This article explains how to configure some settings that could be beneficial regarding social distance regulations or other challenges like finding content in the post-Covid-19 reality.

We listed some tips and tricks per extension to get you (re)started after the shut down period of the coronavirus outbreak:

ANALYTICS
When you’re doubting what to play, you could inspire yourself by looking at your historical data.

a. With help of the Forecasting Dashboard, you could filter your own top X titles of a past period. Select a year or years in the “calendar year” filter. You can narrow your period down by selecting multiple playing weeks/months in the chart (Ctrl+left mouse click), or narrow it to one location by selecting “cinema to filter”. Then order the result in the “Movies Overview” table by actual admits and find your top titles.

b. Also in the Forecasting Dashboard, in the 'movie and cinema performance sheet' you could identify content that had a high occupancy for a past period. Select a cinema and a period with the filters. The result is ordered in %CT, which means % of cinema total. Sort your result on Total %CT Admissions.

c. With the 'performance analysis sheet' you could also identify titles that had the highest average admits per screen. Select a period or a distributor with the filters and sort on "APS" (admits per screen) to get your top X. When selecting multiple years they will be plotted on top of each other in the chart (see image below).

d. Our new 'Performance Insights' dashboard can help you with finding your best time of the day is, or the best occupancy rate per time slot. You can also find which genres work at which time slots.

If you're interested in this dashboard, please ask your customer success manager to enable the dashboard for you and guide you through the different sheets.

MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS (MSA)
Check Market Share Analysis Dashboard (MSA) to find best performing titles on a domestic level. You can eg. select a genre (romantic comedy), a period (last 2 years) and when clicking on domestic BO lifetime you get the best performing Romantic comedies for the past 2 years. Right next to it is your own exhibitor result for these titles. You could even narrow down to individual locations by filtering on “cinema name”.

e. In the same way (in MSA dashboard) you could filter down titles that performed very well, but you didn’t play in your cinemas in eg. the last year. Select release date 1/1/2019-12/31/2019, export data by clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of the table. Click on “export data” and select in the retrieved excel file “blanks” under the filter of column N. Order again on domestic BO lifetime (column I) and you have you personal top X of cinematic pearls you missed.

SCHEDULING
Your customer success manager is available to discuss the best settings for your situation. However, you could consider to adjust the following:

a. Adjust your opening hours. Probably you decided to adjust your opening hours. Be sure to not generate a new schedule without adjusting them. Are you an Film Manager customer, go to app.cinemaintelligence.com and select settings>opening hours. Are you working on the CI platform? Go to the scheduling module>constraints>cinema opening hours. “Last show time” means when the last show can start.

b. When you need more space between screenings, be sure to adjust cleaning time or walk-in time. To give the operations teams more time between shows you could adjust the cleaning time per cinema. For FM customers: settings>scheduling>timing. Using CI platform: Scheduling module>constraints>cinema settings.

c. Setting constraint “enable scheduling on occupancy rate (non-VPF screens)” to a low percentage (eg. 25%) will turn the title of a show red when more than the allowed capacity is expected. When generating a schedule, the algorithm will automatically schedule more shows and it gives you a visual trigger to be aware you potentially need more shows.

d. If you don’t want to start any show at the same time, you could “enable different start times for sessions” which will give you at least 5 min between each show at a specific location.

e. You could “set start time differences for large screens”. If you set the start time difference to eg. 30 min, there will be always at least 30 min between each show. Be aware this is a strong constraint. For example: if you set this constraint to 30 min, and your smallest timeslot is 2 hours, only 4 shows can start. If you have 5 screens in this cinema, your 5th screen will always stay empty. Therefore, please be careful, because if used incorrectly it could cause to drop sessions and create unwanted gaps in your schedule.

f. Happy with your first week schedule? By enabling “Start time shift limitation” your schedule for the next week will look a lot like your schedule for last week, making sure the start times for each show are not adjusted too much.

g. If you want to make sure no guests are in the foyer at a certain time (eg. you would like to do deep cleaning) you could use the constraint "block film start times". You can define multiple time frames to block films from starting for each day.

h. Are you scheduling in Showtime Manager in Vista Film Manager? The ruler on the top of the scheduling canvas shows how many shows start at the same time, the ruler at the bottom of the canvas how many shows end at the same time.

i. To support our customers using Cinema Intelligence outside of Vista Film Manager, we enhanced the Grid in Schedule to account also for session end times, along session start times. Activate the feature from the Welcome menu in the lower left corner - Details - check Show Grid in Schedule. For each session, the following color grids are displayed:

For a showtime schedule respecting most common social distancing regulations, thick lines would be missing.

FILM FORECASTING

i. Since you’re probably expecting less admits, it could be beneficial to re-forecast upcoming titles. Be sure the forecast is done for the correct (new) release date for correct weather and events info to be used by the algorithm. To make it easier for you we show the message "This forecast is out of date" (see image above) when the release date is adjusted in the POS and you haven't re-forecasted the title yet.

j. If you use CI inside Vista Film Manager, discuss with your CSM if it is beneficial to enable the “rolling forecast” option for you. This feature corrects your film forecasts automatically based on actuals.
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Feel free to reach out to support (support@cinemaintelligence.com) if you have trouble using our tools or configuring your settings.

If you don’t have one or more of the above-mentioned tools, feel free to reach out to your customer success manager to see if we can make it available for you.

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