President Richard Mitchell details how CTC has been busy over the last 18 months

Bringing Audiences Back, Supporting the Recovery

Richard Mitchell, President, Cinema Technology Community (CTC)

THE GREAT news is that cinema is back, audiences are returning and box office revenues are recovering - with the recent UK figures for “No Time To Die” in particular proving to be nothing short of remarkable. We’ve proved the doomsday merchants wrong (again), cinema remains as resilient as ever - battered and bruised perhaps, but far from irrevocably broken. It remains to be seen how complete the global recovery is yet, however the indications are that the climb back is very much underway, with increasing momentum.

The CTC has, over the past 20 months, supported the industry in ways never previously envisaged as we entered the pandemic. From white papers, technical guides, videos, seminars and podcasts, our team has worked tirelessly to create a platform to educate, collaborate and inform the industry. We wanted to ensure that when the recovery commenced, our members would be in the best possible position from a technical perspective to provide amazing movie-going experiences once again. And the global community responded.

Our free Community Membership scheme saw our global membership grow to more than 700 members in over 70 countries, making CTC the world’s largest cinema technology trade organisation. This scheme will remain in place until the end of February 2022 (visit cinema-technology.com for details). And as we emerge from the pandemic, CTC’s focus has now moved to supporting cinemas to ensure that presentation excellence remains a top priority. The team has been working on an ambitious project to provide a set of test materials for event cinema, to be rolled out over the coming months. We’re also revisiting our Projection Handbook to provide significant updates to this valuable resource and are actively pursuing the restart of our acclaimed training courses to help bridge the inevitable skills gap that’s likely to exist as a result of the pandemic. But as the industry rebuilds, it needs to do so bolder, more diverse and better than before. Our

CTC EXECUTIVE TEAM Richard Mitchell (President), Graham Lodge (Vice President), Mike Bradbury, Sandie Caffelle, Michael Denner, John Dowsland, Peter Knight, Sarah Lewthwaite, Adam MacDonald, Saul Mahoney, Andre Mort, David Norris, Markus Overath, Alessandra Pavan Bernacchi, Grainne Peat, David Pope, Toni Purvis, Simon Tandy, Patrick von Sychowski, and Paul Willmott. Join our cause Behind everything that we do at the Cinema Technology Community is a passion for ensuring that moviegoers have the best cinema experience possible. If you share that ambition, please join our community today by heading over to our site: cinema-technology.com

CTC ADVISORY COUNCIL Tom Bert (Barco), Mark Christiansen (Paramount Pictures), Brian Claypool (Christie Digital), Theresa English (TK Architects), Mark de Quervain (Showtime Analytics), Jan Rasmussen (Nordisk Film), Dominic Simmons (BFI), Sriram Sistla (CinemaNext India), Alice Tentori (Digima), Julia Vinokurova (RealD) commitment to diversity and equality in our industry remains strong and we recently recorded a second series of “Women In Cinema” interviews at

CineEurope. In December we’ll be unveiling our 2021 award winners and to round out our Community Membership scheme, we’ll be hosting our second One Community Day event in February 2022 to, once again, bring together the global cinema community for a day of learning and networking online.

O P I N I O N

An industry like no other...

After a recent spate of in-person events, Peter Knight muses on where we are now and shares his gratitude at once again being able to enjoy the many pleasures the industry has to offer.

Isn’t it great to be back again?! For those that have managed to get to CinemaCon, CineEurope or the UKCA conference this year it has been such a treat to be able to reconnect with so

many industry colleagues after so long. Sitting in the main auditorium at CineEurope watching some of the slate presentations, and even when investigating some of the new equipment being presented on the tradeshow floor, I was overcome with emotion, more than once, at how wonderful it is to be part of this industry. And I am sure that I am not the only one.

Real Connections Win Every Time

Staying in touch with colleagues via various video conferencing tools is all well and good, but those interactions are just not the same as real-life connections. And let’s be honest, the same is true of trying to watch a movie at home compared to seeing it on the big screen. I would bet that most of us would be able to recall the location of the cinema

and the people we were with for most movies that we’ve seen on the silver screen. But I’d guess that most of us can’t say the same about films we’ve seen at home. Looking at the box office figures out so far, it seems that our audiences would wholeheartedly agree.

On a Radio 4 programme the other day, there was an encouraging interview with a ‘young person’ who wanted to go with their friends to the cinema, rather than stay at home to watch another online movie. But, of course, there are still those who don’t feel able to return to our screens even if they would like to, no matter what’s showing. The real question is how we can encourage them back, instilling the confidence in them to return and enjoy the experience. Here, as we all know, is where sharing best practices and insights really is crucial.

Lessons Learnt

The pandemic has allowed - indeed, forced - people and companies to innovate in ways they never would have envisaged pre-2020. Hopefully, these innovations will go on to enhance both our professional and private lives. Some cinemas have developed additional opportunities alongside their traditional business models: private rentals, streaming services, concessions sales. The list is impressive. We’ve also seen an increase in drive-in cinemas using LED screens for outdoor movie screenings. These are all things that I am sure will continue to exist in one form or another in the

future alongside the traditional experience.

Another thing we’ve seen is that the pandemic has given many an opportunity to re-evaluate and head in an exciting new direction, ultimately benefiting customers, businesses and, in turn, ourselves.

But I can’t stress how great it is to be back, meeting people for real, having a drink in a pub, or a coffee in a cafe. While we know that things haven’t completely settled yet, it’s so refreshing and motivating to be reminded why I love our industry in the way that I, and so many others, do. And I’m so proud to be a part of it.

ALWAYS A GOOD FIT

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