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.