AAM - Digital Cinema

Digital Cinema allows cinemas to show content other than feature films, and has the potential to be a valuable extra revenue stream.

Alternative content can include:

Sports

In Summer 2006, many UK cinemas showed live World Cup screenings – and reported attendance higher than they would normally have had in a generally quieter season.

Cinemas can be used to hold events such as director Q&As, and transmit them to other sites. For example, to coincide with the release of The Village, AAM hosted a Q&A session with M Night Shayamalan. The event was held at the Ritzy in Brixton, London, and transmitted live to 4 other sites, from where people could also interact and ask questions.

One of the most frequent uses of alternative content is to show music concerts. The UK has seen events such as a Robbie Williams album launch show (which was projected to 21 cinemas), a Genesis concert broadcast live from Dusseldorf to 40 Vue cinemas across the UK in June 2007, and a live showing of Take That's sold out O2 arena show broadcast to 43 Vue sites in December 07. Concerts that have been shown in the US include The Rolling Stones live from Copacabana Beach, Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, and Disney's incredibly successful 3D concert film 'Hannah Montana' which grossed $31m in its opening weekend in Feb 08.
In October 2007, Arts Alliance Media project managed the premiere of the concert film Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who in London, including a Q&A with members of the band which was transmitted live by satellite to 14 sites across the UK and Europe (press release here).
Cinemas in the US and the UK have seen great success with showing performances of operas in their venues. The Metropolitan Opera was broadcast to around 275 cinemas in the US in 2007, with Rossini's The Barber of Seville selling almost 58,000 tickets. For 2008, Arts Alliance Media are distributing operas from top Italian opera houses such as La Scala across the UK and Europe. For more information, see our opera pages.

As digital cinema equipment allows any external source to be played on the big screen, it’s possible to connect games consoles and project into the auditorium. There is a great potential to hold multi-player events, as Vue Cinemas demonstrated when they held gaming sessions in selected cinemas to mark the release of Cars.

TV shows can also be broadcast on the big screen, which can be ideal for ‘event’ shows such as the first or last episode of a series.

Cinemas can be ideal venues to host company AGMs or offsites, and laptops can be easily connected to digital projectors to show presentations.

Surgery has been broadcast to students in cinemas as part of training. When an eye operation was performed in a Belgian hospital, it was recorded and shown to a cinema full of medical students as part of their training.