Film Rights Basics
When we screen movies on a campus we have to get the film rights. That’s the case whenever you show films to a large group of people. The exceptions to this rule are if you are showing a film that is already in the public domain and is free to screen or if you are showing a film just to some of your friends. You don’t need to get the rights if you are screening a film just for your floor but if you open it up to the general public or your whole building to attend that’s when we need to start talking about film rights! We use two different companies to obtain our film rights Swank and Criterion.
Themed Movie Nights for Colleges or Teenage/Adult Friends
The reason I wanted to point these two companies out to you is because not only do you need them if you need to obtain the rights to films, but they are also a great programming tool!
They have pages for RA’s with education films and programming topics
They have programming calendars which give you themed movies for each month of the year!
They also give out programming ideas in their online monthly catalog. The examples they had this month were:
- Screening Godzilla and handing out green slime, green kool-aid, and to promote fill a high profile area with tiny fake lizards with the movie information.
- Screening Frozen and having everyone entering cut out and decorate their own paper snowflake and giving out treats like popsicles and frozen yogurt.
- Screening the Lego Movie and having guests bring a toy to be given to charity and also have a challenge to see who can build their lego contraption with out directions the fastest.
Themed Movie Nights for Kids
These companies also work with the K-12 system so they also have programming ideas for kids!
As you can see above a lot of the programming ideas they put together for college students would work for kids too, both the Lego Movie and Frozen are kid favorites right now and lets face it college students are just big kids at heart.
Another great resource for finding out how to theme your event to a movie is just searching on pintrest. People are proud to show of their creative ideas they’ve put together to themed event.
And hey if you’re really in a bind and need some help planning your themed movie night event write me at easyeventideas@gmail.com not only do I plan events in the DC, VA, MD area I am also available to customize an event for you remotely and give you all of the plans and materials to do it yourself!