Stranger in a Strange Land

All,

Ya'll overwhelm me. I'm the only engineer in the bunch and therefore do not have it within my abilities to continue this precident of haragues. I just don't have the time nor the desire to outline my arguments so thoroughly.

Here is my attempt to understand what is going on:

1. Chris doesn't want Block to cater to the desires of those who do not respect the brand (i.e., North Campus frat boys)

2. Jason does not believe that by reorganizing the schedule of movies we are changing the brand, merely expanding our scope


Based on these assumptions, I would like to express my own thoughts on the matter.

I believe that more visibility is important. Any way to do this is worth it. If that means placing specific movies on specific nights in order to draw more of a crowd, even if those in the crowd seem less than ideal, should be done.

We need flyerers. I know everyone hates it but if we don't do it, we are invisible. We have said that maybe flyers are a thing of the past and that everyone reads their email, but I hate emails. I delete and ignore emails and the time I spend reading messages, I could be doing something more productive. On the other hand, I have time to read flyers because I can't be doing anything else while walking to class. Flyers ARE important. We should just suck it up and freeze our tushes off for the cause.

There, my post is complete. We need more visibility and we need flyerers.

Love you all,
Emily

Block's Identity, Part I (In Response to Chris)

Chris,

You're right - we can't pander to a north campus audience and alienate the people who are coming to us. You mentioned our brand identity; so this is a good time to ask: who is our audience, what is Block's brad identity, and what should Block's identity be?

The adult and "mature adult" audience sees a lot of the foreign films as a kind of educational experience, a look into another culture. They like seeing narrative, and films that they may have seen once awhile ago, or have heard of, but have never seen before. They are not hyper-intellectual"high-brow" cinefiles, ( i.e. can explicate the work of structuralist filmmakers or like later Godard). This is a good thing for us. For the most part, they are understanding of our technical flubs. The audience's good will It lets us show Hollywood movies like "Falling Down" and "Spice World", without poo-pooing us off screen.

When not prompted by a class, our student audience shows up to movies that they've heard about but never seen (Bridge on the River Kwai), or more importantly, to movies that are EVENTS. Sonic Celluloid. Planet Earth - an awesome stoner television on the big screen. Most of them are film majors.

Reaching out to north campus for the rock series shouldn't be about abandoning our audience. Rather, we should take it is a micro-example of the kind of communication we should be doing all across campus on a consistent basis: We should be emailing clubs, residential halls, and sororities giving them information about the films and asking to be on their newsletters - in advance. We need to communicate.

Every night at Block should be an experience. The showcaptain’s speech needs to be a performance – just like it says in ‘dere booth. You support the film to support your friends. We should take pride in projecting , but the sloppy reel changes can be endearing too, if we can laugh with the customers about it ; it's organic. It’s an experience.

Radiation CAN give you brain tumors

Hey guys,



I'll respond to some more admin issues in a bit, but for now, here's the youtube link to RADIATION CAN GIVE YOU BRAIN TUMORS (1997), directed by Matthew Silver. The 15 minute video is broken up into 5 youtube segments... weird. It's part of my idea for a Y2k night, which was pitched during programming.

Transparency and Branding

Yay for Bl0g.

Speaking of irony, I find blogs quite silly and you must forgive me if i give in to the temptation to 'camp' or 'snark' blogginess on our own blog. For an example of excellent snarky camping of bloggers please see www.hipsterrunoff.com. It's so perfect because it adopts the snarky voice of hipsters in order to 'camp' them but the thing about hipsters is that no authentic hipster would actually admit to being a hipster but are all merely playing the role of 'hipster,' just like HRO is playing the role of 'hipster blog' and is thus the ideal representative of hipsters on the 'blogosphere.'

Now for some more relevant input, having more to do with block. This new initiative to reach out to the denizens of north campus is at the same time exciting and troubling to me. Having lived for two years on north campus, one of them spent in a once-esteemed fraternity 'house,' I feel I have a pretty good handle on this demographic. It is exciting to see Block reach out to the northerners because they are plentiful and tend to move in herds. However, we must be vigilant to stay true to the block cinema brand.

Series like the Planet Earth [almost] HD series and the Rock Series have an innate appeal to both the artist and the 'bro.' While we can capitalize on this duality, we can not compromise the meaning of block's brand. We can cater to the needs of north campus in order to make cinema and the arts a more convenient appeal but we cannot, at the same time alienate our identity. For an example I point to the case of the Volvo C70 convertible. The first generations of this car did not sell well and were difficult to market because Volvo's brand identity is built on safety whereas topless convertibles are seen by some to be less safe in the event of collision or an automobile capsize. In the newest edition, Volvo has developed the ROPS system which apparently fires steel roll bars out to protect your head when you flip it driving home from the yacht club fired up on tanqueray and valium. You may notice, however, that these cars are still a relatively rare sight on the road.

It has taken me too long to say it and I apologize for my lack of brevity but I am simply trying to add into the discussion a consideration of our basic brand identity and a realistic consideration of who from north campus will be attracted to block cinema. Is a concert before a movie a transparent gesture?

That being said, I think Mind At Large can pack any house with a variety of people and they are totally sweet dudes and I think a concert/film double whammy is totally awesome.

Yours In Brotherhood,
CSW

Winter Programming Schedule

Alright, guys. Here's what I've come up with for the scheduling of the Rock 'n' Roll series. I def think it'd be good to discuss when the films are being shown, what days, etc.


1)Chuck berry fri Jan 9
2)Spiceworld wed Jan 14
3)Meeting People is Easy wed Jan 21
4)Hard Day's Night wed Jan 28
5)The Last Waltz fri Feb 6
6)Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars wed Feb 11/The Decline of Western Civilization fri Feb 13
7)The TAMI Show fri Feb 20
8)Dig! thur Feb 26
9)Don't Look Back fri Mar 5
10)Gimme Shelter fri Mar 13

The question Will mentioned on the spiceworld programming is whether you guys think it's too early? I put it on a wednesday because I consulted with 4 of my sorority friends and they all said weds would be best (granted, they're all south campus ladies). Now, I put it at the start of the quarter to try and get large interest and get it early. I think as long as we can get on marketing it at the start of the quarter (which I think we can) then this is good. What do y'all think?

Also, here are some justifications for other ones. I put the radiohead one after because I thought that might have the best chance of getting sorority hang over from the week before. I'm not sure if that's an accurate thought at all as I know not everyone listens to radiohead, but it was the only one I thought had a chance, popular and modern. I put chuck berry at the start because he's original rock 'n' roll, but further I thought that one appealed least to students and, since calendars won't be out yet, might be better to place at the beginning. I'm not sure I had specific thoughts on the others. I like the ziggy going into decline, kind of a 70's glam into late 70's punk.

I guess that's all. I'd love to hear what you guys think now and at the admin meeting as well.

loves
andy