I went to a school that showed Spiderman 2. That is a pg movie. I suggest putting the rating of the movie on the flyer and letting the parents decide if that is okay. PS. The Spiderman 2 was a sell out at an elementary school.

Those of you who have done a movie night ... do you worry about movie ratings? showing a PG?

Hi,
We had our schools first family movie night last Fall. It was a huge hit and we plan on doing it again.

Here are my answers to your questions:
1) What movie? - We are a K-5 school, so we put a vote to the classrooms (24) with 4 movies we picked and asked them to vote. Sharkboy & Lava Girl was our winner.
2)$50 Fee - if you follow the link on this site to the family movie night - there will be a place to sign up for a movie night kit. Order it and in that will be a form to order a one time movie license to show one movie. If you plan on doing several throughout the year, you can buy a one year license.
3)Best night? We did ours on a Friday night and started at 7pm.
4)Max time limit? Not sure what you mean here? We opened our doors at 6:30 so everyone could grab popcorn, a bag of candy and a drink and find a seat in our gym and have the movie start at 7pm so we could be done and cleaned up by 9:30/10:00pm.

This was our first time doing it and it was GREAT!
About 6 weeks before our movie night we put out the flyer to the teachers for the classroom votes on the 4 movies we picked. Once the winning movie was decided on, we ordered the movie license. We charged admission of $1.50 to cover the cost of the license, popcorn, candy and pop. We had 360 people RSVP and we sent tickets home - presale only, we had no door sales and we made sure our flyers stated "an adult must accompany all children". Our gym capacity is 420. We had the kids wear pjs(optional) bring pillows and sleeping bags and they all sat on the floor in the gym. Looking back I would cut off at 300 as it got very "cozy", but i don't think the kids cared!
We rented a popcorn machine to pop fresh popcorn - good idea, but it is very slow and we only started 30 minutes prior and had to run to Walmart to buy prepopped bags to add to the machine to accomodate the "rush" before the movie started. We pre-made candy bags of mini candy bars (we held ours right around Halloween) and each person got a bag of popcorn, bag of candy and a mini-pop or water.
I used my own personal DVD player and borrower our music teacher's speaker system and the schools LCD projector and showed the movie on the gym wall. Since our movie was 3D, we were lucky enough to have a local theater with a left over box of 3D glasses they donated to us.
The tickets were turned in when people got their popcorn/candy/pop and we raffled off the movie at the end of the night.
We had about 8 volunteers and that was plenty - check-in table and popcorn/candy/pop table. Our principal stayed in the gym to keep "control" of the room for us.

This really was a great night for us and since it was the first time, we were pretty nervous going into it. The only bad thing I would say is it was crowded and we would have to popping the popcorn earlier, I would still buy pre-popped bags just in case.

We just had our 3rd Bingo/Ice Cream Social this past Friday the 13th! It also is a huge hit at our school. We had 325 people attend - we had to cut the limit on this function because we needed tables and chairs.

Hope this helps......sorry it's so longwinded, just trying to cover everything.

We've done four Family Movie Nights. Our annual license covers any movie we show as long as they are from a list of production companies. We have them scheduled every other month throughout they year. The annual fee covers them all, not for just one movie.
There is a one showing license available, but the annual was a better value. It also covers any showing that is done at the school, providing they are films from the approved production companies.

You would need a lisence for each movie. At least thats my understanding.

I was thinking of showing two movies too. But I know the kids and parents would be all over the place. It wouldnt be worth the aggrivation.

Cindy

Okay, we are planning our 1st FMN soon & I like the choice of 2 movies idea, but do you need an extra liscense to show 2 movies? (I know this probably sounds like a dumb question, but I am new... bare with me!)