Hunger Games Movie Event

I put a lot of effort into planning programs for my teens. But my most successful program of the year in terms of attendance required almost no effort from me! In case you hadn't heart, August 18 was the release day for the highly-anticipated movie "The Hunger Games" onto DVD and Blu-Ray. Since my library is lucky enough to have the licencing required to show movies to the public, I decided to invite the teens to the library to watch this movie.

We started advertising the movie event about three weeks in advance with posters.

Anticipating a large amount of interest, we decided that we would require everyone interested in attending to pick up a ticket in advance. There is a lot of benefit to ticketing for an event like this if you have concerns about there being too many people in the room. Tickets make it easy eager patrons to understand why only so many people are allowed in the room. They also can give librarians peace of mind knowing that the room will be filled past capacity. I made the tickets myself on the computer and printed them on golden paper:

Tickets were available on a first come, first served basis two weeks before the event. We gave away the last of the tickets about one week before we showed the movie.

Food is also essential for any sort of teen event and everyone knows that snacks are great to have during movies, so it seemed pretty important that I serve something to eat. I've had truly horrific experiences with serving popcorn in the past (it's easy to spill and is hard to clean off of carpet when it gets stepped on) and I had a little bit of money left in my summer budget, so I decided to order cupcakes. These cupcakes weren't super fancy - chocolate with orange-tinted buttercream, no fancy decorations. But the color scheme was very appropriate for the movie. You could almost imagine that the orange frosting was a flame. I also served juice to go with the cupcakes.




I hadn't expected everyone who had picked up a ticket to come to the program. There are always a couple of no-shows, and this program was no exception. But any program that has 60 people (mostly teens!) in attendance is a success in my book. Everyone really enjoyed seeing the movie - many for the second or third time, but some for the first.

Another unexpectedly cool aspect of this program was the intergenerational potential. I had targeted teens in the advertising for this event but decided to ultimately leave the program open to anyone who wished to attend. Yes, many teens came alone or with friends. But there were also a good number of teens at the program with Mom or Dad in tow. It was actually very cool to see families in the audience so that they could share the experience. "The Hunger Games" is one of those rare gems with appeal across all ages and I was happy that so many families took advantage of the opportunity to see it together.