Rather enjoying the summer months and a break from putting on films, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about the film society. We’ve nearly finished setting the programme for next year, and it is looking very exciting and ambitious.<\/p>\n
It is also a good time to take stock of this season. The table below shows the admissions for all the Forest Row Film Society films (15\/6: this post has now been updated to include data from the last film, Alice in the Cities<\/em>):<\/p>\n Our average audience is 62, which is the highest ever. It is only slightly more than last year, but it is still double what it was a decade ago and is much more consistent. We have had a total paying audience of 1299 in the 2009\/10 season, which is wonderful. Apart from the silent Buster Keaton, which always draws a big crowd, it is interesting that the bulk of the most popular films are French. We don’t have quite so many French films lined up for next year, so we hope that isn’t a mistake. It will be a very strong line-up so we hope our programming sense matches your desire to turn up.<\/p>\n Now, consider the numbers and costs for next year:<\/p>\n We can see that we need to take about \u00a3200 to cover a film. These figures don’t take into account the membership fees or other income, eg from refreshments or adverts etc,\u00a0but essentially, we need 50 people to break even at our current prices. That’s fine, and almost all of our films have done that. The key failures were the children’s films and The Constant Gardener<\/em>. We know that if we want to do films aimed at children in the future we need to devote a lot more energy at building that audience and we will need a special team of people to do it. If you are interested in getting involved in that please let us know. At the moment, we are not planning any films aimed at a younger audience for next season.<\/p>\n The poor audience for The Constant Gardener<\/em> illustrates that it isn’t very sensible to show fairly mainstream films that have had a wide exposure. Perhaps The Lives of Others<\/em> begins to point to that as well.<\/p>\n One thing that we don’t do yet is measure the audience reaction, which many community cinemas do. It would be interested to compare which films get the highest approval rating against their audience numbers. Setting up such a system isn’t too hard, but we will need someone to do it. Any takers?<\/p>\n Do you have any other thoughts and observations about this most recent season and this data? We’d be very interested to hear your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rather enjoying the summer months and a break from putting on films, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about the film society. We’ve nearly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forestrowfilmsociety.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n Sherlock Jr<\/td>\n 137<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Summer Hours<\/td>\n 97<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Etre et Avoir<\/td>\n 92<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Encounters at the End of the World<\/td>\n 80<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Alice in the Cities<\/td>\n 75<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n I’ve Loved you so Long<\/td>\n 72<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Couscous<\/td>\n 68<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n La Vie en Rose<\/td>\n 63<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Edge of Heaven<\/td>\n 61<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n West Beyrouth<\/td>\n 57<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Diving Bell and the Butterfly<\/td>\n 56<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Let’s Talk about the Rain<\/td>\n 56<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Cherry Blossoms<\/td>\n 55<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Page Turner<\/td>\n 53<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Times and Winds<\/td>\n 52<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Lives of Others<\/td>\n 52<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha<\/td>\n 45<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Waltz with Bashir<\/td>\n 37<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Fox and the Child<\/td>\n 34<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Kirikou and the Sorceress<\/td>\n 32<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n The Constant Gardener<\/td>\n 25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n \n\n
\n No of ticketed films (excluding film festival and Metropolis):<\/td>\n 18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Average ticket price:<\/td>\n \u00a34<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Annual costs<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Insurance<\/td>\n 300<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Programme (design\/print)<\/td>\n 650<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n BFFS<\/td>\n 80<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Total<\/td>\n 1030<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Annual costs per film<\/td>\n 57<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Per film costs<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Film hire<\/td>\n 100<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Village hall<\/td>\n 40<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Total per film costs<\/td>\n 140<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Total costs per film plus portion of annual<\/td>\n 197<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Break even ticket sales<\/td>\n 49<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n