Tag Archives: Cinema Exhibitors’ Association

CinemaCon 2011: Digital Funding Partnership Pacts With XDC For D-Cinema Deployment In UK

April 2, 2011

At the outset of CinemaCon this past Monday Steve Perrin gave an interesting presentation titled “Harnessing The Power of the VPF”. As the Chief Executive of Digital Funding Partnership (DFP) Perrin is in a position to know a thing or two about virtual print fees. He’ll have some help in this department now that DFP has entered into an agreement with XDC for the deployment of digital cinema in theatres throughout the United Kingdom.

The Cinema Exhibitors’ Association created DFP in 2009 to help small and mid-sized theatre owners in the UK secure funding for digital cinema conversions. The group is a legal entity consisting of approximately 400 screens at 130 mainstream and specialized cinemas operated by more than 100 theatre owners.

Perrin spent more than a year studying the country’s booking patterns, box office receipts and endless market data in an attempt to determine whether VPF deals would work for independent cinemas in the UK. In doing so he confirmed that VPFs work best for large theatre circuits which play mostly mainstream content. Smaller cinemas showing less mainstream content at varying turn rates are not as attractive to local or international distributors, making it difficult, if not impossible, for theatre owners to gain access to VPF deals.

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Posted in Countries, Digital Cinema, Trade Shows

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Cinema Expo Thoughts: David Hancock of Screen Digest

By J. Sperling Reich

July 20, 2010

The final entry in our series of posts presenting the comments of industry participants on last month’s Cinema Expo provides us with some valuable information.

David Hancock’s name will sound familiar to anyone having worked in motion picture exhibition or digital cinema over the past decade. He is the head of film and cinema at Screen Digest where he works as a senior analyst publishing numerous research reports on the industry.

Hancock moderated a panel discussion at Cinema Expo which reviewed the progress of digital cinema rollouts in Europe. Here are his impressions on last month’s conference:

David Hancock of Screen Digest

This was a very good Cine Expo. Thanks in great part to the efforts of Phil Clapp, the Chief Executive of UK Cinema Exhibitor Association, and Ad Weststrate, President of UNIC, who brought a strong European flavour to the seminar programming, there was much to be learned in both these formal events, as well as the more informal surroundings of the bars.

For me, there were two things that stood out at this year’s Cine Expo. The first was alternative content, which is now clearly on the map and was on most people’s lips. From almost a pariah subject a few years back, there is now strong interest from exhibitors in tracking down new content. The call for content is matched by the need for a central information point where exhibitors can view what is out there. Some exhibitors and content providers have been working in this area for many years, and it is good to finally see the rest of the market catch up with them. Their skills and experience will be in demand in the next few years. There were two panels on this, one on Monday and one on Thursday.

The second is that digital cinema is finally a mainstream movement. Left and right, people were taking deals, with integrators, projector companies, banks etc. In fact, there appears to be a projector shortage now and people are on waiting lists. It is rather strange, having spent so long talking about the future is coming, to talk about this in the present tense. It is even weirder that we are talking about projector shortages when in the past, the opposite was the case.

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Posted in Events, Trade Shows

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Fancy Heading Up UK’s Digital Cinema Group?

By Celluloid Junkie Staff

August 24, 2009

The UK’s Cinema Exhibitors’ Association (CEA) had previously announced that they are setting up an organization to support small-to-medium sized exhibitors in the switch to digital, along the lines of the semi-hibernating Cinema Buying Group (CBG) of NATO. CEA’s CEO Phil Clapp commented at the time that:

many [cinemasl also recognise that they are extremely unlikely to be able to secure funding deals to allow them to convert on their own. We strongly believe that the proposed funding group may be the only option to achieve this for a significant majority of small and medium-sized cinema operators.

Now the time has come to appoint someone to head up this mission. From the announcement:

As detailed in an advert appearing in the next edition of Screen International, the CEA is looking to recruit – initially on a six month contract – an individual with the following qualities:

Experience of work in film distribution and/or exhibition at a senior level, with an understanding of the key industry issues and processes between the two sectors;

Experience of digital cinema contracts and/or deployment;

Knowledge of the major US studios and international distributors, including the key decision-makers on issues around digital cinema;

Proven negotiating skills; and

Experience of running an organisation at director or a similar senior level.

Key initial tasks for the successful candidate will be to: establish the necessary business, governance and financial structures for the group; undertake an analysis of the current market for digital cinema in relation to group members; and, through discussion with potential funding partners and others, to identify those approaches which might provide a ‘best fit’ for group members with regard to financial support.

It may be somewhat optimistic to think that this can be achieved in six months, but the contract does have an extension option. Expect whoever is appointed to be spending a lot of time on a plane somewhere between Heathrow and LAX.

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Posted in Digital Cinema

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UK’s Cinema Exhib. Ass’n Gets Clapp

By Patrick von Sychowski

September 13, 2007

The trade body of the United Kingdom’s cinema industry has appointed former government film deputy secretary Phil Clapp as its new chief executive. Clapp thus replaces John Wilkinson, who stood down earlier this year (or was stood down?) , as head of the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association (CEA). Though Wilkinson remains head of the European Digital Cinema Forum, so the two will have to get on when it comes to UK-European digital cinema issues. What little information there is about the appointment comes from an article in the Hollywood Reporter, which tells us that Clapp, “joins from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], where he most recently was deputy director, responsible for policy on the creative industries, including film.”

Given that digital cinema is the greatest challenge facing the UK exhibition industry, this is not encouraging as the DCMS’s interest in digital cinema has been measured to date, compared to the Department of trade and Industry, which for many years encouraged digital cinema meetings while a new DCMS representative would show up for each meeting. However, this is not a reflection on Clapp, who must have something going for him to have qualified for the post at CEA. The CEA itself has always been the poorer cousin of its US counterpart NATO, unlike whom it does not even have a website, only these contact details. Most interesting to watch will be the dynamics between Clapp/CEA and UK Film Council/Peter Buckingham, that were responsible for the 240 screen-strong Digital Screen Network (DSN) that has made the UK the poster child of government sponsored digital cinema deployments in Europe.

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Posted in Organizations, People

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