 4802 | |
| Ticket income | 2399 | |
| Workshop income | 890 | |
| Advertising | 355 | |
| Refreshments | 200 | |
| Grants | 500 | |
| T shirts | 159 | |
| Total income | 4503 | |
| Profit/(loss) | (299) |
The ticket income was lower than projected, partly because the weekend was fantastically hot, which deterred many people from the daytime screenings. A couple of the films were arguably too mainstream and well-known, which also reduced their appeal.
The workshops lost money, though the grant funding went some considerable way to meeting that, and it was intended from the outset that we would not pass on the full costs to participants to make them more affordable.
The T shirts were a nice idea, though we didn’t sell enough. We probably didn’t push them adequately either. So, if you fancy one, we still have a few left at a fiver each…
Now let’s turn to the regular films. How much does it cost to put on a film?:
| Film hire/supply | 110 |
| Hall hire | 40 |
| Overhead | 60 |
| Total | 210 |
Assuming an average ticket price of £4, this means that our break even point is 52 ticket sales. The film hire item is the typical amount, though some distributors charge about £100 or 35% of takings, whichever is the greater. The Overhead line, includes all the fixed cost items for the year, such as the printed programme and other marketing costs, insurance, accounts, and other general expenses.
That is actually quite a high number for a break even, much higher than it used to be before we ran special events, upgraded our printed programmes, and increased our insurance premium.
So, what does this mean for next year? It depends to some extent on the state of our finances at the end of this season, but assuming they are broadly in the right direction, we could do a number of things: increase ticket prices; develop our programme and publicity to attract even bigger, consistent audiences; cut costs; attract sponsors…
What do you think? There are lots of possibilities.
The review of our 2009-2010 season also included some breakdown of costs and the accounts, which are useful in understanding how the finances work.
For a slightly bigger event (a screening of The Mahabharata) see the cost breakdown on the Transition Forest Row site.