The Falcon Robotics Team in spreading the message of FIRST and helping to change the culture have come up with the idea of taking the message of robotics to the masses, where the masses go, to the movies. Team 842 has edited (with FIRST’s ok) the 1st one minute of the six minute promotional video produced by FIRST . It will be shown at the Tempe Market Place Movie Complex, in Tempe, AZ. There are 16 screens and it will be shown over 2000 times, once before each of the movies that play there. An estimated 40,000 people attend the movie complex weekly. The contract to show the preview is for one month. That means that 160,000 people will have seen the one minute video promoting FIRST . To help measure the impact the video might have on the public, the team has created a website for people to go to by displaying the web address at the end of the one minute video. There is a web counting and tracking device on the site to record the number of visits to the site. A report of the impact the one minute video had on the “culture” of the metropolitan area will be prepared and turned in during the chairman’s presentation at the Arizona Regional and a copy mailed to FIRST headquarters in New Hampshire.
This sounds like an awesome idea! One question, are you paying the movie theater (if so, approximately how much does that cost?), or did you get them to donate the screen time? WOW… this is really cool. Major props to you and your team.
This is really cool. I just finished watching the video, and it really is very well done. Great job to whoever created it. It is also a great way of spreading the message, at a common social place. Great idea!!
Joey
That’s really cool. I think that live action things like movies will probably best for getting people’s attention. Maybe malls would be good places to spread FIRST too because of the massive amount people that go to malls.
That is the bad news…It cost us $5,000.00 for the one month. We went out and had twenty five of our team members raise $200.00 each (10-$20 donations) We are hoping to show that maybe FIRST headquarters can get some friends of theirs at Google to maybe pay to get it in theaters across the country, but first we have to show it works.
FIRST puts out these great videos and only FIRSTers see it, so we though we need to get it where it can be seen by the public.