We're glad to announce new features on Cinema Intelligence.
There major areas of change in this release are:
1. Film Database: Module Redesign
2. Forecasting: Similar Theaters, New Forecasting Report, Theaters Overview
4. Scheduling: New Constraint: Do Not Schedule a Show on a Specific Time Frame, Performance Improvements, Warning for Hard Constraints
Minimum Requirements
Cinema Intelligence supports the following internet browsers:
Google Chrome v. 46.0 and higher
Firefox v.42.0 and higher
Film Database
Film Database Module Redesign
The poster of the movie was split into three parts:
1. The top row for displaying the movie name
2. The body which displays the poster in Grid View; for relevant information about the show you can mouseover the poster.
3. The bottom row which displays, in green, if the show was booked or forecasted and in red if it was not.
Forecasting
Similar Theaters
This feature was developed for helping you dealing with the forecast on a newly opened theater. Every new theater that doesn't have historical data will have assigned a similar theater and use its data to forecast. The similar theater has a comparison factor which uses the same logic as on the Scale Factor (0 to 5 where 0 = no compatibility, 1= 100% compatible, 2 = the value on the destination is considered twice the source value, etc).
The definition of similar theaters and the comparison factor will be done by our Customer Support Team upon request based on your input.
For a better understanding of this feature please keep in mind the following remarks:
1. If a theater has no correspondent, the forecasting engine will use only the data available on the theater you are forecasting on.
2. If the selected similar movie did not play on the desired location nor on the compared theater, the forecasting engine will not provide any forecast.
New Forecasting Report
The new report will display data with all forecasts that are made in the future, on any period of time starting with the current day. To get the report click the button "Full Forecast Report" located on the Forecasting module, the top right corner; its name will be "Forecasting report [current date: MM DD YY]".
The forecast report file will contain the following fields:
Title - Release - Site - Format - Distributor - Start of Play week - Book week (age on that play week) - Forecast
Forecasting Report - New Theater Overview
A new Theater overview is now available within the forecasting report with the following structure:
1. Single theater overview containing the theater's name, playing week, week start date and the forecasted admissions.
2. The whole circuit overview containing:
a. The theater's name
b. "Booked" column - will display the value "yes" if the movie you generated the forecast on has a booking on that theater; the booking has to be confirmed by the distributor and the exhibitor.
c. Week 1, Week 2, ... are the weeks the show has forecasts on. If there is no forecast nothing will be displayed.
The fields from the report can be sorted and filtered and only the enabled theaters will be shown. The report will contain only forecasted movies with release date greater or equal with the day you generated it.
Booking
New Booking Behavior
If you want to delete a booking for a show that is already on a schedule you'll get a warning message saying that the booking on that theater cannot be deleted or modified.
You cannot edit the booking on the current programing week, only future bookings are editable.
Adding a booking on multiple theaters is done by creating new bookings only for theaters that do not have that specific booking; identical existing bookings are not duplicated.
When adding a new booking, the theaters that already have that booking will not appear in the theaters list.
Theaters that already have a booking for a particular movie will not show on the cinema group list for that movie. Don't worry, it won't change the dynamic of the group itself.
Older releases can be booked but they are hidden as default; click on the "show older release" for expanding the view.
Select Booking Format
When booking a new show, the first available format will be automatically selected if only one format is available. If there are more than one format no automatic selection is possible.
The formats will be displayed alphabetically.
Add Start Date to Booking
Adding a start date to bookings is possible through the new calendar, visible once you click on the calendar icon from the Bookings/Start date section.
The default date of the calendar is the release date of the movie to be booked. You can only select a date greater or equal with the default date. Same logic applies to older releases.
The overviews will change as follows:
1. On the booking overview the shows are grouped by starting week.
2. The film week overview will display each week the movie has a starting date on each location
3. On the cinema week overview the movie will show on the week it has a starting date for a particular location.
4. If the movie has several bookings with different start dates, they will be grouped by play week.
Scheduling
New Constraint: Do Not Schedule a Show on a Specific Time Frame
The new constraint that lets you set a time frame on which noting will be scheduled is called "Block start of movies time interval" and it has two settings: time interval for normal movies and time interval for children movies. Each setting option has one parameter for setting up the interval: [HH:mm] - [HH:mm]. "17:00 - 18:00" means that normal or children movie will cannot start playing in that time frame and it is theater specific. Pre-booked, new movies with distributor contracts and locked items will be exempted from this constraint.
If the end time is smaller than the start time it will be considered on the next day.
If you override a show on a blocked interval, the Cinema Intelligence will try to fulfill both conditions; the override will have priority. Please keep in mind that a show can play on a blocked interval, but can’t start.
Performance Improvements
The performance Cinema Intelligence application has improved significantly when changing the current day in the Scheduling module, drag and drop saving and the dashboard loads faster overall.
The position and size of the loading icon was changed from the center of the screen to the top, next to the theater's name.
Drag and drop was changed from the “big loading” in the center of the screen to the small one at the top next to the name of the theater
Warning for Hard Constraints
As you already know there are soft constraints and hard constraints. (insert link to Knowledge Base/Constraints) The difference between them is that hard constraints like "No crowding for large rooms" and "Maximum number of allowed intermission" do not permit any violation. They can be checked using the new button called "Check Constraints" located on the Constraints tab (right upper corner) on the Schedule View. A (insert color here) triangle will be displayed on the respective show if any violation occurred.