3 ways an integrated film database simplifies your cinema scheduling

Weekly film scheduling is a critical component in the life of a cinema manager.

Yet, it’s not the only one. 

As the manager of an independent cinema, you have to take care of the inner workings of your venue on many different levels: from staffing to marketing, from scheduling to the concessions inventory. So many things vying for your attention, right?

That’s why, every optimized task and time saved on manual work makes a big difference on your day to day. 

Even when it comes to your cinema’s weekly program, you probably spend a lot of time gathering film assets, tinkering with the poster size on your website, or trying to manually update the ticket prices for that new premiere.

It doesn’t have to be that way. And we have just the thing for you. 

With an integrated film database built into your cinema management or ticketing solution, you get to easily speed up the full process and have more time to focus on pressing aspects, like promoting the new releases and getting more weekly admissions. Even learning about upcoming releases.

Imagine a film database containing all the necessary information you require (all the critical details - film duration, distributor, synopsis, etc.), film assets, film variants for your market, etc.  that you can access as simple as a search or a few clicks — ready to be used directly in your cinema management platform.

Let’s discover how, and why our product team at DX is hard at work to continuously develop such a database:

1. You save time whenever you schedule a new film 

There’s no need to create a new film every time a new release is happening. Or manually write its description. Or translate it into your local language. Or waste time finding out who the distributor is for that new film.

With a centralized film database created and curated inside your cinema operations solution, you only have to search for the new film you want to schedule, and you’ll have everything ready with a few clicks — from posters, to trailers, to the local market variations you require. That’s right, the technology does the work for you. This is one of the benefits of building in the cloud and for the cloud. We do the hard work up front, so all updates are in, and all you have to do is search for the movie title. Plus, you can even access it on the go.  

Because it’s centralized, that means you’ll get to see all the films across the platform and, who knows?, you might even get inspired for your next months in programming. 

At DX, we also use Sanity, a customizable content support system, to ensure that all our film assets are structured the same in our database and you won’t have any inconsistencies, missing details, or other such issues.  

And, to keep it simple and error-free, we’re exploring the best route to offering TMS integration so you don’t have to double your scheduling work.

2. You create a great discovery experience on your cinema website

Your cinema website is your greatest asset to delight moviegoers and convince them to buy a ticket to that new film you’re showing. 

So the first impression you make counts a lot. 

If your cinema operations solution offers a film database integrated with your cinema website, that means you don’t have to worry about doubling your work with updating the website or missing information for that new film.

Everything is streamlined and updated across the board.

You just search for the new film, use the drag and drop function to schedule it for the next planned week, and it’s automatically updated on your website. 

Plus, the less manual work you have to do, the less prone to errors you’ll be — so you can rest assured that your moviegoers will have all the details they need to choose what they want to see next at your cinema.

3. You have access to real-time film analytics to enhance your cinema scheduling

An integrated film database doesn’t only work as an efficient way for you to schedule films, but can also offer you historical aggregated data to cross-reference a film’s performance across your cinema, your region, or even at a national level.

Because our vision at DX is to leverage the film database and connect it with performance analytics and other key data in our platform (presale data, admissions data, etc.). 

In the end, we want to enable cinema managers to make data-driven decisions for their cinema business, and programming is one of the key aspects we plan to optimise.

We’re on a journey, together with our current clients and partners, of building the data ecosystem every cinema can leverage to:

• Plan ahead and know which movies will have the most traction based on past admissions data and predictions in the market
• Double down film scheduling based on past tickets sales data 
• In the future, even get personalised suggestions of weekly film scheduling based on past performance at the boxoffice (fully automated) 

With each new automated feature and seamless integration readily available in your cinema management solution, you gain more time to focus on the critical side of the business — powering a great experience for your moviegoers.

The centralised film database we keep on populating and improving is just one part of our future-proof cinema software continuous development. 

If you want to be part of this journey and discover how we can help you power great cinema experiences, contact us. 

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