How to Improve the Moviegoing Experience (FilmStack Challenge #2)
Cinema is art, but so is delivering it
Thanks to for leading yet another FilmStack community charge — these initiatives are the emotional lifeblood of this cinematic future that lights fires in the hearts and dreams of folks like us.
I’m in a curious position regarding a question like this, in that moviegoing culture was never something that I well and truly grew up with, and could even only marginally flirt with in my adult life.
I mentioned this on my last FilmStack Challenge post, but I grew up in a very small seaside town, quite far from the nearest cinema, and social media, together with my strategically limited online habits, hadn’t gotten to a point where culture outside of my immediate surroundings was flooding my consciousness.1 I had little to no precedence for moviegoing.
And when I did eventually move, it was to a small city that did have a cinema, but it was one of those smaller chain cinemas that didn’t always get the new releases. I’ve since returned to my hometown where I’m awaiting the beginning of the next phase of my life (which I’m all too certain will involve FilmStack in some way), and the moviegoing precedence here has not changed — that is, it still doesn’t exist.
I suppose I’m telling you this to call attention to the lack of an objective benchmark for moviegoing that could then be hypothetically iterated upon. What’s sensational for me could be run-of-the-mill for another.
Which is why my first — and most foundational — suggestion revolves around creating experiences that don’t fit on any sort of scale:
#1: Pick your cinemas like you would pick restaurants
When it comes to improving the moviegoing experience, the conversation needs to start with local establishments instead of chains, the latter of which are predicated upon mass market appeal, and will realistically only improve by way of technical fidelity. That, in my opinion, doesn’t really help the moviegoing experience, and in fact can actively harm it if it interferes with the films themselves.
Such was the case at the chain at my old city, which went through a lengthy installation of recliner seating at the temporary expense of showtimes (and movies shown) and permanent expense of how many people could see a movie at once.
Local cinemas, on the other hand, can make more intimate and meaningful promises rooted in the film itself. I’m talking curation and genre specialization with the expectation that — like the local restaurant you always go to for a good burger — you go to this cinema for a good movie of this particular persuasion.
And maybe, on other nights, you go to a different local cinema that specializes in a different genre, or maybe even plays host to commentary nights with a respected film critic. This, just as you’d go to a different local restaurant because you know they make a better fish platter.
Whatever the case, improving the moviegoing experience needs to begin with treating moviegoing like an experience in the first place. Experiences, of course, are singular and non-quantifiable, which is not a language that chain businesses speak. As such, the improvement of moviegoing begins by walking into a local cinema.
#2: Identity
To expand on that first point, these local cinemas should establish what their audiences should come to this cinema for. What do they specialize in? Why is it their burger and not just a burger?
Let’s say you open a local movie theatre (let’s call it The Splatterhouse) that specializes in slasher movies old, new, international, and everything in between and beyond. Your screening library is now measured by the depth of one (sub)genre — one market — instead of surface-level width across multiple genres.
By doing this, you leverage the concentrated, consciously-involved affinity that some folks have for slasher movies (rather than the passive consumption of wide appeal), and combine it with a scope that exceeds the familiarity of the Halloweens, Screams, and Terrifiers of the world. You satisfy the intended cinematic goal of expanding audience interest with an experience (a film) that’s genuinely new to them, all without sacrificing that known quantity of fan-coded enthusiasm.
And it should go without saying that all the backend legwork of the moviegoing experience means nothing if the audience is not bringing their own enthusiasm to the table. You don’t win that enthusiasm by trying to please everybody — you stand on business about what you believe in and what you’re passionate about, and let them organically gel with that. People don’t like being sold to.
#3: Events
Sticking with The Splatterhouse and branching off of that first point, there’s so much more potential for great, movie-centric events when you’re dutifully working in the confines of a set theatrical identity.
I’m talking pre- or post-showing trivia nights with subjects ranging from entire franchises to just one film.
I’m talking live interviews with folks who worked on the film being shown, maybe even a VFX demonstration if you get an interviewee from that department.
I’m talking blocking off August 2nd for an in-house celebration of Wes Craven’s birthday, complete with a massive birthday cake and morning-to-night marathons of his A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream films.
Of course, these should be done sparingly so as to keep the majority of the focus on watching films rather than fan-driven gimmickry, but we should never count out the importance of supplementing the film with adjacent engagement beyond the frame.
#4: Make space for local filmmakers
The picture you see above is from a film called Drive Back Home, a Canadian film set in 1970s Fredericton (the aforementioned city I lived in for roughly a decade). It’s a tiny little film (despite featuring Avengers: Doomsday’s Alan Cumming as one of the leads) — certainly not the kind that would receive a theatrical release in my city, if not for the fact that this film’s subject matter is directly engrained in the history of the area.
People knew this, and my showing was packed as a result. This film pulled a seated audience thanks to the microcosm of cultural relevance that only it could have tapped into, and that only the people of Fredericton (and Atlantic Canada more broadly) could emotionally respond to as uniquely as they did.
By making space for local filmmakers and films that are born from the area that it’s being shown in, there’s a new significance that comes with bringing oneself to the movies. The magic of moviegoing coalescing with the intimacy of the everyday. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an experience.
#5: Shops
The cinema in my old city was inside a mall, and also in this mall was a physical media store that I frequently used to build up my DVD collection.
At The Splatterhouse2, you could have a selection of obscure slasher DVDs displayed right beside the snackbar, together with a wrack of Splatterhouse merch and vintage Halloween t-shirts.
Here, the moviegoing experience expands beyond the act of moviegoing. Now, you moviego not just to experience something, but to subsequently decorate other aspects of your life and expression in honour of that experience. Memorabilia can be more than ticket stubs and popcorn buckets, and movies can be more than something you go to.
Indeed, they also can be things that you bring home.
Thanks again to Ted for another fun, interactive rallying cry!
This piece will take the place of my usual film criticism post today. I’ll be moving today’s originally-scheduled post — a dissection of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — to Friday.
I was born in 1997.
Fun fact: I have slashers on the mind because I’m writing a slasher screenplay.
Thanks Charlotte. Reading this makes me want to go out to the movies -- despite the fact that it is only 7A!