Hey everyone. I'm glad I found this forum, it's been quite helpful to lurk around.
Here's our sticky situation:
My (very small) digital production studio shot a feature length comedy in HD this summer. We're located in Worcester, MA and have had a very hard time finding a place to screen our film in HD. We're college students and have access to some HD capable auditoriums for free at colleges but they are 45-50 minutes away from the folks that we want to attend. The fallback is a small local 1 screen theater that uses a modified classroom projector on a 120ish foot run when they want to show anything digital. The image is awful (SD input/SD output) and the sound quality at the theater couldn't be much worse (the walls are wood and brick so everything tends to echo). On top of that, the theater costs money to rent and we'd probably have to take donations to pay it.
So I'm faced with a choice:
Theater: Bad movie experience, good atmosphere. Cost.
Room at a local college (very close): 720p projection. Better Audio. Free. Ugly parking.
Auditorium in Providence or Boston: 1080p. Great sound. Free. Far Away. Nearly no parking.
We'd like to invite the local papers to get some buzz going but we're doubtful that they would come to a college to see it. We've been priced out of having it at an AMC or National Amusements and the other indie theaters we've spoken to didn't think our movie matched well with clientelle (or brushed us off entirely).
When we graduate, we'd really like to make a business from what we've learned and build on our content (we'll be doing this all winter long). Any advise anyone could give me on this situation would be greatly appreciated. I understand that it's not exactly the most professional operation going but we're going through a learning process. We're students, but not necessarily film students so once we got past filming and editing, things got murky. I can post a trailer of the movie if anyone is interested.
Here's our sticky situation:
My (very small) digital production studio shot a feature length comedy in HD this summer. We're located in Worcester, MA and have had a very hard time finding a place to screen our film in HD. We're college students and have access to some HD capable auditoriums for free at colleges but they are 45-50 minutes away from the folks that we want to attend. The fallback is a small local 1 screen theater that uses a modified classroom projector on a 120ish foot run when they want to show anything digital. The image is awful (SD input/SD output) and the sound quality at the theater couldn't be much worse (the walls are wood and brick so everything tends to echo). On top of that, the theater costs money to rent and we'd probably have to take donations to pay it.
So I'm faced with a choice:
Theater: Bad movie experience, good atmosphere. Cost.
Room at a local college (very close): 720p projection. Better Audio. Free. Ugly parking.
Auditorium in Providence or Boston: 1080p. Great sound. Free. Far Away. Nearly no parking.
We'd like to invite the local papers to get some buzz going but we're doubtful that they would come to a college to see it. We've been priced out of having it at an AMC or National Amusements and the other indie theaters we've spoken to didn't think our movie matched well with clientelle (or brushed us off entirely).
When we graduate, we'd really like to make a business from what we've learned and build on our content (we'll be doing this all winter long). Any advise anyone could give me on this situation would be greatly appreciated. I understand that it's not exactly the most professional operation going but we're going through a learning process. We're students, but not necessarily film students so once we got past filming and editing, things got murky. I can post a trailer of the movie if anyone is interested.