Our initial screenings will all take place on a Monday evening. We felt this was appropriate given that Mondays are not tied to any other current nationwide cinema promotions.

We would like all cinemas to screen on the same evening in order to create a national ‘moment’ for our Escapes screenings, and this also ensures maximum reach for our marketing.

We will avoid scheduling Escapes screenings in weeks with big blockbuster releases and on evenings with One Night Only event cinema screenings wherever possible, and we won’t schedule a screening on a Bank Holiday Monday.

The chosen day of the week for Escapes screenings may differ in future based on schedule constraints and cinema and audience feedback.

You will be asked to provide a selection of available evening slots when signing up to Escapes, but there is no set start time for all cinemas to follow.

Escapes will curate a film selection based on the theme of escapism, encompassing diverse genres and narratives that transport the audience to different worlds, times, or use visually captivating storytelling.

Our program will be predominantly feature film previews. The selection could encompass a broad spectrum of films, including foreign language, documentaries, and adult-oriented animation. Priority will be given to films which support British filmmaking talent and demonstrate potential to engage diverse and underrepresented audiences, aligning with the goals of the BFI Diversity Standards. Moreover, our curated films will showcase a diversity of on-screen portrayals.

Selected films will be non-franchise, offering unique cinematic experiences beyond the mainstream, with the potential to attract a wide UK audience.

The film will be chosen by the Escapes team in conjunction with the BFI, using the criteria noted above. This allows us to create a unifying national ‘moment’ at Escapes screenings and is also necessary for the logistics of organising a nationwide screening programme in hundreds of cinemas!

No. These costs will be covered by Escapes and the film’s distributor.

If your company conforms to any of the following, you can access a subsidy of £1,000 across the first 10 screenings:

A limited company registered at Companies House that is not:

• defined as a ‘large’ company under the Companies Act 2006;

• or more than 50% owned by (or a subsidiary of) non-UK resident individuals

• or a company or corporation having shares listed on any stock exchange

You are also eligible if you are:

a community interest company registered at Companies House

Or a UK charity or trust registered with the Charity Commission.

Or any other form of not- for- profit company

If you’re still unsure of your eligibility, please email delphine.lievens@elevenfifyfive.com for clarification.

You will have access to email addresses for all audience members who opt in for this information to be shared with you at the time of booking their ticket.

We will also be collecting detailed anonymised post-screening survey data from audiences which we will share with you both for your cinema specifically and across the project as a whole.

We also encourage you to use the screening itself as an opportunity to encourage audience members to follow you on social media, sign up to your email newsletter etc.

All ticketing for Escapes screenings will be via our ticketing partner, Cinematik. They will receive an email confirmation of their ticket booking along with a relevant QR code for each ticket.

All screening tickets will be for unallocated seating.

You will also be able to reserve a small portion of tickets for walk ups from customers who aren’t able to use the ticketing platform for whatever reason.

All cinemas will be given access to an ‘Usher’ account in Cinematik, where you can view the screening guest list and use any device that can scan QR codes to check in guests to the screening. You will also be sent a .pdf of the guest list via email which you can use to check in guests manually if you wish.

We will supply cinemas with a ‘toolkit’ for FOH and projection staff, detailing both event logistics, and support with accessibility and post-screening audience development.

No. We don't expect cinemas to promote Escapes on their website, social media, newsletter etc. The aim of the project is to bring in new audiences that you're not connected with, rather than give away free tickets to your current paying customers. Audiences will be made aware of Escapes screenings via both our nationwide marketing campaign + ongoing hyper-local targeted paid social media, targeting audiences within a set radius of your cinema.

No, there is no requirement for you to schedule paid screenings of the film chosen for Escapes.

We aim to provide around 8 weeks notice of the date and title for each screening, with a minimum of 6 weeks notice.

All films will be supplied with both audio description and descriptive subtitles (HoH), and we ask that you make both of these available for your screening.

We are also working with Matchbox Cine on a section of our ‘toolkit’ for cinemas regarding best practice in terms of making your screenings as accessible as possible for all audiences.

To participate in the first screening on February 5th 2024, you must sign up by January 12th 2024.

Yes! We’d like cinemas to provide us with a screen circa 120 capacity in order for us to meet attendance targets for the project, but if your screen is smaller we’d still welcome your application to be part of Escapes.

We’re keen to work with all cinemas that are keen on participating in Escapes, and won’t penalise cinemas that have a valid reason such as this for needing to miss a screening.

Please drop a line to delphine.lievens@elevenfifyfive.com with more details around your planned closure to discuss this further.

A key focus of our marketing is hyper-local targeted paid social media - this will be advertising to audience groups that are not currently engaged with cinema or independent film, across social media platforms. Marketing will be targeted to a specific radius of each participating cinema, to ensure it catches new audiences that are local to your cinema venue.

We will also have a nationwide marketing campaign for Escapes, in conjunction with our brand and media partners. These partners will be chosen with our target audience in mind.

Additionally, we are working with audience outreach consultants to target community groups, charities and local authorities who can spread the word about screenings to their service users and those they support.

Avoiding the cannibalisation of audiences is very important to us, and our marketing campaign has been designed with this in mind, specifically targeting audience groups that are not attending cinemas. This has been backed up by audience surveying within our target audience which guided our choice of branding and marketing strategies.

We will also limit the number of tickets each customer can redeem, and how many times they can redeem them, to offer the best chance of them being converted into paying audience members for your cinema.

As this is a multi year project, we will continue to do what we can to avoid audience cannibalisation by reviewing the data we collect and adjusting our marketing and ticket redemption processes accordingly.