Unique Screen Media the cinema advertising subsidiary of Cinedigm will be B&B Theatres’ exclusive agent for in-theatre and web-based advertising services. Terms of the long-term agreement are not being disclosed.
Celebrating its 87th year in business B&B Theatres operates 30 movie theatres with more than 200 auditoriums throughout Missouri Oklahoma Kansas and Florida. Last October B&B opened an all-digital theatre in Wildwood Missouri complete with two Marquee Suites auditoriums catering exclusively to the over-21 movie patron.
Unique Screen Media performs cinema and web-based advertising services for more than 50 independent movie exhibition partners representing more than 2 500 theatre auditoriums in over 280 theatres throughout 35 states. “B&B Theatres’ progressive approach to theatre operations coupled with our commitment to maintaining a patron-friendly cinema experience through PreFlix provides tremendous opportunities for our respective companies ” says John B. Brownson president of Unique Screen Media. Bob Bagby president of B&B Theatres says “We are proud to extend our long-term relationship with UniqueScreen Media. For 10 years they have been a true partner in exhibition in the markets in which we operate and we are thrilled that the partnership will continue for many many more years.
In 2010 Cinedigm and B&B Theatres announced entering into a CBG Phase 2 digital deployment agreement through which B&B Theatres would convert its theatres to digital cinema with Cinedigm administering and managing the systems under its Virtual Print Fee agreements with all the major studios for up to a ten-year term. ,2308
Calit2 CineGrid Win CENIC Award,2011-03-25, For the fourth year in a row and the fifth time in six years a project involving the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology has received the award for experimental/developmental applications in high-performance networking from the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California. The winning project showed how advanced broadband networks telepresence and software tools can dramatically change the way Hollywood studios make movies. CENIC bestowed the award on a team led by CineGrid an international research consortium for networked media arts which staged a joint demonstration with Walt Disney Studios last October of advanced networking and tools for post-production editing and scoring of films by creative teams located in disparate locations.
The award is one of five handed out at the 2011 CENIC Annual Conference hosted this year by at UC Irvine. The Innovations in Networking Awards are given annually by CENIC to highlight exemplary innovations that leverage ultra high-bandwidth networking particularly where those innovations have the potential to revolutionize the ways in which instruction and research are conducted.
The CineGrid@Disney demonstration was the capstone of a nine-month effort involving more than 50 participants from seven CineGrid member organizations including the UCSD division of Calit2 NTT Network Innovation Laboratory Skywalker Sound Digital Domain the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Pacific Interface.
CineGrid was one of the first major research collaborations to come out of the University of California San Diego division of Calit2. Headquartered in California CineGrid is leveraging next-generation cyberinfrastructure to promote higher-resolution imagery better sound as well as more secure and efficient distribution of digital media over photonic networks. CineGrid has been recognized by CENIC in the past for empowering the production use preservation and exchange of very high-quality digital media over photonic networks. This year the organization and its collaborators are being honored for multiple demonstrations of remote collaboration for cinema post-production presented to an audience of nearly 100 executives at the Frank G. Wells Theatre on the Disney Studio lot in Burbank Calif. At the CineGrid annual meeting last December at Calit2 in San Diego the general manager of Disney’s Digital Studio Operations Leon Silverman reported on the CineGrid@Disney demonstration in a presentation on the opportunities and challenges of cinema post-production in a networked world. “Traveling from Burbank to Santa Monica by car takes longer than getting on a plane and traveling to San Francisco ” Silverman said. “Connectivity is going from something that’s nice to have to something we need to have. When we’re linked in exact real time these networks literally allow us to shrink time. We want to redefine the experience of collaborating in a virtual meeting room to collaborating in a virtual media room. The ultimate goal is to create an industry platform that can allow the entire industry to connect and work together at once.”
For CineGrid@Disney the challenge was to bring together several different creative workflows linking multiple remote locations into a single room using very high-quality media running over high-speed networks for interactive real-time synchronized live remote collaboration.
Specific use cases demonstrated included: a 4K/60p telepresence virtual conference room; critical viewing of digitally restored archival film elements at 4K and 2K resolutions streaming from a remote server; digital intermediate color grading; critical viewing of 3D HD stereoscopic visual effects; collaborative audio editing and mixing; and use of a SAGE OptIPortable multi-panel display wall for collaborative review of multimedia marketing materials. The demonstration relied on the active cooperation of five of CineGrid's network members – CENIC/CalREN JGN2 GEMnet PNWGP and StarLight – who provided 1 Gigabit Ethernet ( GigE ) and 10GigE connectivity to the geographically separated participants; in addition the City of Burbank provided critical last-mile connectivity at 10Gb/s from Disney to CalREN the CineGrid hub in the Los Angeles region. Many advanced digital media projects are global collaborations with filming processing editing and other functions taking place on separate continents. As a result makers of high-quality digital cinema stand to benefit tremendously from advanced networks and the bandwidth they offer. CineGrid was created to spearhead collaborations among universities movie studios video production companies and other groups involved in the research development and demonstration of tools and workflows necessary to enable next-generation digital cinema production and distribution.
As Calit2 director of visualization and founding CineGrid member Tom DeFanti noted recently “We’ve spent years apologizing for the stability and reliability of the technologies shown at CineGrid conferences in the past but as these technologies improve we don’t have to do that anymore. These things we’ve been doing as big experiments all these years have now become the new normal.” ,2309
Cinemaworld of Florida Installing Digital Screen in Three Locations,2011-03-25,Cinemaworld of Florida is installing NEC digital cinema projectors and GDC servers provided by Ballantyne-Strong for 43 Cinedigm-Certified screens in three locations in Florida and Rhode Island. The installations were to have been completed by the end of March. “We have taken our time in reviewing all of the available choices in the market. Cinedigm’s integration program allowed us to negotiate our own equipment deals and provided us with the best opportunity to recoup our investment ” says Rick Starr II Cinemaworld’s vice president and chief operating officer. “Cash flow was a major concern and Cinedigm gave us many choices to meet our needs. We look forward to many years of partnership with them.” “We are thrilled and proud that after extensive research and due diligence Cinemaworld selected Cinedigm as their digital cinema integrator partner ” says Chuck Goldwater president Cinedigm’s Media Services Group. “We look forward to working with Rick and the Cinemaworld team to help them take full advantage of the operational and the programming applications made available by Cinedigm’s digital cinema platform.” ,2310
ContentFilm Gets New Name,2011-03-25, ContentFilm has been renamed Content Media Corporation to better reflect its role in multi-platform distribution. The company will consist of three divisions: Content Television Content Film and Content Digital. It will continue to license content to digital media platforms worldwide including on-demand broadband and mobile.
The new name and logo unifies the company’s brand and reinforces the commitment to all three areas. Notwithstanding the changes of name and branding there will be no changes in the staffing reporting lines or the business operations within each of the film television and digital divisions.
Greg Phillips will continue to oversee Content Television and Content Digital and Jamie Carmichael will run Content Film. Jonathan Ford who has been responsible for the company’s digital efforts as executive vice president digital acquisitions and distribution will continue to report to Phillips and manage Content Digital on a day-to-day basis. Phillips and Carmichael will report to John Schmidt who co-founded ContentFilm in 2001. Rounding out the management team are longtime Content executives Geoff Webb CFO and Erick Kwak head of worldwide business and legal affairs.
Further Content provided a trading update to the London Stock Market today noting that trading across the Group has been solid for the financial year ending 31 March 2011. Following on from the pleasing results last year the Company expects to have another similarly positive year with results that will meet management’s expectations. John Schmidt noted that the television and digital divisions in particular had traded well over the last year.
“Across our television film and digital divisions our distribution and sales efforts have grown more unified over recent years and as a result Content has naturally grown more integrated. This is a welcome development as we find digital properties crossing over to television and film and film and television producers more eager to use our digital distribution capabilities ” says Schmidt. “As a result we feel it is time to unify our operations under a common name so our partners in each of these divisions are aware that we are active and successful in all three areas.
“It was anachronistic to call the parent company ContentFilm so we’ve let that go. We have been called Content by our staff and the industry for some time and we’ve brought the Content name to the television division so everyone knows we operate in all three areas particularly our film friends in North America who are increasingly looking to expand into television. We say goodbye to the Fireworks brand with some sadness but guarantee that the same strong values staff and systems will continue uninterrupted at Content Television.” ,2311
Dolby Upgrades its 3D Glasses,2011-03-25, Dolby Laboratories today announced the availability of its next-generation 3D glasses. The glasses are compatible with Dolby 3D Digital Cinema systems currently installed. Dolby has partnered with 3M to develop a new multilayer optical film lens that greatly reduces the weight of the glasses increasing comfort while providing the excellent optical performance moviegoers expect from Dolby 3D.
A more robust mechanical design the new nylon frame features wide side temples and a shelf along the top edge of the frames which help prevent extraneous light from entering the glasses to reduce internal lens reflections.
“With the newly designed Dolby 3D glasses we look to maintain the premium quality visual performance that Hollywood has come to expect from Dolby 3D while providing a more comfortable fit for cinemagoers and a lower price point for exhibitors ” says Matt Cuson senior marketing director cinema Dolby Laboratories. “The next-generation Dolby 3D glasses strike the perfect balance between style and performance and are designed to be used repeatedly bringing per-ticket costs well below disposable single-use 3D glasses.”
The new glasses are currently available at a list price of twelve dollars or less when purchased with a Dolby 3D bundle. Dolby also plans to make children-sized glasses available next quarter.
The new frames fit comfortably over 98 percent of prescription glasses and are well suited to youth and adults.
The next-generation Dolby 3D glasses can withstand the rigors of many wash cycles and can be reused hundreds of times. The new 3M lenses are scratch resistant and include an antireflective coating.
Beyond the antitheft tag included in previous generations of Dolby 3D glasses the new Dolby 3D glasses also include individually serialized RFID tags. These tags can be used for inventory tracking and management. Dolby 3D glasses are high-performance environmentally friendly passive glasses that require no batteries or charging. Because they are reusable the per-ticket cost of Dolby 3D glasses can be well below the cost of disposable 3D glasses.
Dolby 3D Digital Cinema www.dolby.com ,2312
DQ Entertainment to Produce Trio of 3D Animated Feature Films,2011-03-25,India’s DQ Entertainment has announced its 3D feature film release slate currently under development to be released starting 2012 through 2014. The company says it will release three 3D feature with one release planned every year: The Jungle Book (2012-2013) The New Adventures of Peter Pan (2013-2014) and The Phoenix and the Flying Carpet (2013-2014). The anticipated budget of each film is between $25 million and $30 million. DQ Entertainment recently produced the 3D animated stereoscopic feature film The Prodigies with Onyx Films and Fidelite Films France to be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and Studio37 France. Tapaas Chakravarti producer and chairman of DQE says At DQE there is enormous excitement after completion of The Prodigies 3D feature film to move forward rapidly for the development of The Jungle Book Peter Pan and Phoenix and the Flying Carpet 3D stereoscopic feature films.” DQ Entertainment www.dqentertainment.com
Unique Screen Media Signs B&B Theatres to Exclusive Deal
