Production

The Cinema Advertising Association (CAA) provides cinema adverts with a classification that indicate the films it can be shown before. The clearance process takes 24 hours. All copy must receive CAA clearance before exhibition. The cost of this is £180 (+VAT). Charity & public information ads are exempt from this fee.

All copy for charity and government affiliated campaigns requires clearance from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), along with any copy containing content from film and TV. This clearance process takes 48 hours and costs vary.

DCM only recommend mixing your audio at a theatrical studio set up to motion-picture industry standards. This ensures audio is mixed in an environment which is technically specified to provide excellent translation to the cinema and mixed by specialists.

Supply the sound studio with separate uncompressed stems, including music stems for best results. 

Cinema runs at 24fps; however, you will note that we accept picture at either 24fps or 25fps. 25fps will be slowed down to 24fps on the DCP.

If you are supplying picture at 25fps, then your sound studio must mix against this same 25fps version. Your studio will need to stretch the audio to 24fps before supplying the finished D-Cinema Immersive Audio & D-Cinema 5.1 mixes to us, as per our audio specifications. This means that the advertisement will run 4% slower/longer on cinema. Please note that DCM do not charge any additional fees for this 4% overrun.

If it is preferable to avoid stretching the audio, then you may alternatively decide to talk to your post house about cutting a native 24fps picture before the mix which will avoid the tempo change.

Sound studios supply all audio mixes to DCM via 4cine.io, an automated technical QC system which ensures compliance with UK cinema audio regulations.

Please instruct your sound studio be set up with a 4cine account to deliver audio to DCM via 4cine.ibmaspera.com.

It is advised that titles and logos fall within cinema title safety. All legal lines must  be positioned within cinema title safety. Any object that falls outside of title safety is at risk of being cropped by the masking curtains in some auditoriums.

Please ensure that you use the title safety guide that corresponds with the resolution of the picture you are supplying, otherwise the picture may be rejected.

Frames should always be exported and supplied progressive, not interlaced. An interlaced picture sequence can cause visual quality issues in the mastered DCP.

If you are already setup with Caria access, you should use the platform to create your CRI. Creative agencies will see the booking on their system, indicated by the cinema symbol.

There are guides on how to setup CRI’s on the Caria Help page.

Once all assets and clearance letters have been supplied, we will convert your advert to digital cinema format (DCP). Once this is done, we can either host an approval screening in our office, or we can send you a viewing file via email so that you can confirm we have received the correct assets.