A Guide to hosting a movie night
After having covered choosing movies to watch on your sick day last time, I will help you to plan a movie night this time around. If you own your own flat and want to avoid having to clean it the day after a house party, then a movie night is the perfect event to host. Here are some things to keep in mind when setting up a movie night.
- Choose the right date: Since people are often busy on weekends, you might want to schedule this on a weekday. Check beforehand what day works best for your friends.
- Choose the right time: Let’s assume you all have jobs. You don’t want to invite people too early, but not too late either. Make sure they have time to get from work to your place without stressing, but also that they don’t have to kill time at the office waiting. 7PM is usually a good time.
- Choose the right group: Unless you have a massive place you don’t want to fill up your entire flat. Mixing groups of friends usually isn’t the best idea, since they would just split off into different groups. Focus on the one group, and possibly invite one or two social outliers.
- Clean your flat: this one goes without saying. Get rid of the bodies.
- Choose the right movie: I once put on Requiem for a Dream for a movie night. It was not the best idea. No one talked during the movie. Everyone was depressed and went home. What I find works best are bad movies. You want something to talk about, but not that you have to pay attention to constantly. Some examples are: anything by Neil Breen, the Room, 80s movies (i.e. Miami Connection, Troll 2, Samurai Cop, etc…). If you need more recommendations just check in the comments or take some tips from the redlettermedia gang.
- Provide snacks: People just came from work, give them food. Snacks are good to have, but you’ll need something dinner-ish. Order pizza or buy something frozen you can stick in the oven. People will whine otherwise.
- Provide drinks: Tell people to get drinks, but be aware they will run out. They always do.
- Promote the event the right way: Create a Facebook/Whatsapp group and spam people constantly so they don’t have a window of opportunity to bail. Once they say yes they can’t go back this. If they do leave, leave them passive aggressive comments such as “don’t worry, we’ll manage without you”, “more space for us!” implying they are fat or “right, I already forgot I invited you!”
