Movie Night at Church

[Greg Farra]

The last few years, we have a drive in movie night a few times in the summer at our church, and we open it up to the community. We have free food and drinks, and games for the kids until it gets dark. Then we project a movie on the front of the church. Tonight we saw' A Night at the Museum'.
That was the good part. The bad part was that we had two bathroom incidents. Apparently, some little kid had a problem with explosive diahrrea. The youth pastor's wife asked if I could check out some 'problem' in the men's room. Another guy and I had just finished cleaning up the mess when another kid comes running down the hall and projectile vomits all over the carpet and the tile outside and inside the men's room. This was 20 times worse than what we had just cleaned up. I found out this kid had consumed 4 hot dogs and two root beer floats!:gen13

[Scott Daniels]

Greg,

Gross story. Has the church ever gotten in trouble for showing the movies publicly? I don't mean with the congregation, I mean with the copyright folk. Just curious, b/c I'd love to have us do those kind of things but we can never get permission to do so.

Scott

[Anita F. Henck]

From my former college administrator days, I remember just enough on this to be dangerous! If the movie is rented for public use, it can be done for large public settings. The "public use" rental is generally $200 or so. It may be more if you are, in turn, going to charge admission. Renting for "private use" (through Blockbuster, etc.) is not allowed for large group showing, according to copyright law. We defined "private use" as being 15-20 people or fewer.

At the same time, the companies that provide the public use rental service also have "modified" versions of movies which reduce the inappropriate language. It opens up more movies for group showing.

I would imagine the Ryan Scott or Jeremy Scott could add to this discussion. They were involved in student leadership when we were at ENC together, but they have younger memories than I do!

[Greg Farra]

I don't know about the copyright issue. I know we don't charge for anything.
I'll have to check into it.

[Greg Farra]

I asked our youth pastor about copyright. We are covered under some kind of license. It allows us to use some movies, but not others, depending on the company.

[Ryan Scott]

Churches can apply for a licence similar to the CCLI that they get for music. It's relatively inexpensive, but you do have to choose from a list of movies that are covered. Most movie distribution companies are covered, but not all.

I'm guessing colleges are not allowed to get in on that deal or else we were too dumb to check when I was on student government at ENC. We did get a yearlong pass from one company. It allowed us to show like five or six movies for $500. Fines can be quite steep for violating the copyright. I believe 19 people is the max that can watch a movie without the license. Rumor has it one of the Nazarene colleges got busted for having more than 19 watching a movie in a common area while I was in school, but of course I have no idea how truthful that is.

[Jim Monck]

Hey, look on the bright side. You not only get to show the movie as an outreach but also get to have an exciting jail ministry, from the inside.

[Greg Farra]

:fav18Tonight we're giving away 300 free ice cream cones at Handels Ice Cream. We're having games, animal balloons, inflatables and face painting. It's about 90 degrees here, so we should have a good turnout.:fav18

[Jim Monck]

:fav18Tonight we're giving away 300 free ice cream cones at Handels Ice Cream. We're having games, animal balloons, inflatables and face painting. It's about 90 degrees here, so we should have a good turnout.:fav18

That sounds great Greg. Sorry I can not be there. Could you mail me a cone? Please!:cool:

[Greg Farra]

Jim,

I would, but it would melt before I got it in the envelope! I got a two scooper(coffee chocolate chip and chocolate pecan) in a dish and it melted on me so fast I had it all over my hand!

It was a blast last night. We could have gave out 20-30 more coupons. I saw a family from our old church there, and I met a guy that had visited our church Sunday. I was supposed to call him as a follow up, but I got to meet him in person. We had several people ask about our church, and I got to talk to some newer members and get to know them. All in all, a great time.:fav18


Greg

[Cindi Hammons]

Greg,

I have to ask....what church are you at? I graduated from Groveport H.S. in 19mumblemumble, and my parents still live in Columbus. You have me curious. :)

[Mike McVey]

Scott, (man that feels weird to type)
http://www.cvli.com/about/pricing.cfm
gives the pricing for the movie version of CCLI.

Ryan, I know that colleges and schools have a similar license. http://www.swank.com/college/main.html
One of them is here above.

[Mike McVey]

Greg,

I have to ask....what church are you at? I graduated from Groveport H.S. in 19mumblemumble, and my parents still live in Columbus. You have me curious. :)

Cindi, you graduated in 1997 too? That's amazing, so did I! :basic05

[Roland Hearn]

Churches can apply for a licence similar to the CCLI that they get for music. It's relatively inexpensive, but you do have to choose from a list of movies that are covered. Most movie distribution companies are covered, but not all.

I'm guessing colleges are not allowed to get in on that deal or else we were too dumb to check when I was on student government at ENC. We did get a yearlong pass from one company. It allowed us to show like five or six movies for $500. Fines can be quite steep for violating the copyright. I believe 19 people is the max that can watch a movie without the license. Rumor has it one of the Nazarene colleges got busted for having more than 19 watching a movie in a common area while I was in school, but of course I have no idea how truthful that is.

That is all correct as far as I can remember Ryan. We showed a video clip in every service at NewStart. I found it a brilliant way to connect and create a sense of what the service was about. The license is called MPLC and you can read all about it and purchase one @ http://www.mplc.org/. It is not expensive and definitely something all churches should look into.

[Cindi Hammons]

1997? I wish! Ha!