A poor sound system is hard to recover from. If you can grab their attention right off then you're okay but with that kind of a bump it is hard to get everyone back on track.
We serve bag dinners at ours (had one for 300 last Thursday) which is nice cause folks ease into the movie and then are full and can laydown and relax. We take the first 5 minutes to lay down the "rules" and let parents know we will ask them to leave if their children get out of control. We also test the movie before hand to ensure it is working (and the system is working). Finally we arrange things at our functions so there are no large spaces for running. Parents sleeping is one I'm not sure I'd know how to broach except for a 5 minute intermission telling folks that their attention to both the movie and their children is expected. Sorry it went poorly...perhaps a few months for everyone to recoup and regroup after this one will put things back in a more favorable light.
We just had a first movie night last night and it was a disaster. We have had them before and things didn't seem so bad. Let me explain what happen and see if anyone has ideas of how to improve. First our PA system didn't work so we could barely hear the first 15 min. of the movie, we did get it fixed but it seemed like it took awhile to get the parents and the kids back on track. Then about 3/4 of the way the kids were getting restless and we actually had parents that were sleeping and not watching their kids( we were showing a recently released movie). I was chasing small children and bring them to their sleeping parents all night long, we had older kids pitching pennies in the hallway and chasing after the girls. We did have enough help and all the parents that were helping were walking around and making sure that all children were contained. I am the current PTO Pres. and I attend almost all the school functions as well as help out. My husband took on this committee and was very excited about helping out but after last night he said he won't do it again, it was too stressful to keep up with all the kids ( we had about 75 kids and parents) show up. Does anyone have ideas of how to contain and entertain the crowd better for a better and more organize event. I feel disappointed at myself for not doing a better job in organizing but I can seem to also blame some of the parents who attended and just left the kids to us to babysit. We put in our flyer that this is a "family night". Please help, I would like to do another movie night under better conditions. HELP
We purchased a yearly license and hold a movie night once a month. We look at it as a family/community night(ie. a chance for families in our low income area to do something fun together). We charge $3 per FAMILY and it looks like at the end of the year, we'll break even. The popcorn is donated by a local Flagship cinema and a few members bring in big Igloo containers full of juice/water/etc. Our community and even the PTO members have a lot of fun putting this together and at it.
IMO, it is SO SO worth it. In fact, our Dec. movie is Polar Express. We going to do cookie decorating and Hot Chocolate before. We really make a night of it.
Are you sure that your school district doesn't have a license... Since you are showing it at the school, I thought that if the school district has a license for the school, that you can piggyback on it, since the Movie is being shown on school property. You might want to check into this...
We have 2 movie nights a year.
One in December- we show a Holiday Movie and 1 in the late Spring-- the kids love it-- and the parents have a great time. Good luck!
