The Weekend Round-up
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl has been the literary phenomenon over the past 18 months, with seemingly 50% of tube users at any one time reading the book. The film adaptation hit cinemas on Thursday and with master-director, David Fincher pulling the strings, it was hugely anticipated. An opening weekend of £4.1m (including £517k from previews) is a strong start and the second 18-certificate film this year to open above £4m, after January’s The Wolf Of Wall Street (£4.6m). The obvious comparison for Gone Girl is David Fincher’s last film, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Another 18-cert literary adaptation, TGWTDT opened with £4.3m in 2012 but that included four days of previews, so Gone Girl’s opening is much more impressive. TGWTDT finished its run with £12.3m, so Gone Girl will be aiming for a total north of that. Read more
CEA Digital Conference – 27 Nov @ Cineworld at the O2, Greenwich, East London
The ‘Cinema of the Future: innovation driving the audience experience’ conference is open to colleagues from across the industry. Read more
The BFI London Film Festival is set to be promoted through the Digital Cinema Media (DCM) app, cinime.
Those who use the app will receive a notification alerting them that new content will be made available during this year’s BFI London Film Festival, which runs from 8 to 19 October. Read more
The 58th BFI London Film Festival, in partnership with American Express®, kicks off today (Wednesday) with the European premiere of WWII drama, The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.
Taking place over 12 days, the 2014 BFI London Film Festival includes a huge 248 feature films and 148 shorts across 17 venues, finishing on 19 October with David Ayers’ tank drama Fury. Read more
The 11th Advertising Week in New York saw some serious star power at large and the synergy between advertising, film and cinema, was great to see.
Gaining inspiration from other creative industries in particular, such as music, fashion, books and film can help challenge all of us to push boundaries and innovate. Read more
It’s that time of year again, and this season’s meeting began with the first London CEA meeting, for some time. We all met up at the fabulous Olympic Barnes, in glorious ATMOS sound.
The first CEA meeting of the Autumn season also had a new feel, as the format has been refreshed somewhat - now the open meeting is conducted in the afternoon, which enables a longer more energetic closed meeting in the morning (or so I heard) and makes it far more practical for all of us who sit alongside our Exhibitor partners. There were some great updates, some of which are summarised below: Read more
Thanks to a partnership between Digital Cinema Media (DCM) and MyMovies, users of the cinime app will now be able to access all the latest film content, wherever they are. The enhanced functionality is being launched as the app reaches the milestone of 500,000 downloads in the UK.
Going to the cinema to experience movies at their peak intensity, offers a genuine passion point for film fans and smartphones now allow people to plug into the experience at every step from preview to review – not just when they’re in the foyer or sitting in front of the big screen. Research has also revealed that the average dwell time in the cinema foyer of smartphone users is 15 minutes before the movie, while 50% of respondents are interested in doing some form of integrated activity with their phone in the movie theatre (FAME 2013). Read more
The ever-expanding Encounters Film Festival is famous for being the UK's best known showcase for short film and animation, as well as an annual meeting place for filmmakers and industry professionals. The six day festival kicked off last week, where it was hosted in two main venues on Bristol’s scenic Harbourside, one of which is The Watershed, part of DCM's independent portfolio.
This year saw the celebration of Encounters' 20th anniversary, featuring inspirational screenings and events, radical debates and cutting edge workshops. The special celebration presents 20/20: Looking back to look forward, a theme connecting the past to the future. The programme explores the festival's history, marking two decades which saw the change from analogue to digital. Read more
On Saturday, 21 September the 10th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival drew to a close in the historic town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Over five packed days the festival attracted an impressive 9,000 visitors to see the diverse range of films and events on offer, which included 75 new films from almost 40 countries across the world, including six world premieres across 12 unique locations. Over 40 artists and filmmakers in the programme travelled to Berwick from across Europe and from as far as Lebanon and Los Angeles.
A returning theme for this year’s festival was border crossing - a subject to reflect on the significance of the Scottish referendum as well as exploring border identities and transcending boundaries all over the world. Fittingly, the festival undertook its first foray across the border with a 130 capacity sell-out screening of From Scotland With Love followed by a Q&A with Director Virginia Heath, at the fantastic new venue Paxton House. Read more
Last Monday, DCM's Exhibition Account Manager, Rebecca Rau, organised a bakesale on behalf of a great cause. She blogged about it below.
On 29th September, DCM hosted a coffee morning for Macmillan Cancer Support. This involved staff baking cakes to sell in order to raise lots of cash! A sterling effort was made by all and there was a vast variety of cakes including popcorn/cinema themed cupcakes! We certainly gave Mary Berry a run from her money. Read more
The UK’s National Media Museum and Picturehouse Cinemas have announced a new commercial cinema partnership that will begin on October 30. The partnership sees Picturehouse taking over the operation of the three major screens at the Museum including Europe’s first IMAX screen.
To celebrate introducing IMAX to the UK, on November 7 the opening of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar will premiere at National Media Museum, announcing Its status as one of the few ‘true’ IMAX 70mm film cinemas in the world. Read more
The 11th Advertising Week in New York has seen some serious star power at large, with more to come and - with my DCM hat on - the synergy between advertising, Hollywood, film and cinema, is great to see.
This builds on a theme explored at Spikes Asia last week, where creative agency legend, Johnny Hornby, chairman and CEO of The&Partnership and founding partner of CHI&Partners, talked about a move away from traditional advertising talent. He said: "With the new agency model, a modern creative director doesn't necessarily need to come from the advertising industry. We need to be looking at non-traditional ideas. I think the pace of change is so fast that creative people need a wider horizon." Read more
