We’re glad to announce new features on Cinema Intelligence.
The areas of change in this release are:
1. All Cinema Intelligence modules:
2. Booking:
3. Scheduling:
New features applicable to all Cinema Intelligence modules
Weather format configuration
We can now change for you the unit of measurement for weather information. Upon request, a Support Agent can configure for you how you want the weather information to be displayed: in Celsius or Fahrenheit degrees.
This will have effect on:
Scheduling module, Cinema Info section on the Dashboard
Forecasting module, in the Weather during lifetime section of an older release
Booking
New options when creating a booking
When creating a new booking for a movie you can also create multiple copies of the same format. You can do this by pressing the “Add copy” button. The maximum number of copies is 5.
The new options are the two check boxes on the copy level, “Is Children” and “Is VIP”.
You can use the “Is Children” option in case you only want a certain copy to be considered as children by the Scheduler.
In the previous version of Cinema Intelligence (you can find release notes here: http://support.cinemaintelligence.com/hc/en-us/articles/207492536-What-s-New-January-2016), we have introduced the option to define children movies based on their genre. Defining children genres and setting a copy as “Is Children” has the same behavior, but with the children-copy option from Booking you can define any movie (movie copy) as being a children one, regardless of the movie genre.
The “Is VIP” can only be used on cinemas that have VIP rooms. If you do not have VIP rooms in the cinema you are creating the booking for, a VIP-copy will not be transferred to the Scheduling module.
Displaying booked events
When adding a new booking you are now able to see the events scheduled in the same week as the start date of your booking, and on the same cinema/s.
The events are also included in the Film Week Overview and Cinema Week Overview pages of Booking module and in the reports available for download in these two pages.
Scheduling
New Cinema Constraint: Dynamic Spacing
When this constraint is active the scheduling algorithm will calculate the spacing between start times of shows based on their forecasted visitors.
This constraint requires three parameter values:
1. Minimum time for 1 visitor (value in seconds): for each forecasted visitor of a show, this value will be used to calculate the difference between start time of shows, i.e. the start time of the next show; For all movies that play longer than 1 week, Cinema Intelligence is determining forecasted number of visitors automatically
The next two parameters are used only for new releases. For Dynamic Spacing functionality, forecasted number of the visitors for new movies will be calculated as X% of minimum seats requested (in Booking or Scheduling Constraints).
2. Occupancy in peak times for new movies (percentage): in case of new movies scheduled on peak times, the start time of the next show in the cinema is calculated applying this percentage to the minimum seats requested for the new movie
3. Occupancy in non-peak times for new movies (percentage): in case of new movies scheduled on non-peak times, the same calculation is used but with the value of percentage added here
Examples:
1. Let’s consider an old movie, with 80 forecasted visitors for a given show/timeslot.
Minimum time for 1 visitor: 10 seconds.
80 * 10 / 60 = 13 minutes -> all values are rounded to the next number, 15 in our case, which complies with the “5 to 5 minutes” rule of Scheduler.
This means that the next movie will be scheduled 15 minutes after the start time of our movie with 80 forecasted visitors.
2. Let’s take a new movie, which was requested to play in a room with minimum 200 seats.
Occupancy in peak times: 75%
75% * 200 / 60 = 25 minutes
The next movie will be scheduled 25 minutes after the start time of the new release.
Dynamic Spacing cannot be used in combination with “No crowding”, ”No crowding for large rooms” and “Limited waiting time” constraints.
Importing profit information
If the ticketing system you are using is Compeso, we can import in Cinema Intelligence profit information. By profit we understand the revenue a show brought, the equivalent in money of admissions number.
Displaying the profit of all shows
If profit information is available and imported from your ticketing system, we are displaying this information in multiple places throughout Scheduling module:
1. Dashboard
The profit is displayed on the Dashboard, under the Last Week’s Top Performers
2. Schedule View
In the Schedule View the profit is available on the movie level (Movie List) and on the show level (Last week’s shows).
In the Movie List using the “Day” sorting option will give you the admissions for the stopped/playing movies. Using any other sorting option (Name, Weekend, timeslot) will give you the profit for the movies.
Please keep in mind that all profit values displayed here are forecasted values, not actual! You can find actual values of profit by using the right-mouse click menu and going to Last week shows. The first value displayed here represents the actual number of admissions and the second one the actual profit that particular show brought.
3. Expand View
Profit information is available in the Expand View, in the Playing list, as a separate column containing actual profit for each movie on the weekend days.
Detailed profit information on show level is available in the Per Show tab.
Besides the number of admissions, available until now, profit information for every show of a movie is available here.
For the values in the forecasted week the same drop percentage is used for both Admissions and Profit numbers.
Scheduling based on profit
Since we are now importing profit information, the scheduling algorithm is also capable of scheduling movies based on the profit they generated, and not based on admissions.
Definition and scheduling of VIP rooms
VIP rooms require slightly different scheduling behavior than non-VIP rooms. In this purpose, we now support the definition of VIP rooms and movie copies that play only in these rooms.
The VIP rooms are highlighted with red color, in the Scheduling View, and the VIP copies will be yellow.
There are two ways of scheduling a new movie in a VIP room:
1. Using the Booking module to define a copy as a VIP-copy
How to do this you can find at the beginning of this document.
2. Defining an override in the Scheduling module, Expand View
You can do this in the Scheduling Constraints tab by selecting the option “Use film in VIP rooms”; you will now have only the rooms defined as VIP in the “Min. seats” section.
In the case of old movies, only movies that previously played in a VIP room will be automatically scheduled there.