[IMC-Video] Video Venue Locations

[victori at resist.ca]

Here's some good suggestions for setting them up locally

Look for library rooms, Pizza places, independent theaters, cafes,
restaurants. Places like these are great because you accidentally show
your stuff to an unreached community and minimal promotion is necessary
because you're using their patrons. However do promote because the more
patrons you bring, the more militant you can get with your content without
being asked to not come back. To secure these venues, do not charge
admission and explain to the owner who you are and what you're planning to
do. You can easily get your funding from passing a jar and this way the
owner will not charge you or ask for a cut.

Do not use activist centric spaces no matter how tempting it may be. Often
activist centric spaces do not feel open to the public and/or are not
close to popular areas of towns. Plus almost always they'll need to charge
to maintain the space and then you'll have to charge to pay them leaving
you with no money or worse minus money. Always a lot of promotion work is
necessary to get the public to these types of spaces.
However if your goal is to get people to start using the space and get the
general public there. Then yes do it. But keep in  mind who exactly you
are targeting and why.

For multiple shows, reserve a day every month ie the last monday of the
month for one venue and the first wednesday at another. Schedule them for
the next 3 months(usually this is the farthest ahead allowed). When you
make your monthly flyers, radio, print, and electronic announcements
include all these dates for the month on each of them. Try hard not to
change the routine. This way people will follow the routine and your
promotion efforts can kick back a notch while your audience does the 10-10
friend game(as long as the shows run smoothly and everyone's happy). Also
pass around an announce email list sign up sheet. We currently have
somewhere around 300-500 on ours. With doing all this I was able to do up
to 8 shows per month. If promotions and venue placement are done
thoughtfully, often these shows can be a persons first intro to indy.
Always direct the audience to other current projects in your imc. Always
stick around afterward to cleanup after your audience and direct all
interested folks individually to other imc projects through 1 on 1
conversation. It really helps to have folks from the other projects
available to point to.

That's all I can think of for now. If anyone has any questions feel free
to ask, I did this for a year and a half or so and tried a lot of things.

Solidarity,
            Victory!