USA edition. This guide is written for volunteer-run clubs in the United States. Where rules differ — grants, tax, incorporation, safeguarding — follow the USA-specific pointers below or check with your national body.
Twenty to eight on a Thursday. Sixty people are in the seats, the urn is on, the projectionist has the film cued, and somebody leans over the trestle table at the door and asks — quietly, pleasantly — whether the society ever got the licence sorted for tonight.
That question is the whole job in one sentence. Programming is why anyone volunteers for a film society: arguing over the season with a bottle of wine open, putting a film in front of ninety people who would never have found it alone, watching a room laugh in the same place at the same time. Rights, venue agreements, captions and the sound in row three are why the society still exists in ten years. Nobody joins a committee for the second list, and the second list is what separates a film society from a group of friends who own a projector.
This guide is for whoever is starting or running one — a subscription season in a hired hall, a community cinema that sells tickets to the public, a campus society, an outdoor summer program on a lawn. It covers the shapes a society can take, how screening rights actually work and the four legal routes to putting a film on a screen, programming a season people will pay for up front, pricing season memberships, choosing a venue and running the projection, and the access and captioning decisions that quietly determine who feels welcome.
The four shapes a society takes
These look identical from the seats and are completely different to run. Pick one on purpose, because the choice decides your licensing route, your money and how much you are allowed to advertise.
| Shape | How it runs | Where the money comes from | Volunteer load |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription season society | Members buy a whole season up front, screenings closed to members and guests | Season memberships, small guest fee | Concentrated — one big sign-up push |
| Community cinema | Open to the public, tickets sold per screening | Door and pre-sold tickets, occasional grant | Steady, every screening is a mini event |
| Campus society | A term program for students, often a room booked through the union | Student membership, faculty or union funding | High turnover, rebuilt every year |
| Pop-up or outdoor season | A short run of screenings in a park, courtyard or car park | Ticketing plus food and drink partners | Peaky — huge for six weeks, then quiet |
| Special-interest strand | Documentary, silent-with-live-score, a single language or director | Small dedicated membership, partner venues | Low volume, high programming effort |
Most societies are one shape with a little of another bolted on: a subscription season with two open public screenings a year to recruit, or a community cinema that sells a discounted pass to regulars. That is fine, as long as the committee knows which screening is which, because the licence, the advertising rules and the door process differ.
Screening rights — the part that keeps you legal
Here is the thing most new committees get wrong, and it is worth stating bluntly. Buying a disc, renting a digital file or holding a streaming subscription buys you private, domestic viewing. It does not buy you the right to show that film to a group of people outside your household, whether or not you charge, whether or not the audience is members-only, and whether or not you make a cent. Public exhibition is a separate right, controlled by whoever holds it for your territory, and you need permission before you advertise the title, not before you press play.
The good news is that permission is usually easy and cheaper than committees fear. There are four routes.
The four routes to a legal screening
| Route | What it covers | Who you ask | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Umbrella non-theatrical licence | A catalogue of studios and distributors, for a year, for a named venue | The licensing agency that represents those studios | An annual fee, often scaled to venue size or audience numbers |
| Per-title booking | One film, one date, one venue | The distributor's non-theatrical or community desk | A flat fee or a share of the box office, whichever is greater |
| Public domain or openly licensed | Older films whose rights have expired, or films released under an open licence | Nobody, but verify the status for your territory | Free, with real homework attached |
| Direct permission from the maker | Independent features, local documentaries, short-film packages | The filmmaker, producer or sales agent | Often free or a modest fee, sometimes a fee plus travel for a Q and A |
A few things that follow from that table and save societies a lot of grief:
- Ask the venue first. Halls, libraries, schools, universities and licensed clubs frequently already hold an umbrella licence for their own use. Sometimes it covers a hirer, sometimes it explicitly does not. Get the answer in writing before you buy anything yourself.
- An umbrella licence usually forbids public advertising of the title. That is the single most surprising condition for new committees. You can tell your members what is on. You often cannot put the film's name on a poster in a shop window or a public social post. This is exactly why so many societies are members-only by design — see the next section.
- Per-title bookings need lead time. Six to eight weeks is comfortable, and popular titles get held back during a theatrical or festival window.
- Get everything in writing and keep it. One folder, one document per screening: the permission, the agreed fee, the format, the date and the venue. If the society is ever asked, the folder is the answer.
The specifics of who licenses what vary by country and change over time, so treat the rest of this section as general orientation and confirm the current position with the rights holder, your venue or your national film body before you commit to a season.
In the United States, public performance rights sit separately from any purchase or subscription, and community screenings are typically covered either by an annual umbrella licence from an agency representing multiple studios or by a per-title booking through a distributor's non-theatrical division. Public libraries and campuses often hold a licence already. Independent and documentary titles are frequently handled by educational distributors who quote a screening fee per event, and a state humanities council or community foundation will sometimes fund a documentary series with a discussion attached.
Members-only or open to the public
This is the decision everything else hangs off, and it is worth making explicitly rather than drifting into.
| Members-only society | Open community cinema | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can come | Members and their signed-in guests | Anybody who buys a ticket |
| Typical licence | Umbrella licence or a non-theatrical per-title booking | Per-title booking, usually with a box-office share |
| Advertising the title | Usually restricted to members, in your own channels | Advertise freely, as agreed with the distributor |
| Money at the door | Season subscription paid in advance, guest fee on the night | Per-ticket, plus any advance sales |
| Cash-flow shape | Front-loaded, predictable | Screening by screening, weather-dependent |
| Growth engine | Word of mouth and a strong season brochure | Marketing every single screening |
The members-only model is genuinely easier to run, and the membership is not a legal fiction if you treat it properly. A society with a constitution, a subscription, a members list and an annual meeting is a real organisation. What makes it fall over is sloppiness — selling "membership" at the door for the price of a ticket to someone who has never heard of the society, then advertising the title publicly. If you want an open audience, take the public route and license accordingly. Both are legitimate. Doing one while pretending to be the other is not.
If you are only now setting the society up formally, how to start a social club covers the constitution, committee and bank account groundwork that this all sits on.
Programming a season people will subscribe to
A season is not a list of good films. It is a shape. The reliable structure balances the films the committee wants to show against the films that fill the hall, and puts them in an order that keeps people renewing.
The slots that make a season work
| Slot | Job it does | Placement |
|---|---|---|
| The opener | Sells next year's season on night one — accessible, warm | First screening |
| The crowd-pleaser | Pays for the difficult ones | Early, and again mid-season |
| The difficult one | The reason serious members subscribe | Never first, never last |
| The local or the short | Roots the society in its own place, and is easy to license | Paired ahead of a shorter feature |
| The restored classic | Reliable, and pulls an older audience who bring friends | Mid-season, midweek |
| The members' choice | Programmed by ballot from a shortlist | Late season, drives the ballot |
| The closer | Communal, funny or spectacular — end on a high | Final screening |
Eight to twelve screenings is the sweet spot for a volunteer committee: enough to feel like a season, few enough that every screening gets attention. Fortnightly beats weekly for almost everyone.
A worked programming timeline
For a season starting in week one, working backwards:
- Week minus 20 — the committee shortlists roughly triple the number of titles you need and checks availability and rough hire terms for each.
- Week minus 16 — season locked, bookings confirmed in writing, dates held with the venue.
- Week minus 12 — brochure and season page finalised, including content notes and access information for every title.
- Week minus 10 — subscriptions open to last year's members first, at the renewing rate.
- Week minus 6 — subscriptions open generally, guest tickets go on sale.
- Week minus 2 — technical check of every format you will use this season, with the actual kit, in the actual room.
- Week minus 1 — volunteer roster confirmed for every screening date.
The members' ballot deserves a specific mention because it does more work than its size suggests. Put six titles the committee has already cleared for availability in front of members, let them rank them, and screen the winner. You get a genuinely popular film, an excuse to email everyone mid-season, and a room full of people who feel like owners rather than customers. Run it as a simple online form and publish the result the same week.
Season memberships, passes and the money
Film society economics are unusually clean: a small number of predictable costs against a small number of predictable income lines. The variable that matters is not the ticket price, it is the fill rate.
Work in per-seat terms. Take the licence fee plus the venue hire for one screening, divide by the number of seats you honestly expect to fill — not the number of seats in the room — and that is what the screening costs per person before anything else. Add a share of the annual costs (insurance, projector maintenance, the website, printing) spread across the season. The number that comes out is your floor. Everything above it funds the difficult films and next year's equipment.
Four pricing models, and what each one really does:
| Model | How it feels to a member | What it does to the society |
|---|---|---|
| Pay at the door only | Zero commitment | No cash flow, no members list, weather ruins you |
| Season subscription only | A real commitment, best value | Money up front, a real membership, low door admin |
| Membership plus a small door fee | Fair for irregular attenders | Steadier, but two payment systems to run |
| Season pass sold alongside tickets | Choice, which people like | Best of both, and the pass quietly becomes the default |
Most established societies land on the third or fourth row. Whichever you pick, sell it online and stop counting cash in a biscuit tin — season pass versus single-event tickets works through the trade-off in more detail, and external ticketing site versus built-in ticketing covers where the booking fees go.
For a rough sense of scale in the United States, a library community room or campus theatre is frequently free or nominal, a rented hall runs $75 to $250 a night, an annual umbrella licence for a small venue sits in the mid hundreds to low thousands, and a per-title booking through an educational or independent distributor is commonly $200 to $500. Season passes of $60 to $120 for eight to twelve films are normal, with single admission around $8 to $12 and a student rate.
Venue, projection and the night itself
The two failures that lose an audience are not the film. They are dialogue you cannot make out and a picture that looks washed out. Both are solvable with a bit of discipline.
Choosing the room
Ask these seven questions of any venue before you sign:
- How dark does it actually get at your screening time, with the blinds you are allowed to use?
- What is the throw distance from the projector position to the screen, and can you fix the projector rather than wheeling it in?
- What is the sound like when the room is full — soft furnishings and bodies change it completely?
- Is there a hearing loop, and does it work?
- Where does the audience wait, and is the entrance step-free from the car park or the street?
- What is the wet-weather or power-failure plan for an outdoor or semi-outdoor season?
- What are the pack-down expectations and who locks up?
The technical checklist
- Match the projector to the room, not the price. Brightness needs rise steeply with screen width and any ambient light. A projector that looks fine in a dark hall at 2.5 metres wide will look grey at 4 metres.
- Know your formats. A digital cinema package, a Blu-ray, a secure file with a time-limited key and a plain video file all behave differently. Confirm the format when you book, and test that exact format on your exact kit.
- Sound intelligibility beats volume. A centre-channel or a dedicated speaker pointed at the audience is worth more than more watts. Test with a dialogue-heavy scene, from the back row, with someone sitting in the middle rows.
- Carry spares. A spare cable of every type you use, a spare adaptor, a torch, gaffer tape, and the disc or file on a second drive.
- Rehearse the start. Cue the film, check the aspect ratio fills the screen properly, and confirm the subtitle track before the doors open.
A screening night run sheet
| Time | Who | What |
|---|---|---|
| T-90 | Projectionist | Kit up, test picture, test sound from the back row, check subtitles |
| T-60 | Front of house | Chairs set, aisles clear, exits unobstructed, signage up |
| T-45 | Door team | Float and card reader ready, members list open, guest tickets out |
| T-30 | Door team | Doors open, greet, seat anyone who needs a specific position |
| T-5 | Host | Welcome, housekeeping, content note, next screening plug |
| T-0 | Projectionist | Lights down in stages, film starts |
| Interval | Front of house | Lights up gently, refreshments, renewal reminder |
| End | Host | Thanks, one line about next time, lights up before the credits end |
| Plus 30 | Everyone | Pack down, count the door, note attendance in the members system |
Recording attendance every single night, in the same place, is the least glamorous habit on this page and the most useful. Three seasons of attendance data tells you which slot is dying, which night of the week works and whether the difficult films actually cost you an audience or you only think they do.
Access, captions and content notes
Getting this right widens your audience considerably, and most of it is free.
- Captions. Ask the distributor at booking time whether a captioned version exists. Open captions burned into the picture are simplest and help far more people than the ones who need them. Where the film is in another language, subtitles are standard, and it is worth saying in the program which titles are subtitled so nobody is surprised.
- Audio description. Less commonly available, but ask. Where it exists, it usually needs a headset system, so check the venue can support it before you promise it.
- Hearing assistance. Test the loop yourself rather than trusting the sign on the wall, and announce at the start which setting to use.
- Physical access. Step-free entry, an accessible toilet that is unlocked, a wheelchair space with a companion seat that is not at the very front, and a lit path from the car park.
- Relaxed screenings. One a season, with the lights slightly up, the volume down a notch and freedom to move around, opens the society to people who cannot manage a conventional screening.
- Content notes. Publish them per film on the season page and repeat the relevant ones in the welcome. This is basic courtesy, not censorship, and it stops people walking out.
- Sensory and comfort basics. Interval timing, seat comfort for a long film, and somewhere quiet to step out to.
The same thinking applies to how people find you in the first place. If your season page cannot be read with a screen reader or on a phone in the dark, the access work in the hall is undone before anyone arrives — building an accessible club website covers the essentials.
Volunteers, and the jobs that must have a name
Small societies fail when three people do everything and one of them moves away. Name the jobs, even if one person holds two of them.
| Role | What it owns | Time in season |
|---|---|---|
| Programmer | Shortlist, availability checks, the season shape, the members' ballot | Heavy off-season |
| Licensing officer | Bookings, agreements, the licence folder, the advertising rules | Steady, low volume |
| Projectionist | Kit, formats, testing, the technical run sheet | Every screening |
| Front of house | Door, membership checks, seating, access needs, refreshments | Every screening |
| Communications | Season brochure, website, reminder emails, content notes | Fortnightly bursts |
| Treasurer | Subscriptions, box office, licence fees, the annual accounts | Steady |
Rotate front of house across a roster so the same two people are not missing every film they programmed. How to recruit club volunteers has the practical approach — slice the roles small and ask specific people for specific nights.
Season shape follows the weather. The dark half of the year is peak season for an indoor program — early sunsets and cold evenings are exactly when a warm hall and a film is the most attractive thing on offer — while high summer competes with everything happening outdoors. Run the substantial season from early autumn through to spring, keep summer light with a short outdoor or open-air run if you have somewhere suitable, and budget for heating a hired hall in the coldest months, because a cold room empties faster than a bad film.
Marketing a season without breaking the licence
If you hold an umbrella licence, you generally cannot publicise the individual titles beyond your membership. That constraint is less painful than it sounds once you flip the marketing around: market the society, not the film.
- Publish the season page publicly with the shape, the dates, the venue, the price and the flavour — "eight films, fortnightly, one restored classic, one documentary with the director present, one chosen by members".
- Put the titles behind membership. A members-only page or the season email is where the actual program lives.
- Make joining the call to action on every public page, rather than "buy a ticket for Thursday".
- Use your own email list rather than a social feed for the program itself, so you keep control of who sees it.
- For public screenings under a per-title booking, do the opposite and go hard on the title, with whatever artwork the distributor allows you to use — how to promote a club event covers the campaign rhythm.
Running the season from one place
The admin of a film society is small but relentless: subscriptions to collect and renew, guest tickets for individual nights, a members list that front of house can actually check at the door, content notes and access information on every screening page, a mid-season ballot and a reminder email every fortnight. That is a website's job, not a volunteer's Sunday. ClubHelix gives you events with ticketing for each screening and the season as a whole, online membership and self-registration so subscriptions renew themselves, email broadcasts from your own domain for the fortnightly reminder, and discount codes for concession and student rates without a separate price list.
It is independent and ad-free, the free tier is genuinely enough for a society of a few dozen members, and the pricing page shows exactly what changes if you grow. Most committees get a season page, a membership form and the first three screenings live in a single afternoon — start your society's site and see how far you get before the kettle boils. Societies and interest groups of every kind run on it, which is what the hobby and interest clubs page is about.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need a licence to show a film to a club?
Almost always, yes. Buying or streaming a film covers private, domestic viewing only. Showing it to a group outside your household is public exhibition and needs permission from the rights holder, regardless of whether you charge admission or restrict the audience to members. The usual routes are an annual umbrella licence covering a catalogue of studios, or a per-title booking through the distributor.
How much does it cost to screen a film for a community group?
It varies by title, territory and audience size. A per-title community booking is typically a flat fee or a percentage of the box office, whichever is greater, and an annual umbrella licence is priced by venue capacity. Older, public-domain and openly licensed films cost nothing, and independent filmmakers will often grant permission for a modest fee. Always ask your venue whether it already holds a licence before you buy one.
Can a film society advertise which films it is showing?
Not always. Umbrella licences commonly restrict publicity of the individual titles to your own membership, which is a large part of why so many societies are members-only. Per-title bookings for public screenings normally allow full advertising, often with conditions about which artwork you use. Check the terms of the specific agreement before the poster goes up.
How many films should a season have?
Eight to twelve, screened fortnightly, suits most volunteer committees. That is enough to build a habit and justify a subscription, and few enough that every screening gets a proper technical check, a host and a full roster. Weekly programs are possible but burn out small committees quickly, and monthly ones struggle to hold an audience's attention between screenings.
How do you make screenings accessible?
Ask the distributor for a captioned version when you book, publish which titles are subtitled, test the venue's hearing loop yourself, keep entry step-free with an unlocked accessible toilet, and offer wheelchair spaces with a companion seat somewhere other than the front row. Add content notes to every listing, and run at least one relaxed screening a season with the lights up slightly and freedom to move around.
Keep reading — season pass versus single-event tickets works through the subscription decision in detail, and how to run a photography club covers the same committee problems for a club built around making images rather than showing them.
