It’s fun to give money to theaters. I wish it was more, but it’s something. Week 2 was down from the first week, but Week 3 is tracking closer to opening weekend.
We had 25 theaters in Week 2. For Week 3, we dropped 8 and added 13.
Below are Week 1&2 payments broken out by theaters (names redacted.) This may be the final week I share such granular details, but for now I find it interesting and helpful to analyze. I’m sending payments bi-weekly, so first checks go out Monday.
While at most theaters Phoenix, Oregon was the only film offered in Week 1, now most theaters have a “virtual screening room” on their websites offering many films.
It took me several hours to prepare the theater payment reports. I exported from our payment processor, formatted, sorted and created a report for each theater.
That process won’t be scalable past 30–40 theaters, so I need to devise a new system this week for reporting. I also want to provide affiliates (theaters, festivals, etc) an online portal so they can view real-time sales. Shopify has this functionality through third party apps, but I haven’t quite found the right combination.
Next week, we’ll add 30 festivals to the mix for Film Festival Day on April 11. I’d love to give the festivals some visibility into their sales leading up to the event.
We are also in conversations with other organizations to do simliar promotions.
So it looks like the next step for me is to focus on the scalability of the system.
For now, the customer experience seems to be working well — except when those dang spam blockers occasionally block a customer confirmation email… I need to call my email providers to get that cleared up.
Onward,
♡ Annie