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Scott Sherr: Can speak a little bit about managing content in the theatres?
Sure, well don;t want to sound like a broken record here but.. um
a lot of what we deal with in terms of issues as this point are to do with
communications and I'd say and timing more than anything else.
If we have a problem it tends to be with late delivery of a key, um or
we will have problems with versioning, um I came across a quote arr
recently that was given to me actually in a book of film quotations while I was at UIP
from my staff and um, John Landas the film projector use to say, if you can
drive a car, you can direct a movie. Its an over simplification of his
business but I think it sort of a has some implications for what we try to do
I suppose the goal should always be about trying to simplify stuff. And
where we have the primary issues tends to be where things get complicated, where we have lots of versioning
ar, where we have experiments like High Frame rate to deal with and those kind of things
are off, so I think, you know, we as exhibitors are obviously are
obviously always keenly interested in portraying the film the way the directors want.
them portrayed, so we are always going to grasp the challenge of doing that. But thats were
we run into issues, if you look at it from a cinema level. Um. so
in a lot a ways I think that digital has simplified our lives but we keep throwing these wrinkles in all the time
And thats where it gets interesting.. Scott Sherr:Tom, I mean you where coming off having released
probably the most complicated feature ever released by any studio
Can you speak to some of the challenges that warner brothers has experienced with
can you speak to some of the challenges that Warner Brother has experienced with both content and key delivery
both content delivers around the world and does it differ also regionally?
we pretty much cover all regions equally depending on the release, depending on the scope
We do many many titles especially if a title thats day and date across thousands
screens internationally including domestic is actually quite a challenge to make sure that
every key is working on every screen that we want it to be booked on. But I think transferring
the first question you had to Howard and Joe and so forth is a question on content
I think overall we do a pretty good job the industry as a whole, manage, managing
this really on manual level and Howard you said phone calls, Joe you said
its a mediation program in terms of getting keys delivered, but I think a real efficient
way to improve this more automation. You can't, you have to try to eliminate
the human error, so some form of automated response, or some form of a
centralised repository of information that exhibitors can go to
using a consistent naming convention, very arr
organised one stop shop in a way so that information can be provided and everyone
from the industry, all of the participants, exhibitors and distributors, manufacturers can use it
in relation to that, one thing that from our perspective and we are working on this,
is try to improve that communication with our vendors or the exhibitors as well is to look at
the more I'd say interactive automated response between
the keys and when its delivered and if its ready to play. So right now
as a distributor we deliver a DCP. We don't get confirmation that its been
sent to the site, we don't get further confirmation that it is been uploaded correctly,
ingested correctly in the TPMs, we don;t have any of that information.
in addition, the KDMs, we don;t get information that its actually been ready to go so we
can coordinate and integrate with our booking systems. So if we had that communication
I think we would actually mitigate a lot of opportunities for dark screens. So its an evolving process
and I think overall Technicolor and Deluxe and others have provided opportunities
in terms of the portals they are introducing to make sure that these types of updates are made
in a very fast and efficient manner, but I think there is still work for improvement.
Scott Sherr: So, are you talking about more of a FLMx kind of feed that comes back from the server and the TMS and the equipment. Tom Molter:Yes
Scott Sherr: Greg can you table about this a little bit, are you guys working on anything that would help facilitate that
sort of automation that Tom is talking about. Greg: so there is a considerable development effort
thats going on at Technicolor, again I think, everybody has noticed that the
digital cinema world is entirely too dependent on email today,
The emails the spreadsheets, the orders coming in from territories from around the world, particularly when we are managing
these day in date releases, that can be a challenge. So we are looking at how we can
standardise the information first via portal so from a development perspective work
with other companies, obviously who are more downstream, who actually have the pathway into the theatres.
to get that information.