Inside view of VUE Middlebrook

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By William Kirkpatrick
"It was a very interesting experience, but i must confess the digital technology did steal some of the mystery and magic i had envisaged of the projection room at the cinema." 

During our trip to watch and review the latest film animation comedy film 'Minions', the Newshounds were given the unique opportunity to look and see what happens behind the scenes at the cinema. 

Dale Woodfield who was in charge of the vast projection room gave us a special look into how things worked. All projectors are found in one long corridor-like room that hosts 12 projectors. Where in the predigital days of cinema each projector would have required a projectionist. 

Now, just one person is responsible for controlling all 12 projectors. To quote Dale, "this allows more time for employees to focus on customer service to create a better experience. " 

VUE have cinema screens 1,4 and 6 which project in 3D The projectors have two lenses which create the 3D effect as it projects the film for both left and right eye seperately. 

All projectors are run off a central computer which obtains the movie files, checks them, adds advertisements, and transports them to the projectors to be able to view the shows. All are controlled on one system from head office and hae anti-virus software. 

Each Sony projector is apiece of very expensive equipment and each of the twelve screens cost one million points plus to construct. 3D projectors and screens are even more expensive to build. 

This may seem a sizeable investment but there is an average of 8,000 weekly ticket sales alone, not factoring income from popcorn, drinks and other refreshments.  

The busiest recorded day had 6,000 tickets sold, which was when Harry Potter and the Simpsons were out at the same time. 

SECURITY
It's clear that lots of people want to go to the cinema and VUE takes extra precautions to stop video piracy. 
Video piracy online has become easier to obtain but could devastate the cinema industry if allowed to continue. To stop people from recording the films in the cinema, staff use night vision goggles to catch recorders. They also have special equipment to spot red lights which appear on cameras. It's safe to say you will get caught should you attempt to record in the cinema. The upgraded technology has helped to remove the need for bag searched tht disrupted the viewers experience.

By Daniel Almond

You'd think there would be individual booths where they place films to be shown, right? 
Wrong. The recording room is a large corridor fitted with 12 seperate machines which are all controlled by one, yes one, computer. You may not believe this but there are only one to two workers who maintain the room. They place all the films and timings into the machines in the morning, and the screens are set for the day. Screens have tiny cameras built into them to track when electronic devices are recording them, this is really helpful with the film piracy issue which is getting out of control at the moment.