Renting Film Prints

[Keith Kawaii]

I'm not really sure where to put this... but does anyone know how to go about "renting" film prints? A local theater of mine lets you rent their space for 150$, and they'll play whatever film you have. The first thought that hit me was to get a big group of people locally to give 10 or so dollars each and then rent out some new Godard prints, like Pierrot Le Fou and Two or Three Things I Know About Her

[HerrSchreck]

Find out who has the rights to theatrical distribution for the films you wanto play, call them up and ask for rates, for either 16 or 35. If they don't have a site of rental on offer like this Kino page I'm sure if you find their-- whoever "they are"-- site it's very easy. You just need to decide what you wanta show then find out who rents the prints out. Then call.

[miless]

often times there's about a $300 "deposit" on the film... if the film does not make more than $300 everything is fine... if it makes more, a certain percentage is to be paid to the distribution company. you wont see this "deposit" again... it's more a rental fee.

at least this is how it was all explained to me by my former employers at a small theater here in Portland (well, sort of... I volunteered for them).

[MichaelB]

In my neck of the woods it's called a "distributor's minimum guarantee" - it's basically designed to cover their costs in terms of print transport, wear and tear and any other relevant issues.

When I booked films for repertory cinemas I always had to budget for minimum guarantees, especially if we were showing triple bills - which was a major reason that we tended to stick to the same distributor when booking multiple programmes!

(Woody Allen was a godsend in this respect, as virtually all of his output was handled by the same UK distributor - at least up to the time I was booking them)

[portnoy]

I used to program a repertory house. Heads up:

1) Pierrot is Janus. 2 or 3 is Rialto. Both distributors require their films to be shown reel-to-reel, i.e. on dual 35mm projectors and not cut together on a platter, so if your local theater can't handle this, you can't do this.

2) Both of these distributors are looking, at least to an extent - for credentials/insurance for their prints. Neither one is in a position where they can strike another expensive print without much care, so they tend to only let their prints out to people they have a certain degree of confidence in. Janus more than Rialto, really, in this regard. Again - it largely depends on the venue where you want to show these movies, and their reputation as exhibitors. If they're known for trashing prints and sloppy projection, you might have a hard time convincing a distributor to let you exhibit the film there.

3) Prices for a one-night booking will range greatly. A New Yorker Films one-night booking (god help you) can run up to $900 - I'll never forget the night we paid $800 to show Moolaade to 50 people. If I remember correctly, we used to pay Rialto and Janus something like $350 vs. 35% - ie, if the film grossed more than $1000, we'd pay them 35% of our gross, but if it didn't, we paid a sum of $350 (even if only 10 people showed up).

[M]

Wow. Exhibition kind of sounds like a dismal line of work. Anybody ever make any money at it besides the distributors?

[Awesome Welles]

Exhibitors make their money from confectionery and bar sales. Aparently the profit on popcorn is more than heroin, though I've never bothered to work this out (I work for an exhibitor). My advice regarding the private hire of your cinema is ring the head office and have a chat, the way we handle private hires is we offer the cinema and film all booked by us and then we charge the customer a flat rate. What you might find is that it will be cheaper for you to hold your hire at a time when the cinema is usually closed, so that the cinema won't have to cancel any of it's prebooked shows, which might be a problem for the distributor anyway as they won't want to lose a show. I expect if you express interest with the cinema and give them a few titles I'm sure they'll come back to you with a price.

Oh and on this subject in the UK was anyone aware that at the BFI in Stephen Street prints can be viewed for quite a reasonable price, though apparently it is in a screen with five seats only. Some friends and I were going to view Antonio das Mortes though it never materialised. Has anyone ever done this?

[ogygia avenue]

Have you considered putting together a film screening at a library or other free venue? A few years ago I was booking 16mm films at galleries and libraries in Boston. We had access to prints through the Boston PL, with the condition that we had to show them for free. This might be a good option for you.

[MichaelB]

Oh and on this subject in the UK was anyone aware that at the BFI in Stephen Street prints can be viewed for quite a reasonable price, though apparently it is in a screen with five seats only. Some friends and I were going to view Antonio das Mortes though it never materialised. Has anyone ever done this?

The reference to "five seats only" makes me think you're talking about viewing it on one of the Steenbecks in the basement - though I'd honestly advise against doing this for more than two viewers (believe me, this is based on experience!).

The Steenbecks are more suited to academic research purposes than comfortable viewing - not least because there'll be a break of several minutes between each reel when you remove its predecessor and lace up the new one. For all the thrill of getting to physically handle the 35mm print, it's probably my least favourite method of watching films.

Wow. Exhibition kind of sounds like a dismal line of work. Anybody ever make any money at it besides the distributors?

I've worked in arthouse exhibition and distribution and I'm still not entirely sure how anyone manages to make any money in this business!

(The cinema just about scraped by on box-office income, but the distributor was heavily reliant on European Union MEDIA subsidies, without which a great many titles simply wouldn't have got released)

On the other hand, I miss the thrill of coming into work on Monday morning and seeing how well (or otherwise) we'd done - especially if we'd taken a gamble on something like the jazz documentary A Great Day in Harlem, the most gratifying surprise hit I've ever been involved with. Not that it made a fortune, but it comfortably paid the cinema's rent and running costs, and that's all I was really concerned about.

[davebert]

I interned a while back in the non theatrical rentals side of NYer, and while the rates there are just a tad more reasonable than $800 (that sounds like a theatrical or first-run kind of pricing), I'd still expect at least 300 vs 30% for the rights to publicly air any of their catalog, which includes a healthy slate of Godard and other .org-approved auteurs.

That's also just the rights, which they usually try to push DVD as the screening format. Most of their 16mms are getting tossed out or liquidated for space, and for a 35mm print you pretty much have to be an established, insured film festival.

Quality issues certainly come with a price tag. I remember one guy paid for the US rights to run Celine and Julie Go Boating, but was also paying a hefty price to the BFI to import just their 35mm print.

After working there I gave up the dream of ever running a repertory theater... I just couldn't imagine trying to balance the books with my oft-spoiled demand for print quality approaching the MTI'd, fully restored splendor of CC DVD releases.

[MichaelB]

Quality issues certainly come with a price tag. I remember one guy paid for the US rights to run Celine and Julie Go Boating, but was also paying a hefty price to the BFI to import just their 35mm print.

The sad fact is that at any given moment, only a tiny, tiny fraction of film history will be conveniently bookable on celluloid. Even though I was based in London, with easy access to the BFI and the Rank depot (where virtually all distributors store their prints), I was constantly frustrated by what wasn't available - and importing prints was so expensive that we could only afford to do it once in a blue moon.

This is one reason why I'm a bit of a digital evangelist when it comes to rep programming. Obviously, a digital print isn't going to match a brand new 35mm print, but I'd much rather watch a digital print than the knackered 35mm and 16mm prints that rep cinemas have to put up with. In fact, some of the prints we showed routinely in the 1990s would be considered totally unacceptable now - DVD has raised people's expectations.

After working there I gave up the dream of ever running a repertory theater... I just couldn't imagine trying to balance the books with my oft-spoiled demand for print quality approaching the MTI'd, fully restored splendor of CC DVD releases.

We used to get some gobsmackingly deluded complaints. Including one on a job application form - we had a standard question that went "State what you would contribute to the running of the cinema", and this guy launched into a tirade that began "Well, for a start I would have rejected that print of Unforgiven that you showed last week and asked for a new one".

We were almost tempted to hire him, just so we could say "Well, go on then" and let him demonstrate exactly how a small repertory cinema with virtually no money goes about persuading a Hollywood major to send them a new print of a back-catalogue title for a one-day booking without the sound of them hanging up to raucous laughter.

But we thought better of it.

(Sadly, in the real world, if you complain about the physical condition of a print, especially to a major, the upshot is usually that that print is withdrawn from circulation... but not replaced. And since in most cases there's only one print in circulation to begin with - after the initial release, distributors massively reduce their inventory to keep storage costs down - this effectively means that the film disappears from 35mm circulation altogether until such time as it's deemed worthy of a full-blown reissue. And this will only happen with a tiny number of titles)