THE MEN OF DODGE CITY, directed by Nandan Rao

Filmmaker Nandan Rao launched Simple Machine in March 2013 at SXSW. The goal of the site is to facilitate the public exhibition of microbudget (<$100K) films – most of which are never screened for public audiences after their festival runs – by directly connecting filmmakers to audiences. Though there is a possibility for filmmaker/distributor profit within the Simple Machine model (via ticket revenue), the primary function of the service is to foster a grassroots network of communities (exhibition sites, programmers, and cinephiles) that are passionate about truly independent cinema. It has now been a year since the site began offering its services, carrying a library of films by directors such as Joe Swanberg, Dustin Guy Defa, Robert Greene, and Amy Seimetz. While there have been dozens of one-off screenings along the way, a consistently operating venue or screening series has not arisen. I intend to change that.

If Simple Machine’s potential is to be fulfilled, it is necessary to create pockets of strong local interest. Right now, there are only a few areas where you can see many of these movies in a public setting – New York City, Austin, Chicago, occasionally Los Angeles or Seattle – and there is the Internet, where microbudget cinema has found a home. The challenge, it seems, is to generate new physical outposts for a mostly online community. Ideally, these physical outposts would grow local audiences, which would then feed back into and expand the overall network. People actually talking about films with other people can be quite powerful.

The Micro-Wave Film Series (“micro” budget + new “wave”) is my attempt to give concrete form to the hypothetical promise contained within Simple Machine. Every screening takes place in a fantastic UW-Madison campus theater, is free, and involves a Q & A session with the filmmaker(s) afterward. Sounds great, right? Well, as of now, people are not coming. Community building requires the slowness and steadiness of the proverbial tortoise. However, someone has to take the first big step. If anything, taking that first step has taught me how difficult it can be to create and/or mobilize an audience, especially when relying on the Internet.

In my case, for example, we have garnered 170 likes on our Facebook page. Facebook tells me that 60 of those are Madison residents. Not a ton of fans, but if even 25% of those Madison fans showed up to each screening, we would be pulling in about 15 audience members at each screening. Terrific! However, these are the actual attendance figures for our four screenings thus far this semester: 18, 7, 4, and 3. Indeed, Facebook also tells me that we only have 10 “engaged” fans located in Madison. So much for all those sponsored posts.

To be fair, these early stumbles are likely due to my lack of experience as a promoter, not just the inefficiencies of Facebook advertising. I only decided to do the series in January, so I have been flying by the seat of my pants. Hopefully, more planning time and experience will result in more efficacious publicity. These sorts of difficulties, however, extend beyond my specific circumstance. The challenges of audience building and mobilization seem endemic to public film exhibition outside of a traditional theatrical setting, especially with films that lack mainstream stars and significant advertising budgets. Depressingly, way more people will come out for a campus screening of the new Thor film than a screening of a film they might not be able to see anywhere, anytime, anyhow, even with the bonus of special access to the filmmakers. How does an upstart exhibition organization effectively attract and reward viewers, especially when the films are produced by total independents? This question is interesting to me not just as a budding programmer and exhibitor, but also as a filmmaker and, most pertinent to this blog, an academic. I imagine my understanding will grow along with my experience. I hope to deliver progress reports to Antenna in the future.

THE INTERNATIONAL SIGN FOR CHOKING, directed by Zach Weintraub, kicked off Micro-Wave in Madison.

Of course, Micro-Wave, has also been a relative success. Our first screening, a double feature of films by Zach Weintraub, was well-attended and well-received. Though subsequent screenings have had lower attendance, audience members have expressed enthusiasm for the films and our Q & As have been candid, informative, and very conversational. Beyond our Madison audience, we have received great feedback from other filmmakers, critics, and miscellaneous participants in the microbudget community. A few of them have even told me that they intend to start their own local chapters of Micro-Wave, which I wholeheartedly support. Importantly, Micro-Wave is also serving as a major testing ground for the Simple Machine model. Screening the films has required me to exchange films in various forms (mailed Blu-ray discs, mailed flash drives, Vimeo downloads, Dropbox downloads, BitTorrent peer-to-peer sharing) and to manage physical Q & As, Skype Q & As and Google Hangouts. To me, Micro-Wave (particularly this first semester) is like beta testing for what Simple Machine will eventually become. Hopefully, it will be something transformative.

Ian Clark’s MMXIII

On Sunday, March 30 @ 7:00 PM, Micro-Wave will be screening Ian Clark’s MMXIII (2013), followed by a Skype Q & A with the director. On Sunday, April 13 @ 7:00 PM, Micro-Wave will present a double feature of films by Kris Swanberg, with the director in attendance: IT WAS GREAT, BUT I WAS READY TO COME HOME (2009) and EMPIRE BUILDER (2012).

Last week, Kevin Williamson, a columnist for National Review, had a new experience: He was thrown out of a theater – probably with more delicacy and ceremony than when he threw another patron’s phone across the room. According to Williamson, a young woman had already ignored requests from Williamson’s date and the management to refrain from using her phone during the performance. Having had enough after his own request was curtly refused, he “deftly snatch[ed] the phone out of her hand and toss[ed] it across the room, where it would do no more damage.” On goes the war against cell phone use in theaters…

Though unfamiliar with the battles being fought for the spectatorial soul of live theatre, I am acquainted with analogous debates and calls to arms over movie theater etiquette. One of the most visible defenders of cinemagoing decorum has been Tim League, co-founder and CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. During a panel at the 2012 CinemaCon, for example, influential figures like Regal Entertainment Group CEO Amy Miles and IMAX President Greg Foster expressed tentative interest in the possibility of loosening bans on cell phone use during select screenings as a concession to youth viewers. League responded that ceding ground was the wrong approach. “It’s our job to understand that this is a sacred space and we have to teach manners.” Such rhetoric, which elevates theatrical exhibition beyond its commodity status and into the realm of the sublime or spiritual, is quite common. Like churches, cathedrals, temples, and so forth, movie theaters function as spaces of congregation for collective activity. Prohibitions against cell phone use concern the maintenance of that collectivity – i.e., the teaching of manners – a hard-won prize if the variety of “No Texting / No Talking” PSAs is any indication.

One must ask, though, if common assumptions about audience collectivity are synonymous with the most basic intentions behind these trailers. Consider this commentary from the movie news and review website Screen Rant:

“Theatergoing is a communal experience that, in its purest form, is made better by the other people who share in the experience. We laugh more during a comedy film, surrounded by other people who are similarly entertained, than we would alone in our apartment. We knowingly enter into this social contract when attending public screenings – expecting that sharing in the experience with other people is worth any inconvenience we might face as a result of ignoring our phones for two hours.”

Judging by the expectations of cinemagoing evident in this excerpt and elsewhere, it would be easy to assume that the crimes of inconsiderate audience members amount to an unwillingness to participate in the affective community created by common attentiveness to a movie. Such jeremiads regularly decry the apparent inability of mobile users to disconnect from the outside world and embrace immersion, in which case these reprimands double as laments: “If you’d only put away your phone, you’d experience what I/we experience.” In fact, though, what these arguments denounce is interference. The glow of miniature screens and the beeps of incoming text messages are not, in and of themselves, problematic; rather, it is their ability to render others’ affective and intellectual experiences discontinuous that causes concern. The social contract supposedly implicit in attending a theatrical screening does not require that we contribute to others’ viewing experiences; it asks that we not detract from them.

The photo leading this post, then, strikes me as an inaccurate representation of the problem at hand for exhibitors and patrons, though I have seen it accompany several blogs and articles about the place of phones in theaters. What it depicts are not viewers frustrated with other patrons’ thoughtless behavior; rather, we see twelve audience members blissfully immersed in their own business, ignorant of both the movie screen and those around them. With one or two adjustments, it sketches the basic goal of “No Texting / No Talking” PSAs: a situation in which viewers do not interfere with the attentiveness of others (ideally, to the film).

Tim League’s CinemaCon comments – especially the line, “Over my dead body will I introduce texting into the movie theater” – thus seem short-sighted. To reiterate, the problem with personal devices is not their presence, as League and others suggest, but their lack of integration into the viewing experience. When these technologies contribute to spectatorial practices – as is the case with HeckleVision – perhaps calls for the eviction of phones from theaters will quiet, at least under some circumstances. Already, the mainstream exhibition industry is looking for ways to incorporate personal devices into the practices of cinemagoing. Apps like MoviePal, Movie Night Out, and RunPee help smartphone users plan their trips to the theater. Cinemark’s branded app, featuring CineMode, and Sprint’s “Dream” campaign use coupons and personalized videos, respectively, to reward smartphone owners for not using their devices during shows. In each of these cases, though, viewing itself remains a personal, analog activity. In 2010, Best Buy’s Movie Mode app took tentative steps toward assimilating mobile devices into spectatorial practice with its Minionator function, which translated the gibberish spoken by Gru’s Minions during the end credits. The most ambitious experiment to date, however, seems to be App (2013), a Dutch thriller designed to utilize smartphones as second screens. At select moments during the film, an associated app notifies theatergoers of additional, narratively salient content accessible through their phones.

Whether cinema storytellers will pursue experiments like these in the future remains to be seen, and it is still less clear that such integration can become standard of the theater experience. However, both App and Despicable Me point to a basic, easily overlooked facet of theatrical exhibition: rather than pre-existing as an abstract set of rules – a social contract signed with the purchase of a ticket – the practices of cinema spectatorship are enacted anew by each congregated audience. As new conditions arise and standardize, both audiences and the industry adapt in kind. Moreover, these adaptations not only represent new possibilities of practice, they reflect new and legitimate, if contentious, expectations of practice.