Bowling looks at options for The Goodhand Theater

Wilson Bowling, Economic Development Director for the City of Kimball, recently returned from a trip where he visited several small town Nebraska theaters. Bowling compiled the information he gathered on his trip and presented it before the city council at their meeting on Tuesday, March 4. The reason for gathering the information being that the city is looking into what it would take to get The Goodhand Theater up and running once more.

The things Bowling took a look at on his trip were the size of the local theaters he was visiting, who it was operated by, what it took to get it up and running, and was it currently successful.

“All but one were owned by the city the theater was in, and run by volunteers. The exception was run by a family who did all the work. The rest were all done by volunteers, and the majority that I know of in the state, even that I didn’t go to, are all run by volunteers,” Bowling said.

The largest theater he saw had 150 seats and the smallest had 60. Several of the communities raised the money for the necessary renovations to their theaters. The time it took varied. Some communities needed as little as three years to raise the funding and one took nine years. All the buildings that were renovated were in various states of disrepair.

“One building, before it was renovated, actually had a tree growing up through the center of the building. So that had to be removed before any kind of building could begin,” Bowling said.

Building renovations are important. However, in order to keep up with the times and technological advances, a digital projector had to be purchased in each theater.

“As of 2014, all theaters in North America have made that switch over to digital. The film reels are no longer being used,” Bowling said.

The movie industry simply isn’t producing movies for distribution on film anymore. They put the film on a hard drive that slides into a digital projector that is then programmed to play the movie at its designated start time. Some might have a bit of a nostalgic attachment to the old film projector, and they might even prefer to watch movies on film. However, it is just more practical to ship the movies on digital hard drives. Some theaters used to tie two theaters together by running the film across the projection room onto a second projection wheel in order to accommodate two theaters. This was a dangerous move, given someone could get hurt or run into the overlapping projection. Also, if the reel was to get tangled, the theater would have to compensate two houses instead of one. Overall digital projection is a simpler tool that allows theaters more ease of operation.

Although the benefits of digital projection are great, it is a pricey update. Getting a digital projection system, that includes the projector and sound updates, could be around $80,000 to $120,000. If the theater wanted to upgrade further to 3D projection capabilities, that would be $3,000 for the price of the lens and then the additional cost of getting a screen that was capable of showing the 3D movies.

Bowling spoke about the way the theaters he visited saved money. Often only staying open on the weekends for a few showings of a movie, the theater saves by having volunteers work the theater.

“Each theater did it kind of different on how they handled their volunteers. One theater I got to see the spreadsheet, and they actually had teams of volunteers. They’d volunteer during two shows a week. So say there were four shows a week, one team of about five people would handle Friday and Saturday and the second team would handle the two shows on Sunday. And then those groups wouldn’t have to work again for two months because there were enough groups to rotate out for a month. So go in and help out once every two months for about four or five hours. Go in get the concessions set up, let the people in, after they leave, clean up and go home,” Bowling said.

Most of the theaters had only one paid staff member and a booking agent to obtain the movies to be shown weekly. On average, the movie costs $500 a week and then if it is purchased for several weeks at a time a 15 or 25 percent discount is added after the first week.

“It’s hard to get in good with the companies distributing the movies. Which is why a booking agent is necessary,” Bowling said.

After acquiring all this information, Bowling was able to lay out the steps that would need to be taken in order to get the Goodhand into a condition to be running again.

“The first step is to bring in a contractor to look at things and give us an estimate, and, once we have that estimate, we can start to narrow down what can be done by volunteers and take that away from the price. Also from that initial estimate, depending on how much we raise, we can start getting grant funding for the full thing,” Bowling said.

Once the contractor goes through, volunteers for specific jobs can be sought out. For instance, electricians, plumbers, and other various contractors would be asked for help, and it could offer a tax break to those helping.

The project of renovating The Goodhand Theater is one that depends on support from the community. It depends on the community to get it into a condition that will allow it to serve the city. It depends on the community to keep it going.

“You would be surprised how much small towns love their theaters. Every single community it seemed they all loved the fact that they had one. There was never a time when they didn’t have enough volunteers to help run it or who wanted to be a part of it in some way. A city like Imperial, I think, they raised all the money they needed to do renovations in three years. Some of the other places took longer, but they were smaller towns. Every single community I went to truly cherished the theater they had in town,” Bowling said.