With one successful screening already under his belt, one of our promoters, Spencer Howard, is already moving forward with his next. Here are some tips from Howard on how to make your Tugg screening a success, as well as information on his new screening.
I love movies. You know all of the clichés about them transporting you to another world, the storytelling marvels and the flights of fantasy. For me, the communal experience of watching a movie beats all of those clichés. I’ve had the opportunity to go to many different special screenings where the audience was made up of people just like me. We were there with a common purpose and a mutual respect for the experience. I have laughed with these people and cried with them and cheered with them. I’ve had to drive 100 miles to Atlanta for these screenings. I’ve gone to New York and Austin for screenings. My town of Columbus, GA just didn’t do what other places did. So I decided to throw one myself.
All I had to do was sell 50 tickets. If I did that, the show would go on and I would bring a taste of that screening glory to my town. And sell we did. We met our goal in under a week and our show went on. Everyone had a blast, we gave out prizes, talked movies after and got people excited for more. You can read all of the details about it here on my blog. The screening inspired me to do many more and it also inspired me to believe everyone should be doing them. It’s not hard and if you’re considering it; do it. Here are a few things I learned that might be useful to you if you give it a shot.
The first thing to figure out is who your audience is. I screened Comic-Con: Episode IV a Fan’s Hope. So I stopped in at my local comic shop and talked to the owner, an old friend. He agreed to let me put flyers up and he told every customer who walked through his doors. Then I went online. I have a blog so I did a write-up there, telling people I was putting this thing together. I implored everyone that this was our screening and that with their help, we could make it happen. On Facebook, I invited every one of my friends, regardless if they even lived here (some bought tickets just out of support). With every ticket sold and milestone crossed I updated my page and the event page I created.
We organized prizes for a raffle and started posting teasers for those and then announced them. It gave folks a reason to check back with us and encourage people to be talking about the screening. Twitter was a great help as well, I reached out to Morgan Spurlock, the director, and Harry Knowles of AintitCool.com. Both were amazing and retweeted me and even provided personal notes for me to read to the audience. The constant contact and conversation made our show reach its threshold in no time. We had a great group of people, a lot of whom I’d never met show up. I now talk to these folks all the time and they’re excited about the next show. It’s not hard, it just requires some legwork. It is completely worth it.
Howard is hosting a screening of “Extraterrestrial” next. You can find more information about it by going here
