Editor's note:
The theater chain is an important participant in the movie market. The Chinese movie theater chain has its own particularities. The connection with the theater is not the same model, but there is no doubt that it has an important responsibility for the management and operation of the theater. As the main body of the movie market, cinemas have also undergone severe tests under the impact of the epidemic. Not only that, from the perspective of the cinema terminal, the cinema is the "first of the flock", leading the direction of cinema operation management and development
What are the theater chains doing as the theater resumes business? What are the interactions with the theater? What are the measures during the special period? For this reason, Ivy Cinemas has connected the leaders of some theaters and won a positive response. They have interacted in the form of oral communication and written reply. After sorting out, we launched a series of reports, which were published successively on the topic of "Cinema Resumption, Cinemas in Action".
Today is a report on the Shinkansen of China Film Southern Film.
July 23, Thursday.
The employees of China Film Southern Film’s Shinkansen have been working overtime for 7 consecutive days and can only get off work at 10 pm every night. When the reporter connected to the staff of the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen, the other party's voice seemed hoarse. She told reporters: "All of our employees are in such a state that they have to answer hundreds of calls every day, coordinate and communicate with the theater, and explain to them the requirements for resumption of business." Take the film for example, after the resumption of business, the process There has been a change and the theater needs to reapply. With nearly 900 theaters under its umbrella and two main film producers, then 1,800 related issues have to be dealt with. In addition to the inextricable connections with the cinema, all the staff have been working day and night these days.
Some media said that the film industry is "tragically resuming business" this time. No matter how we understand the meaning of this statement, it is an indisputable fact that the industry is difficult. The impact of the epidemic on the film industry is all-round. As an enterprise, China Film Southern Film Shinkansen also faces great financial pressure. There is no main operating income for half a year, and in the face of considerable costs and expenses, the income generated by the resumption of business during the special period is only a drop in the money; since January, due to the impact of the epidemic, many cinema films have not been paid, and they need to advance the funds to the film party first, which is very big An expense.
The theater is at the top of the tough. Many movie studios have not paid their rents for the past six months, and have owed some film funds that have not been paid in. Coupled with concerns about the flow of people in the early stage of resumption of business, they have insufficient confidence.
All kinds of practical problems have made cinemas more dependent on cinema chains. In this regard, despite its own difficulties, the China Film Southern Shinkansen still adopted a "zero-point account" form in July and August to transfer all the profits from the re-screening film to the theater. At the same time, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen is still taking practical actions to give the theater the confidence to resume business.
System guidance, orderly resumption of business
Under the conditions of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, cinemas resume operations, and services and processes have changed. The theater has made major adjustments in terms of personnel management, venue management, screening management, and ticket purchase management. In order to enable its cinemas to adapt to the new requirements, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has done related work with documents, on-site visits, and on-site guidance.
Resumption of work is a systematic project. In order to provide theaters with a complete and standardized guidance plan, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has formulated the "Guidelines for the Resumption of Theaters and Emergency Response Plan" in accordance with the content requirements of the National Film Bureau’s resumption notice, which includes the resumption approval, hard disk and key application, The five major contents are the requirements for epidemic prevention and control measures, the technical guidelines for the operation of projection equipment in the early stage of resumption of business, and the emergency response plan for handling emergencies. Through text and classification, the theater will be fully guided in detail to understand and solve related problems encountered in the resumption of business.
In order to assist the theater to resume work as soon as possible, the leading group of China Film Southern Film’s Shinkansen takes the lead and organizes an implementation team consisting of the theater director and the chief technical engineer to go to the major theaters in the city to check the implementation of various prevention and control measures and safety production. , From employee health monitoring and management, venue prevention and control management, audience entry and exit management, emergency response plans, fire safety and screening equipment maintenance, a total of six aspects to help guide, check the implementation of preparations and identify the responsible person.
The procurement of epidemic prevention materials is an important part of the preparatory work for the resumption of theaters. However, for single theaters, there is a lack of procurement channels, bargaining power, and material quality control capabilities. To this end, the marketing department actively contacted all major disinfection material suppliers to discuss plans for centralized procurement and supply of theaters, and arrange resumption of business promotion activities. While providing all kinds of high-quality and low-cost anti-epidemic materials for theaters, it effectively alleviated the problem of capital shortage in the initial stage of theater resumption.
In addition, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen also leveraged its resource advantages, combined with the theater’s resumption of prevention and control requirements and the actual needs of operation and management, and introduced scanning ticket PDAs, unmanned ticket gates, disposable seat films, and mobile disinfection lamps. Equipment supplies provide efficient and convenient killing solutions for theaters.
Restoring confidence and helping each other
There will inevitably be a "transition period" in the early stage of the resumption of business. The length of this period directly affects the total box office revenue this year and the survival of the theater. The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen believes that stimulating audience consumption is a "protracted battle" that must be won. It must work closely with theaters to accelerate the development of the consumer market, exert the "multiplier effect", and resolve the "freezing" of the consumer market at the beginning of its opening. Urgent. For this reason, during the period of resumption of business, they have done various work.
On the one hand, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has helped theaters recover their popularity in the form of activities. From the day the Film Bureau issued the notice, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has responded positively and organized two types of activities.
The first is to assist the Guangdong Film Bureau to organize a number of theaters in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Foshan to actively carry out the "Go, Go to the Movies—Guangdong Excellent Movies 5 Yuan Movie Viewing Activity". From July 20th to 26th, every film The ticket price of 5 yuan is arranged to show 12 excellent films produced in Guangdong Province to solve the problem of small audiences and insufficient film sources in the initial stage of the resumption of the theater.
The second is to contact multiple film producers and distribution companies to organize the release of many classic and excellent domestic and foreign films in July and August, and most of the re-released films are exempt from the film party’s sub-account and theater service fees, and there is no price limit. Maximize the profitability of the theater, alleviate the problem of difficulty in starting funds at the initial stage of the theater's resumption, and allow the theater to initiate promotional activities with relatively low ticket prices to restore consumer confidence in watching movies.
On the other hand, helping theaters recover their popularity as soon as possible requires "internal" support. Therefore, they assist the theater in terms of platform promotion, policies, and resources.
At the beginning of the resumption of business, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen organized a number of local mainstream media to conduct interviews and reports, and released the theater’s resumption information in a timely manner. It also used new media to conduct live broadcasts in the theaters, and introduced the theater's epidemic prevention measures to the audience. At the same time, arrange for marketing personnel to collect and edit fixed-file film promotional posters, allocate promotional materials, produce short videos, and distribute them to various theaters to promote publicity on the day of resumption of business and create a good public opinion atmosphere for the theater to reopen.
In order to promote film consumption and work hard to help the theaters in the early stage of resumption of business to open up the situation, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen combined its own resource advantages and actively contacted major agencies, enterprises, institutions, and organizations based on the recent release of many outstanding domestic and foreign re-screening films. Special performances for public welfare film screenings, as well as special performances for party-mass education and trade union welfare activities, assisted the theater to resume operations.
During this period, the sales department was closed, the theater lost a major income, and the advertising business, which was one of the revenue sources of theaters, was basically stopped due to the epidemic. In order to increase revenue for theaters, China Film Southern Film Shinkansen took the lead in initiating strategic cooperation with major pre-screening advertising agencies, introducing new advertising agencies for theaters under the theater, and solving the problem of insufficient number of movie viewers and cash flow shortage in the early stage of resumption. problem. At the same time, it cooperated with a number of brand merchants, negotiated theater advertising cooperation, planned brand promotion activities, increased revenue for the theater and promoted the atmosphere of the scene.
It can be seen from the above that operation and marketing are the core service segments of the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen, and also its strength. Engineering technology is another core section of the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen. The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has a special technical department to assist the theater in solving various technical problems in equipment.
After stopping the screening for such a long time, the equipment and facilities of the theater will inevitably fail. In order to ensure the screening quality of the theater as much as possible, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen provides related services to the cinema for free. A professional technical team is appointed to provide inspection services and equipment maintenance solutions for its key theaters, including screen brightness, clarity, and sound reproduction equipment debugging, to ensure the normal operation of the projection equipment and safe projection during the resumption of business.
Normal prevention and control, never relax
In the post-epidemic era, epidemic prevention and control will become the norm for a period of time in the future. The competent authorities and other relevant departments have strict and meticulous requirements. As the business supervisor, the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has also formulated a series of plans to help and urge theaters to implement And stick to it.
The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has formulated a corresponding supervision and management system. Special statistical personnel will conduct real-time data comparison and analysis based on the daily computer ticket sales data reported by the theater and third-party sales data such as Maoyan and Taoticket. Communicate in a timely manner with theaters whose attendance rate and film scheduling rate are not up to standard, to understand the actual situation, and if any theaters that do not meet the requirements are found to be urged to make corrections.
According to the requirements of the film authority, they implemented relevant ticket sales prevention and control measures from the ticketing system at the beginning of the resumption of business, and installed one-click seat selection through the back-end management to facilitate the studio's separate ticket sales operation.
They also set up a special supervision team to go to the major theaters under the theater chain, especially the theaters with large traffic in first-tier cities, to check whether the theater's prevention and control measures are in place. Regularly organize the directors of each theater to hold relevant prevention and control and management meetings, strengthen the theater's awareness of epidemic prevention and control, share management experience and understand the operating situation.
The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen also intends to be led by its film management company to develop standardized prevention and control measures management systems and personnel operation service procedures for directly operated and hosted theaters, to ensure high standards of prevention and control measures, and high-quality implementation. After the operation, the experience is summarized for further improvement, and the rules and regulations are compiled based on this, and they are promoted to the theaters of the theater.
Reporter's Notes:
"Together, we are all prosperous!" This is what the staff of China Film Southern Film Shinkansen said the most. Yes, only by serving the cinema well and letting the cinema live more healthily can the cinema chain be better.
The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen has been considering the question: In which direction should the Chinese cinema chain go? In the end, they believe that a path for the development of cinema chains with Chinese characteristics should be embarked on. For the cinema chains, to enhance the influence of cinemas cannot be achieved through asset linkage, but rather through services. Therefore, in the development dictionary of the China Film Southern Film Shinkansen, "service" is the core entry. This also explains why all employees have to give up their rest days and work overtime until 10pm every day since the notice of resumption of business was allowed.
An excellent enterprise must be an enterprise with complete systems, standardized management, and shared culture. The China Film Southern Film Shinkansen's ability to securely rank first among Chinese cinemas is the result of the long-term emphasis on service and self-innovation. I believe that under the leadership of the cinema, its cinemas will be able to quickly recover and get back on track!
