The ***Official*** Hints for planning a line party Thread

Attention all City Reps, RSA's and other FF Members interested in planning a line party:

This will be the ***Official*** Line party planning hint thread. Let's keep it on target, and use it for posting ideas, hints, and lessons learned about line parties.

If anyone has question, try PM'ing the person instead of posting it here. I'd like to keep this as focused as possible, a one stop shop for line party information.


And with that, thanks to PtrsonsZOO, here are the first hints:

Get a local charity involved - it makes it more appealing to a greater # of people.

Costumes Costumes Costumes - even those who might not have an interest in SW enjoy seeing a bunch of geeks dressed up in costumes, plus it gets you a chance for media coverage.

Involve your local media - prepare a press release describing your event, then your group, and then the charity.

Auctions - these are great because they don't require any special licenses and you can arrange to have the money go straight to the charity involved (no fiscal responsibility).

Costume Contest - make sure you have a great prize for that person(s). Talk to your local 501st Legion for judges, these people know costuming.

Find a friendly theatre - It is best to work with the biggest drawing theatre in town, you know the one everyone saw the original movies on and flocks to like mad when a new one comes out. But, sometimes they are not the most open to these ideas, thinking they can draw the people on their own. So, appeal to their better angels, and let them know about media coverage, the charity/tax deduction aspect and the community good will (PR is very important to these operators). Most of all, be relentless, persistance can win out in the end.

Permissions - many times you will be asked to get perimission from this entity or that one. TheForce.net is easy to work with, but it gets trickier when you get to bigger entities (Like LFL). Make sure you talk to their publicity departments, they are the ones who set up these things and they are the ones to get the permissions. Getting a hold of a friend of a friend who works in the mailroom, just doesn't cut it.

Begging - find someone who is a great BS artist and have them write up some letters to pass around to local merchants for donations.

But the number one most important thing to remember is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Grand schemes are great, but "delusions of grandeur" only work well in the movies.

Also, I have the Official Contact Info for the LFL Publicity Office. I will be posting this in the City Rep Forum, if anyone else needs it, please contact me.

If you have any other hints, tips, etc, please post them here.

 

Costume Contest - make sure you have a great prize for that person(s). Talk to your local 501st Legion for judges, these people know costuming.

For our Costume Contest, we've decided to go for local "celebrities" from radio and tv stations in the area for the judges.

They may not appreciate all the details it takes for a great costume, but they will provide us free publicity.

 

I would like to recieve the contact info for LFL Publicity as I am one of the organizers for the Arizona Line-up event and we need to get our advertizing in place ready to get printed.

The theater chain we are at is going to also put advertizing slides for our event on all their screens and theiy are going to need our designs soon as well.

Contact us at AZLineUp@hotmail.com

Thanks

P.S. I am going to send you a Word DOC on our proposal to the Mall we are going to have it at so you can sent it to others who need guidance

 

Two points:
Get a local charity involved - it makes it more appealing to a greater # of people.

I highly, highly recommend that your line support a charity only if it is something you truly care about. If all you're after is a means of justifying your line, or looking to appear the hero on the six o'clock news.... then please reconsider.

Re-focusing the media attention from your lineup over onto a local charity can do a world of good, but only if you really care. If you don't care two licks about it, it will show. Believe me it shows. Your indifference can reflect poorly onto the charity.

Begging - find someone who is a great BS artist and have them write up some letters to pass around to local merchants for donations

Important to remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Sometimes the tradeoff to get 'free' stuff is more than some lines are willing to accept. I personally think it is much better for lines to be self-sufficient. If any merchants choose to give something out of the goodness of their hearts once you're out there - that's one thing. But going hat in hand to everyone in the neighbourhood tends to give the wrong impression of your line. The recent series of PVP comics should underscore the point. Unless you decide early on that you aren't in this for the 'freebies', that is the only way your line will be percieved. How your line is percieved will largely determine the type of people who will join you in line.

I know that for myself, I'm in line to make friends and have fun. I don't know if I'd get that standing beside a fella who's only there for the free sandwiches and action figures.

 

Great advise, guys. I am busy working away trying to get the Albuquerque Fan Force started, but once that gets rolling we'll -have- to plan for a line party. I think it will be easy to get a nice showing at the theatres for tickets, and getting the media involved wouldn't be too bad of an idea. I'll keep my eye on this thread for more info.

Any ideas about things to do for a trivia contest?

 

actually, our idea for a trivia contest in the phoenix line was a "beat the geeks" based game, where all the 'geeks' were SW gurus, and each one is an expert in a specific field(like original trilogy, prequels, expanded universe). and the prizes would be to move up in line(wow!) or time in the video game arcade located across from us.
sound fun?

 

What an amazing idea!

 

Make sure that you have permission not only from the theater itself, but also the management company that may own the area the theater is in. For example, if the movie theater is part of a mall or shopping center, they may not have any say about lining up on the sidewalks outside the theater.

Also, you may want to inform local law enfoprcement of your line so they can do regular check ups if you are staying overnight. This will deter anyone from hanging around and looking for trouble.

Don't forget to call the local news stations and radio stations. Last time in our line we had several news stations show up and if it were not for the thunderstorm at 6pm, we were going to be one of the top stories on the news and shown live, but instead I think they played a tape of already filmed footage from earlier in the day.

One more thing. Sometimes theater chains like to work with specific charities. Talk to management first and find out. If so, they theater may be happier to work with you, or even take control of the charity part.