Premiere

Key takeaways

Premiere belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Premiere to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Premiere from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A premiere, also spelled première, (from French: première, 1re, transl. first, 1st) is the debut (first public presentation) of a work, i.e. play, film, dance, musical composition, or even a performer in that work.

History Raymond F. Betts attributes the introduction of the film premiere to showman Sid Grauman, who founded Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The first ever Hollywood premiere was for the 1922 film Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, in front of the Egyptian Theatre. By the late 1920s the red carpet had become synonymous with film premieres.

Classification There are a number of different types:

A single work will often have many premieres. For example, in film, the 2019 United States movie Aladdin held its world premiere at the Grand Rex in Paris, France, on 8 May 2019, its first regional premiere in Jordan on 13 May 2019, and its United States premiere on 24 May 2019. Likewise, in music, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 received its world premiere in the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna on 7 May 1824, and subsequently received a premiere in England at the Argyll Rooms in London on 21 March 1825. When a work originates in a country that speaks a different language from that in which it is receiving its premiere, it is possible to have two premieres for the same work, e.g., the French-language version of the play The Maids by Jean Genet received its British premiere (which was also its world premiere) in 1952, and subsequently its English-language premiere in Britain in 1956.

Festivals

Significance of a premiere The type of premiers that a work receives will impact on how the work is treated by festivals, including the categorization of the work in screening sessions, e.g. Fantastic Fest, and even as the basis of its submission requirements, e.g. Sundance Film Festival eligibility rules require that United States feature films, both narrative and documentary, have retained their world premier status, whilst international feature films, both narrative and documentary, have retained the international premiere status. Premiering at a film festival has been used to gain publicity for a film, even without a distributor already in place, and can even allow last minuting editing. Director Alex Winter said, of film festival premiers, "It helps me get a sense of what my work is or isn't communicating. We've often made little tweaks and changes after we've premiered it at a few film festivals."

Online premieres Concerns existed about online premieres, when in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, festivals had to become either partially online, e.g. SXSW and Tribeca, or fully online, e.g. CPH:DOX, Visions du Reel. Director Alex Winter even went so far as to pull his documentary Zappa out of both SXSW and CPH:DOX rather than let the film premiere there, saying "Our main concern was sales. Being online with these festivals would be the equivalent of a streaming distribution deal." On 29 May 2020, upon the cancellation of a number festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival, an International film festival called We Are One was organised where films were globally streamed, via YouTube, in an event containing 13 world premieres, 31 online premieres, and 5 international online premiers. Director Lina Soualem, who reluctantly kept her film Their Algeria in for an online premier at We Are One said "At first, your automatic feeling is, 'No, I don't want to do that, ... I felt distressed because this would be the first time I would show an audience my film, so I was upset that it (would have to) be online." but said she relented as "I was observing (the Doha Film Institute's Qumra event) online, and it was a good experience. I spoke to many programmers and professionals, and little by little, I understood we are all in the same situation and times are so uncertain that if I decided to say 'no,' I wouldn't know what would happen next with the film." Fionnuala Halligan of Screen Daily questioned the legitimacy of the festivals without physically screened premiers, saying "Is premiere status demanded by A-list festivals still valid, and if not world, then national or international, or online – how much do they matter in the time of Covid?" On the complications of incorporating online premiers during the new online reformatting of festivals, Halligan said that another burning question was "Would a geo-locked online premiere at a smaller festival jeopardise a filmmaker's chances for showing their "international premiere" at another, perhaps larger, more covetable event (for which the selection hasn't yet been announced)?"

See also Season premiere Film festival Film release Television pilot Press line

References

External links

Media related to Premieres at Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Premiere

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Premiere claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Premiere before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Premiere ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Premiere

In research: Premiere appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Premiere in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Premiere is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Beginnings, Film and video terminology, Music events, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Premiere outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Premiere in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Premiere means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Premiere out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Premiere in simple terms?

A premiere, also spelled première, (from French: première, 1re, transl. first, 1st) is the debut (first public presentation) of a work, i.e. play, film, dance, musical composition, or even a performer in that work. History Raymond F.

Why does Premiere matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Premiere?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Premiere.