2008 Woodie Awards
Oxford film festival sees slight increase in ticket sales
Margaret Watters
Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Front Page
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According to executive director J.C. Schroder, ticket sales increased by about 250 from in 2007 to 350 tickets.
"It's a good increase," Schroder said. "Not terribly significant but good. We're only in our second year."
Public relations chair and Miami University senior Shannon Berner says there are several reasons for this increase, including the festival increasing its number of showings to more than 100 films and adding more activities for moviegoers. However, she said the audience was still spread thin.
"It wasn't an incredible increase, but it's hard to tell because people were spread out across more screenings and activities," Berner said.
Junior Rebecca Waesch, who went to the film festival for the first time, thought the festival should have been better publicized and doesn't think she would have heard about it if a professor had not mentioned it.
"It was pretty well organized, although, it wasn't as well attended as I hoped it to be," Waesch said.
Berner said that she hopes to see more interest from the local community in coming years.
"I think a lot of people don't get what a film festival is or that it pertains to them," Berner said. "I think a lot more people knew about it this year, but I think a lot of people weren't familiar with what (a film festival) was."
The city of Oxford contributed $15,000 in support of the film festival.
"That's not a normal thing," Diana Durr, executive director of the visitors and convention bureau said. "The city doesn't usually do that … We wouldn't put ourselves behind it if we didn't feel like if it was worthwhile."
The city performed an economic impact study on the 2007 festival and found that the festival contributed an additional $350,000 to $400,000 of revenue to Oxford and the surrounding region.
According to Durr, Saturday night was the busiest for Oxford and surrounding area hotels. The Miami Inn and Marcum Conference Center held a block of 30 rooms for the event April 9-12, Durr said.
Durr said that the visitors bureau also noticed an increased number of walk-ins Friday, particularly out-of-town guests looking for information on the festival. However Durr said it was hard to tell if the festival or other events were responsible for uptown's busy weekend.
Berner said that even as the festival grows, the students still want to maintain the festival's personal atmosphere.
"I think the one good thing is that because it is so small the (directors and attendees) rave about the personal interaction," Berner said. "It's that that separates us from other festivals."
Oxford Mayor Prue Dana attended the festival and saw the movie "Swing State '08."
Dana said that the festival was better attended this year, partly because the event was scheduled on a better weekend.
"Last year it was over Easter weekend and that was harder because people had their own family agendas," Dana said.
Dana supports the festival and hopes to see its popularity grow.
"If it puts Oxford on the map-well, that's something I'm all for," Dana said.
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