Boxoffice - February 2016
The Official Magazine of the National Association of Theatre Owners
The Official Magazine of the National Association of Theatre Owners
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We do partnerships with local<br />
colleges such as University<br />
of Washington–Tacoma and<br />
Tacoma Community, but<br />
ultimately younger audiences<br />
compose a very small part of<br />
our audience.<br />
Programming<br />
Particularly during awards<br />
season, many of our films stay<br />
at The Grand for a couple of<br />
months. Because of this, we often<br />
heard “We want to see something<br />
new” from our frequent<br />
patrons, so we started a Tuesday<br />
film series. Every Tuesday we bring in a film that plays a matinee and<br />
an evening screening. This gives audiences a chance to see a new film<br />
every week. We play a lot of documentaries and foreign films on those<br />
days that we otherwise wouldn’t have room to play. Tuesdays are now<br />
our highest attended weekday because of this. Another event we created<br />
that is unique to The Grand is a festival for the filmmakers named by<br />
Filmmaker magazine as their 25 New Faces of Independent Film. For<br />
the last six years we have played the films of those filmmakers and flown<br />
them to Tacoma to present their work. Filmmakers who’ve attended<br />
consistently say it is their best festival experience ever, largely because it<br />
is like a mini film camp for them where the focus is on them.<br />
Cross Promotion<br />
We do well with environmental<br />
or progressive films and<br />
make efforts to get speakers<br />
for post-film discussions after<br />
as many as we can. Getting<br />
an interested organization to<br />
cross promote a screening is<br />
the absolute best way to draw<br />
an audience, so we try to<br />
find films that fit community<br />
interests. Recent examples<br />
include Bikes vs. Cars and The<br />
Messenger, a birding movie that<br />
easily sold out.<br />
Membership<br />
Members are a huge part of what we do at The Grand. We have<br />
about 7,000 members, and that continues to grow. We give two big<br />
perks that are important to our members: free small popcorn and access<br />
to a member’s only parking lot. We gave away over 30,000 orders<br />
of popcorn to our members last year, and everyone says it is the best<br />
popcorn anywhere. As for the parking, our cinema is on the border<br />
of downtown Tacoma and parking is scarce, especially during the day.<br />
We worked out a rental agreement with a neighborhood parking lot<br />
that was underutilized, and it has turned into a true win-win partnership<br />
for all involved. n<br />
ace<br />
ace EQUIPMENT<br />
FEBRUARY <strong>2016</strong> BoxOffice ® 39
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