UKCA’s Phil Clapp explains why cinema’s resilience is in

Weathering the storm...

Lockdown has been a kick in the guts to all cinemas, but as Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, explains, the true mark of our sector’s resilience is in its continued response to such adversity.

WE CAN ALL AGREE that it may be one of the great understatements to say that the past six months or so have been amongst the most difficult that anyone working in the UK (and indeed global) cinema sector is ever likely to encounter and that we’re by no means out of the woods yet.

Certainly, a time when the UK industry was enjoying a run of almost unprecedented success and the BAFTAwinning “1917” was pushing box office in Q1 of this year to even greater heights now seems an entirely different age.

For many, a sign of the onslaught to come arrived with the announcement on 4 March that the upcoming James Bond movie “No Time to Die” would be re-dated. In hindsight it makes absolute sense, but it came at the time as an unexpected punch to the solar plexus of the industry.

...& coming out fighting

The start of 2020 saw a real boom in UK Cinema. The industry was enjoying a run of almost unprecedented success and the BAFTA-winning “1917” was pushing box office in Q1 of this year to even greater heights. How quickly things took a turn for the worse…

95% The UKCA estimates 95% of UK cinema staff were on furlough

After that, things seemed to move quickly, though the beginning of the lockdown when it came was undoubtedly a messy affair with the public being told by government not to go to cinemas (amongst other venues), but with cinemas not being required to close by law. As a result, we witnessed a week of slow death for the admissions of those cinemas that doggedly chose to remain open before the curtain finally came down.

A further period of uncertainty followed before the announcement of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the point at which the word ‘furlough’ suddenly dropped into our everyday lexicon. In truth, while just one of a number of business support measures put in place for the sector — including a business rates holidays, a VAT deferral and a range of local authority-administered grants — it was this scheme above all which provided a lifeline for UK cinemas. At one stage, we estimate that over 95 per cent of the sector’s workforce was on furlough, allowing those roles to be retained and ensuring that vast swathes of redundancies were avoided at the time.

The need for dialogue

The UKCA’s role in those early weeks was primarily one of communication, ensuring that members were kept up to date on the developing situation and aware of the different support schemes available to them. One feature of that time — and something which became a constant theme — was the need for dialogue not just with the UK government in London, but also the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, many of the key issues being dealt with differently in those nations.

Much of that early support in place, the association’s focus then swiftly shifted to taking the steps necessary to convince government to allow cinemas to re-open again. Central to this was the development of a set of guidelines setting out the key measures to be put in place to safeguard audiences and staff members.

In drafting these, the UKCA relied heavily on the experience and expertise offered by a specially-convened working group of operations leads from more than a dozen of its largest members. Given the developing nature of public health advice and the changing state of the pandemic, this remains a ‘living’ document, again tailored to the differing requirements across the four UK nations — the latest version can be found at www.cinemauk.org.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/ guidance-for-cinemas/

A lack of bandwidth

Even with those strong foundations in place, there’s no denying that dialogue with government on this and other matters was (and remains) at times a challenge. The need to engage with so many demands at once has clearly caused a range of ‘bandwidth’ issues at the centre, and communication has not always been as timely or consistent as it might have been. Announcements relevant to the sector have sometimes been made without the knowledge of officials supposedly ‘in charge’ of our interests, requiring them to play catch-up before they can offer us detailed advice (the latest example being that around the need for face coverings). That said, it probably speaks well of the sector’s ability to organise itself that in each of the four UK nations, cinemas were among the first public venues allowed to open, and the UKCA worked hard to provide the necessary support for members, producing a series of assets to communicate the relevant measures to audiences — these can be found at: www.cinemauk.org.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/guidance-foraudiences/ — and more recently worked closely with the sector skills agency ScreenSkills to develop an online e-learning module and assessment test around CV19 for those working in exhibition, but which can be attempted by all. More here: www.cinemauk.org.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/ training-for-cinemas/

There’s still a question mark…

While that sounds comparatively straightforward, at this moment the reality for many operators remains that when and how they might re-open presents various challenges.

The cost of implementing necessary safeguards come at a time when revenue is squeezed beyond all recognition, not

least when the demands of social distancing and the “rule of six” are such that available capacity is massively reduced — and much of the audience has not yet plucked up the courage to return. With cinemas doing all they can to get the sector back on its feet, the most obviously missing piece of the jigsaw remains new film content necessary to persuade people out of their homes.

While the Film Distributors’ Association did a superb job in marshalling its members to bring back-catalogue movies to the table, and some have drawn significant audiences (see

Audrey Tatou’s iconic movie moment in “Amelie”, part of the “LoveCinema” trailer campaign

There are though heroes (and heroines) to be found here — the likes of Altitude Films for example, which has released a number of significant titles into the maelstrom, and of course colleagues at Warner Bros, who — with sinews no doubt strengthened by director Christopher Nolan — bucked “Classic titles back on the big the trend and released the espionage screen”, page 24), it’s increasingly “There are heroes thriller Tenet globally in territories and clear that without release of major new titles, the coming weeks and months will remain a hard slog for like Altitude Films which has released regions where cinemas are open. In truth, we need more such displays of confidence in our business if we are to everyone. It’s possible that smaller several significant emerge from what will remain a deeply operators in particular won’t make titles into the concerning time for the sector, with the it to the other side. current maelstrom” weeks and months ahead perhaps being crucial in determining the survival of many. Content now. Please. There are positive signs — feedback from returning It’s easy to jump on a high horse here, but while no one audience members is overwhelmingly positive, with many under-estimates the challenges being experienced by going out of their way to say how safe and enjoyable the colleagues in film distribution, the general unwillingness of experience has been. And the launch of our ‘LoveCinema’ many of the US studios to make new content available to campaign — www.lovecinema.com — led by an evocative theatres in the UK — and indeed the increasing number of trailer, has been hugely well-received, and clearly struck a other film territories where cinemas have been able to rechord with many. open — looks to many like hugely frustrating short-term The challenge now is to maintain that momentum and thinking and something which increasingly puts at risk the bring our industry back to the heights it was enjoying before future of our global industry. lockdown.