Anyway, this blog post isn't about that. It's about a hypothetical situation where my friends and I win the lottery and we buy Crewe cinema off Odeon and make our own independent cinema that, in my head, would be way more popular by making some small changes to make a big impact.
Full disclosure: I love watching films in the cinema, and I do not have the money to do this project. A lot of it hasn't had any financial research, and some of it may have practical issues from being implemented, but this is a dream darn it! (alternatively, hello potential investors, yes this is what I would like to do please fund me)
Also, I ramble. Expect rambling.
Chapter 1 - Pricing
Present Day
Alright, let's get the big one out of the way: Cinemas are expensive. At Odeon Crewe, it costs around £10-15 for a single adult ticket depending on whether it falls into the "blockbuster" category, or it's 3D, etc. We don't have any fancy screens here, though we do have a very small one that costs the same as any other. Odeon have Kids Club and Silver Screen screenings for kids and seniors respectively, which cost much less but are for films on the end of or a little after their main theatrical run; I guess a little while before they come out on disc and streaming.Outside of Crewe, Northwich has the same rough pricing although it's a few quid more for their iSense screen, and Knutsford has a Curzon cinema also at a similar price though with only one screen. However, if you head to a Manchester, Liverpool, Stoke or Newcastle-under-Lyme, suddenly cinemas get much cheaper, at £5-8 a ticket. Why? Competition. They lower the prices to get more people to go, and try to outdo the other cinemas nearby, while places like Crewe only have one cinema, so they can essentially charge whatever they want. Now, it's not clear to me whether the cinemas charging under £10 a ticket are operating at a loss and the ones like Crewe are picking up the tab, or if the higher prices at Crewe are solely so because there's no other options.
Odeon also have a membership scheme called Limitless, which costs £205 a year or £17.99 a month for a minimum of a 12 month contract. If you manage to watch two films a month, that's essentially £9 per film, which is less than Crewe, but more than places with more than one cinema. Cineworld have a similar Unlimited scheme, which interestingly used to cost a fair bit less than Limitless, but now is roughly the same. Curzon's on the other hand has a cheaper membership at £50 which gives you a finite number of tickets (4 at time of writing) plus discounts on future tickets, along with a more expensive option that's more in-line with Odeon's and Cineworld's. For the cheaper option, that's the equivalent of £12.50 per ticket if you don't use the discounts on any more.
In terms of food and drink, cinemas are famously expensive, although it's believed that cinemas make most of their profit from food and drink rather than the ticket prices. For example, £12 gets you a large drink, large popcorn and a bag of sweets. Now, the bag of sweets is really worth £2-3 from a corner shop charging full RRP, and the drink I'd compare with a restaurant doing unlimited refills, so take Nando's charging around £3. Is the large popcorn worth £6-7? Probably not, but it does have to get cleaned up afterwards. You do get discounts if you have a membership for the relevant cinema, but that's not going to cover the markup.
Peter's Imaginary World
So what would I change about this at my single indie cinema? Well, let's assume that the reason Odeon charge more at Crewe cinema is that they're covering for the ones where they charge significantly less, rather than just being awful for people who don't have a choice of cinema. So, we take a middle ground and say that tickets cost £8. Either way, having the price point be under £10 is the aim, as the moment it reaches double digits is when it starts feeling expensive. Of course, this is based on a whole bunch of assumptions that this is a feasible price point both in terms of costs and in terms of paying all workers fairly.A membership scheme isn't a terrible idea, and I'm fond of Curzon's approach of "buy a batch of tickets up front, then discounts in future" as, once the initial batch are used up, people aren't as obliged to visit the cinema more than they want to, but the discount is still a draw. Whether a discount can be offered or not would be up to whether the tickets are making enough profit in the first place. Membership schemes are to make money out of people who might not use all their benefits, and the intent is to get more people into cinemas by making them more penetrable.
What about food? Well, let's work on the assumption that cinemas really do make more profit off food than ticket sales. If their only market are cinemagoers, many of whom are just buying their own food and drink and bringing it to the cinema anyway, then the price-points make sense. However, there's a lot of potential here. Let me give you a quick case study:
Case study: MtoGo
On the Wirral, West Cheshire, around Liverpool and North of Liverpool, Merseyrail operate high frequency trains around the area. Every station bar a couple of minor exceptions have ticket offices, and everyone is required to have a ticket before they get on the train (the exceptions have machines). For those down South thinking this isn't particularly unusual, in the North most stations outside of larger towns and cities don't have ticket offices, and many don't even have machines. Buying on the train is the norm. Merseyrail, on the other hand, have gone the opposite way and have ticket offices at most stations. In fact, since their trains don't have toilets, most stations also have toilets which the ticket offices buzz you into.Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Ten of their ticket offices also double as convenience stores so you can get meal deals, coffees, magazines, etc along with your tickets. I even bought a plush version of one of their trains from one as part of a promotion. I am not aware of other rail operators doing this, instead usually going for a branch of WHSmith as a nearest equivalent. It makes a lot of sense because people will be going to get a ticket to get to work or wherever, and get their lunch or a snack at the same time. It also justifies staff at these stations, as they can do rail-related stuff and shop-related stuff.
So, my thinking is to introduce a convenience store that's open longer than the actual cinema's opening hours, and sells food and drink at typical convenience store prices. Since it's integrated into the cinema, it would be promoting and selling tickets for the cinema, while also making additional profit outside of screening hours. There would also be ticket machines and customer service desks for the cinema directly during screening hours.
By doing this, the cost of food and drink would be lowered to convenience store levels, which admittedly are a little higher than supermarkets, but guests would be much more willing to buy products when they arrive at those price-points, and it would also make money off those not viewing a screening, and just want to pick up some bread/milk/etc.
Chapter 1 solution: Lower ticket prices and integrate a convenience store.
Chapter 2 - Variety of films
Present Day
As a chain, Odeon tends to prefer "blockbuster" films (read: big budget, Hollywood, English speaking, etc) at their smaller cinemas. Since Crewe has two rather small screens, even the bigger films that aren't quite "blockbusters" tend to not get shown here (Isle of Dogs and Downsizing to name a couple, that similarly sized Nuneaton Odeon showed, as did the larger Stoke Odeon). For context, Odeon Crewe is a five screen cinema. Screens 1 and 5 are very small at less than a hundred seats, while 2 and 4 fit a bit more, then screen 3 seats 190. Each auditorium has 2 wheelchair spaces. Screens 1 and 5 are typically only used when films are nearly out of their theatrical release window and they're expecting not many people to show up. Instead, the three larger screens show the latest 1-3 films, with the later night screenings being the slightly-less blockbusters, particularly horror films.When I have challenged Odeon in the variety of films they show at Crewe, Odeon claim that the film distributors dictate which cinemas show which films. They won't go into detail on how this works, but perhaps they get told they can show a film on X number of screens, or in Y number of cinemas and they have to figure out which cinemas are most appropriate. However, the way they have worded it to me in the past implies that someone like Universal says "show this film in Crewe. Don't show this film in Crewe", and while that honestly sounds ridiculous, I wouldn't be that surprised. Looking around online, film distribution honestly sounds like quite a secretive area, and since it involves big deals with money, that isn't surprising. However, it sounds like buyers from chains negotiate with the distributors on which films to rent (perhaps lease is a better word) and then the terms of the agreement presumably include which cinemas they intend to show them in, or a number. Of course, I'm not privy to these agreements, so I can't say for sure.
Something that makes this a bit more complicated is older films. They may get a similar deal, or they may end up being something else entirely. One thing I do know is that, when Back to the Future had an anniversary while I was in college, Crewe cinema (then still a Reel Cinema I believe) showed it because the cinema manager was "a huge fan" so that's promising for older stuff.
Peter's Imaginary World
As an independent cinema, I would've thought we'd have a lot more say in which films to be shown, particularly when it comes to smaller films, older films, foreign language films, etc. However, new films (blockbusters especially) are still the main draw to any cinema. I wouldn't want to drop all blockbusters in favour of indie films, as that's a sure fire way to run out of money when nobody wants to show up. However, at the same time, I don't want blockbusters to overrun the cinema like they have with Crewe. So, let's have a think.Crewe cinema has 5 screens: 2 small, 2 medium, 1 large. The large screen should always be reserved for blockbusters or special events, provided that there's enough demand. Odeon tends to decide on the specific screen far in advance for events, but that doesn't seem reliable as if you aim low, you could fill a screen, aim high, you have loads of empty seats. There's a few options here. One is to ditch allocated seats, and instead have unreserved seating (which many Odeon cinemas do already) and then allow for pre-booking of only up-to the capacity of the smallest screen, then start allocating screens in the background for that day, moving pre-bookings up until it's the largest screen. The remaining tickets are for walk-up when the specific screen has been decided. The downside to this is that you have to charge the same no matter which screen you're in. There are many who would think this is unfair, as paying "full price" for the smallest screen doesn't seem right. To fix this, there could be retroactive part-refunds, which seems expensive, or perhaps offer discounts to those who book early. In other words, the complete opposite of what Odeon do now that they've introduced a booking fee, making buying tickets in the cinema cheaper than online. There's also the issue that removing allocated seating will reduce interest in pre-booking, but then that's what a discount in advance is for. Pre-book, get the seats cheaper. Lots to think about, not sure what the right solution is. Speaking of which, here's another.
We could reduce down the number of screens, possibly having one of the smaller ones becoming dedicated for smaller and indie films, selling tickets to them at a lower cost than the ones in the bigger screens. The bigger screens would be for blockbusters and larger event screenings of course, and people won't feel ripped off for paying the same as the biggest screen for the smallest screen. Since only cheaper films to rent/lease get shown on the smaller screen, that scales with the cost of getting the film shown at all too.
Chapter 2 solution: I don't know, but having a screen dedicated to indie, foreign language and older films feels right. There might be a fun technical solution where we allocate screens based on number of tickets sold in advance, especially since allocated seats put people off either inviting friends after the initial purchase, or booking in advance, which in turn may indicate lower interest.
Chapter 3 - Accessibility
Present Day
As is standard in most cinemas, chain or otherwise, each auditorium in Crewe Odeon has wheelchair spaces, with allocated carer seats (free) if necessary, or for the wheelchair user to move onto rather than stay in their wheelchair if they wish. Crewe's Odeon has no steps to get between the entrance and the auditoriums, although the auditorium doors are not automatic, so may provide some issues for those using wheelchairs. Also standard are hearing loops for hearing aids, along with headsets for audio description. The vast majority of films shown at Odeon have audio description available if you request a headset, and they don't charge for it. If you look around carefully, you may find a flashing red LED in a cinema auditorium, that's usually the indicator for the hearing loop.What about subtitles? If you're hard of hearing, what does the cinema offer for you? As far as Crewe is concerned, not a lot. There tends to be perhaps one subtitled screening a day, usually of a film heading towards the end of the theatrical run. Sometimes for very popular films, they'll have a subtitled screening running in-parallel with a non-subtitled screening, but that's usually just for launch week. I was in a screening that wasn't advertised as subtitled, but subtitles came on. Someone went and asked for them to be turned off, which they then were. Now, I actually quite like having subtitles on, even for English language media, but I can appreciate that some people find them distracting if they don't need them. However, Crewe's Odeon having very very few subtitled screenings seems very unfair, and I feel like there should be more of them, especially early in a film's release, assuming Odeon put any out in Crewe at all.
Odeon also take part in offering "Autism Friendly Screenings [...] for guests on the autism spectrum or with sensory or learning disabilities". They're apparently once a month on a Sunday morning. I don't know if that's enough, and I don't know if more can be done to make normal screenings more accessible, but here's Odeon's page on it https://www.odeon.co.uk/accessibility/autism-friendly-cinema-screenings/
Peter's Imaginary World
I do wonder if a static 2 wheelchair spaces at the front of the cinema is enough. Something that I'd be into trying out are removable seats for increasing the number of wheelchair spaces available as and when people need them show up and/or book in advance. As mentioned above, removing the need to pick specific seats is planned, and so if wheelchair users wanted to pre-book, they can do that and the cinema can be prepared accordingly. Of course, encouraging walk-ups is important too, so as long as the seats can be quickly adjusted by staff on a whim before the listed start time, there should be enough for anyone to walk up. The one remaining issue with this is the fact that cinemas generally, by design, have stairs up to the seats, so only those at ground level can be made available for wheelchair users. Installing lifts may also not be an option due to fire safety, but I'm not sure if this could be addressed somehow. Having wheelchair spaces further up rather than at ground level would be ideal to give the options everyone else has.Okay, so the main issue I want to talk about are subtitles. However, it's worth noting that it's not just those who are deaf and hard of hearing who want subtitles. Crewe is fairly famous for its Polish community (cześć to you) and I have several Indian neighbours both at home and at work. While Crewe Odeon shows Polish films occasionally (late at night and once a week at most) I know for a fact there are Romanian, Chinese and Indian people who aren't getting their films shown, and so their options are English language (occasionally with subtitles) or Polish (with English subtitles). Perhaps their English reading ability is better than their speaking & listening ability, so they want screenings with English subtitles? There's a few ways this could be dealt with, each with their own potential drawbacks.
1) More subtitled screenings: The simplest option, and the one with the fewest drawbacks. However, the main drawback would be people who don't want subtitles not wanting to go to these screenings, already the reason why cinemas don't show subtitled screenings as often (perhaps this isn't true, and is just something cinemas have made me think is true. Something to think about there.).
2) All screenings subtitled where possible: About as simple as above, although if a subtitle track isn't available for a particular film, should that film be rejected from play at the cinema? Personally, I'd say yes, but if it's a small indie production, perhaps that wouldn't be fair, though a subtitle track doesn't seem like an expensive thing to produce. Either way, this *will* put people off who don't like having subtitles on screen. Depending on their reasoning, it could be understandable, especially since this hypothetical cinema takeover would be affecting a cinema they used to go to where they could see films without subtitles. Perhaps there's options to deal with this.
Is there a different way of presenting subtitles to people that wouldn't disrupt the average cinemagoer who has full sight and hearing and speaks English? Well, there's a couple of ideas:
a) Subtitles are projected below the screen: When I went to see Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's production of Monkey: Journey to the West in Manchester, the entire performance is in Mandarin, with English subtitles projected below the stage. It was an unusual set-up and not one I'd seen before, but because of the language barrier for many audience members, it was a necessary one. I do wonder if the audience members fluent in Mandarin find English subtitles distracting, considering any Chinese cinema that makes it over to the UK will always have English subtitles, and sometimes traditional Chinese subtitles too. Anyway, this leaves me with a thought on how the subtitles could be projected below the screen:
a1) Visible to whole cinema: No matter where you sit in the cinema, you can see the subtitles. Again, easiest and most accessible solution, but distracting for those who find subtitles so. Since the subtitles would be projected below the screen, it might be easier for people to tune them out.
a2) Visible to front few rows: I'm not 100% on the technical side of this, but it may be possible for the front row or two to have an angled additional screen allowing you to get subtitles below or possibly overlaid that is either invisible or mostly invisible to the rest of the audience. Downsides are, again, having to look away from the screen unless it's a transparent screen to overlay the subtitles, but most notably that you'd have to be in a certain place in the cinema. But wait, there's another way you can use a transparent screen to achieve this.
b) Augmented reality (AR) headsets: Before you roll your eyes, this is technology available right now. Although not cheap, we're not talking about a bulky headset like current VR headsets, or even Microsoft's Hololens. We're looking at something more akin to Google Glass where you don't need excessive graphics or anything like that, you need to see text and you need to be able to see what you're looking at. On a technical level, you'd probably have infra-red emitters at points around the screen so that the headset can identify where you are in the auditorium and overlay the subtitles at the bottom of the screen like the traditional projected ones. Hypothetically speaking, you could even adjust the location if you wanted to, probably with a dial on the side or something like that. Since cinemas already hand out headsets for audio description, handing out ones for subtitles shouldn't be too out of the ordinary.
Going down this route also helps with our other thought: translation. Now, if I pretend that the world is lovely for a moment and all films get translated into several languages prior to their English-speaking theatrical release, you could have all available languages available to pick from on the headset. You get into the cinema, select your language and then the film gets subtitles in your language on the headset. In reality, that's probably not going to be the case (forgive my pessimism). Fortunately, machine translation exists. The subtitles could be translated automatically which, although not great, could help fill some gaps in someone's English knowledge.
While writing this, I had another idea. If we've got headsets for displaying subtitles using AR, why *can't* we show graphics? Again, hypothetically speaking, you could overlay someone doing a form of sign language (in our case, British Sign Language or BSL) next to the screen. I'll be honest, I'm not deaf or hard of hearing, so I don't personally know when's appropriate to use one or another, but I certainly see kids shows on TV with BSL interpreters, so why not films in the cinema? Alternatively, I'd certainly love to have a live BSL interpreter for kids films in our hypothetical cinema, as I feel like that's potentially an audience untouched.
Chapter 3 solution: Since this is all imaginary, the solution is to introduce AR headsets to offer to those wanting subtitles in whatever language they prefer, catering to those with hearing impairments and those wanting translations. I'd also have more frequent autism friendly screenings, and introduce a live BSL interpreter for kids films, assuming the distributors won't let me record one and overlay it on the film in the AR headset. We also want seats that can be removed to make way for more wheelchair spaces, and maybe ones further up the seating levels, rather than at ground level only.
Chapter 4 - Cheer screenings
Some of my most vivid and treasured memories involve being at an event of some kind as part of the audience, and the audience adding so much to the event. While these include going to concerts, this also includes film screenings. There have been a couple of cinema screenings I've been to where, although not explicitly described as such, have essentially been "cheer screenings", a term used to describe film screenings where the audience are encouraged to sing along to songs, cheer at moments in the film, etc (historically a term I've only seen for screenings in Japan, but I'm seeing it more often). In other words, there's audience participation. This is usually reserved for films people have seen before that are classics, such as Grease and Rocky Horror Picture Show, although there can be some special events for new films, such as the Absolutely Fabulous Movie gala screening in Manchester a number of years ago, where people were encouraged to dress up, are given free popcorn and prosecco (I stuck to cola) and was tied in with local clubs having after parties, famous drag queens in attendance, etc and the audience would cheer at every cameo and reference, applaud at various points, etc. You get the idea.Present Day
Now, Odeon will occasionally show old films, but in the case of Grease, it was for an anniversary screening nationwide, and for Absolutely Fabulous, it was the Manchester premiere. Otherwise, showing old films isn't really Odeon's forté, and special events like that will be few and far between. There used to be Odeon Flashbacks, specifically at the Manchester Printworks Odeon (now a Vue) and then it started to be a nationwide thing at larger cinemas (so sometimes Stoke, always Manchester and Liverpool and the like) and it was usually monthly on a Monday night (when not as many people would be going to the cinema) but it's been a while since that was a thing (even pre-pandemic). However, even when showing these films, they weren't listed as the sort of thing people would cheer along to, I think you just had to know it was that sort of thing. Grease in particular had people singing along, but there were a few there who weren't happy at this sort of a thing going on.Peter's Imaginary World
So the first thing is, I'd love to show older stuff (as mentioned in chapter 2) but making more of an event of them would be amazing. If you look at theatre, you'd go for a meal beforehand, get an ice cream during the interval, etc. Films don't tend to do that, except for 2001: A Space Odyssey and in India. That's right, when I go to see Bollywood films at Odeon cinemas, they tend to be quite long films (often 3+ hours) and halfway through there's usually an interval for about 10 minutes to get a snack, go to the loo, etc. This is fairly common, and even abruptly pausing a Hollywood film part way through so there's an interval. I'm not saying we do that here, unless we show Bollywood films (which I would want to) or others where an interval is expected (yes, 2001 did have an interval in the original version). However, making an event of it, opening the floor for a party of some sort, or working with distributors to get merchandise or something, seems like a fun thing to do. Certainly advertising screenings as "cheer screenings" or an equivalent term so people know and are encouraged to participate in the atmosphere of the film, seems like something that would draw in crowds. It's certainly a thing for The Room down in London. Not so much up here.Chapter 4 solution: Heck yeah do cheer screenings, but make sure they're labelled as such and a non-cheer equivalent is offered (or maybe offer noise cancelling headphones so it can be the same screen, but cancel out the people cheering). It could even be a festival of films for people to join in with (Crewe Sing-along Film Festival could be a thing).
Chapter 5 - Adverts, trailers and timekeeping
Present Day
This is a fairly common complaint about cinemas I hear. "I pay a lot of money to be shown adverts" etc. Adverts are a part of cinema and how you can get money. I'm not sure how much is made by cinemas on advertising over the cost of the films themselves, but the fact that even indie cinemas have adverts and trailers before the film probably says a lot. I am not expecting this to change in imaginary world, but perhaps it could be improved. At Odeon Crewe, though, the adverts and trailers run for roughly 20 minutes from the listed start time. I have often taken this knowledge into account by showing up 10-15 minutes after the start time, and walk in during the trailers.Peter's Imaginary World (and Japan)
When I went to a cinema while in Japan, things were a little different. Adverts were playing while I entered the cinema, before the listed start time. At the listed start time, there was a short trailer reel of I believe a couple of films, then the film started. I don't know how consistent this is across cinemas in Japan, but I feel like it's a good format to follow. Having the film start only a few minutes after the start time allows for some last minute stragglers to get seated, but otherwise you can keep to a fairly reliable schedule based around the start time, without having to guess around how many ads there are. It also gives some extra power to refuse entry for people arriving after the film actually starts. I don't know if the cinema advertising companies enforce a particular format to how their advert reels are placed around films, but following the Japanese style where people see some adverts as they arrive, then a couple of trailers before the film they came to see, rather than (in theory) sitting through numerous ads as they arrived at the listed start time, seems like a good alternative, while still showing adverts to get that extra revenue.Chapter 5 solution: Start the ads before the listed start time, start the trailers at the listed start time, then start the film a few minutes later, like that one experience in Japan I had. Ideally refuse entry for people showing up after the film actually starts.
Chapter 6 - Cinema Etiquette
Present Day
If you're in a cinema and someone a few rows ahead of you is messing on their phone rather than watching the film, and the light from their screens is distracting, what do you do? You could try and move somewhere else, but you're with some mates and there isn't room for you to move, or they're at the front enough where you can't move. You could ask them to stop, and risk getting abuse and them ignoring you (I have had this happen). You could go find a staff member, but that involves going out during the film, finding staff, and getting them to ask them, which they may or may not want to do.Peter's Imaginary World (and Scotland)
I go to Scotland Loves Anime every year, usually Edinburgh, and, generally speaking, people are fairly well behaved. One of the things Edinburgh Filmhouse has that chain cinemas generally don't are ushers, keeping an eye on the screen, making sure people aren't on their phones (and, if they are, asking them to turn them off or leave). In Crewe cinema, for example, a staff member will show up part way through to see if there's anything...on fire or something I dunno, but that's about it. So, the first thing our imaginary cinema would do differently is to have an usher in each screen, making sure people are not disrupting others.Chapter 6 solution: Hire ushers and pay them well (along with all the other staff of course)
Chapter 7 - Jonathan Clements
On the topic of Scotland Loves Anime, something I really appreciate at the festival is how each film gets an introduction by Jonathan Clements, adding some extra context behind how the film was made, information about the director, things to look out for, etc. While I don't think this would be appropriate for every film, when showing older, indie or foreign films, it may add a similar layer of enjoyment that I get from Jonathan Clements' introductions to anime films in Scotland every year. I'm not saying every film should get an introduction, but if there's films showing that staff at the cinema are passionate about, or even asked to be screened there in the first place, then adding a short introduction could be a big draw to the cinema over the large chains.I'm not saying we have Jonathan Clements on staff, but we should definitely have people who have a genuine passion for film working there, and who get a say in how the cinema is run and which films are shown. Since films the staff are passionate about are shown, the staff will likely have interesting things to say about it, especially if it's particularly obscure.
Chapter 7 solution: Introductions to films would be great for older, foreign and obscure content, along with any special screenings and festivals, which would hopefully be many. If the staff were on-board with the idea, collectively we could have interesting facts or things to look out for to share with guests.
Conclusion
Dear [bank or investor name here],Please give me [monetary amount] so I can buy the Crewe cinema off Odeon and start up an independent cinema that caters for everyone and is a good environment to work in and visit.
Yours Faithfully,
Mx. Peter Shillito
