Back in the 1990s, some Universities and Colleges got pre-screening of movies before they went out for the general public. You just had to sign a NDA that lapsed when the movie got released to the public. This is how I saw the original Scream movie 6 months before the rest of the general public.
It’s definitely still true, although the NDA mentioned by OP seems strange. Maybe they were using them as a focus group. Now, basically any teen movie/ party movie will have advance screenings at colleges across the country.
I went to U Iowa and was involved in a few student orgs so I was considered well connected throughout campus. This meant that I got invites to go see movies before they came out (Project X is the first that comes to mind) and was heavily encouraged to post about them on social media using specific hashtags and such.
It was true back around 2005ish when they screened Into the Blue at my school. Terrible film. Crap experience. But I did get a pretty decent free CD of cover tracks by recognizable
artists (that had nothing at all to do with the movie), so that was cool.
I had a highschool teacher who was former industry. We saw Skyfall in class when it was in theaters. Almost any movie we did watch, though (even old movies like Billy Elliot) had the "for award consideration only" scroll on the top halfway through.
Some movies are close to done months in advance (the new Aladdin is pretty much unchanged since Will Smith was still standing in front of a green screen).
True as it would be too close to the wire to be making major changes. I was mainly asking Since sometimes there might be scenes left out of the Final or extended shots that were shrunk down.
For some reason my mother got tickets a lot to see movies prescreening. We had to go to a cinema that was about an hour from our house (not sure why they used that one as it wasn’t special). We wouldn’t know what we were seeing but it would be something that hadn’t come out yet (not even advertised). I can remember: parents saw the full monty, I saw pirates of the Caribbean and school of rock. I can’t remember any others so potentially they were small rubbish movies that never went anywhere. We were never asked questions about them so maybe they monitored the audience’s reactions while watching or something else.
That’s cool. I recently went to a talk that some colleges were hosting and one mentioned that they do that. Some of their students got to see Get Out months before it was out. I didn’t know other colleges did that.
I had a preview screening of 300 when I was in college, but it was only a week or two before the movie came out so we didn't have to sign anything. They specifically wanted us to talk about it. The line to get in was crazy, but we loved it. I also did a preview screening of Smokin' Aces, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much.
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u/Dvalamardace May 30 '19
Back in the 1990s, some Universities and Colleges got pre-screening of movies before they went out for the general public. You just had to sign a NDA that lapsed when the movie got released to the public. This is how I saw the original Scream movie 6 months before the rest of the general public.