Help me with my film night!

[MadameFod]

I am arranging our first film night for a small primary school. It is likely that we will have 50-70 children attend.

I have been reading on forums about schools charging around £2 including a snack and drink. To cover the STSL licence fee, we would have to be charging nearer £6. Am I doing something wrong here? Is it completely illegal to show a bought DVD and charge only for food so that we make some profit? We would not be advertising out of school and only our pupils would be invited.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

But it's only £83 for a single title DVD licence through Filmbank here which would make £2 - £2.50 reasonable.

Thanks Galena. So, does that mean I don't have to add a minimum charge of £50 or 35% of takings? The STSL as I understand it is £91 + £14.99 for film delivery. That would mean I need at least 42 children paying £2.50 to break even. Although I can see us covering costs, I am not seeing the big money spinner I was hoping for! We would have to charge more to include refreshments.

You can buy a yearly licence, so if you have several film nights then you may not make a big profit this time but you would make more money on future film nights. Are you a ptfa? Are you a member of ncpta? If so they have more details on their website.

Or school should have a licence, if it's only your pupils attending, would school mind you using their licence so you're covered that way.

We've given snacks of pizza or hot dogs in the past as we hold ours straight after school. We usually make a profit of £1 per child.

Our school does this - and they advertise it as 'after school child care' and NOT 'film night'.

It used to be called film night, but it was changed to 'after school child care' - they did tell us the reason (perfectly legit as somebody on PTA has legal-eagle husband) & I'm sure it was something to do with not having to pay a license if you called it child care rather than film night.

Sorry to sound vague - perhaps worth googling or looking into?

Anyhow, each child is £3.50 at our school, we collect at 5pm and every child is given a drink, packet of crisps and some sweets (50% of kids only go for the sweets & crisps and a natter with their mates!).

Also, ours didnt use to be open to YR kids (one PTA mum says they are just too young and tired to concentrate on a film straight after school and you spend the entire time with the whole of reception sat on your lap wanting to go home!). But after changing it to 'after school child care' it has to be open to all kids, so YR do now go (and do still end up sitting on laps of parent helpers!). Makes a brilliant profit at our school apparently.

Good luck - if I can find any more info out about the 'child care' as opposed to 'film night' thing, i'll post again.

One way to get round it is to make sure it has an 'educational theme' which could be as simple as a sheet to fill in with examples of kindness (for example). Then a quick roundup at the end discussing the examples they spotted. If it's educational, there's no licence needed...

I do one every half term - we charge £5 for popcorn, drink and the film - £2 of which is for the film (which we put on the 'ticket') and there are sibling discounts for second and subsequent children. I usually make around £200-250 profit with between 80-90 children attending, although I do make the popcorn myself, rather than buy it, which saves money (though not time) so you should make something with fewer children. I don't think it's too much to charge for 2 hours childcare, refreshments and a film!

We do open it to the whole school, but get very few children from Reception in the first two terms - we tend to only get siblings in the Autumn and Easter terms - they are shattered and either fall asleep or just curl up with a brother or sister!

If it's classed as childcare is there not an OFSTED registration required with correct ratios etc?! It may avoid the licence fee, but doesn't it just open a huge can of worms?

Just checked my last few invoices - we pay Filmbank £116 for each film (which includes the net guarantee thingy).....

We do it every year, charge 4.50 each, including drink and popcorn, We show 2 films (one more aimed at Ks1, one at kS2) and separate charge for each. We get about 150 over the two, make about 200? It's not a huge money spinner, we do it more because its a nice thing to do for the kids.