How does a film actually make it to a cinema's projector?

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When a movie arrives at a cinema what actually happens next? We’ve been looking into the world of DCPs and the TMS.

How many times have you watched your favourite film? Ten? 20? Maybe the nice round 100? But have you ever actually seen it? The physical object, I mean, the film itself. And now that most of our movies go from script to set to screen without ever touching a single piece of celluloid, what does a physical film even look like?
This is the question that led me to the projection suite of my local cinema, the Cameo Picturehouse in Edinburgh, on a Thursday afternoon a few years ago.

Sitting beside the projector is a large, red box. It’s bulky and a bit bashed, traces of old stickers on the side.

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“It’s in there,” says Linda Lace, one of the Cameo’s duty managers. “Open it.”

Inside the red box is a smaller box and, like a Russian doll or layers of Inception, inside that is an even smaller box, this one a silver casing for an external hard drive. And inside that, Linda assures me, is a film. Or – more specifically – the DCP for a film. DCP stands for Digital Cinema Package, and these three letters are what has come to replace the reels and reels of 35mm prints that used to connect cameras in Hollywood to cinema screens around the world. But before the DCP can give the film it carries that final push onto the screen, first it must be… ingested.

Feeding the habit

‘Ingesting’ is the technical term for transferring the contents of the DCP onto the cinema’s server. Specialist servers – or Theatre Management Systems (TMS) – hold all the films playing in a cinema at one time, as well as all the adverts and trailers. The Cameo’s TMS can hold approximately 50-60 features, depending on file size.
And speaking of file size, they’re big. Really big. 200GB is about average for a standard blockbuster.

Once a film has been transferred to the server, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s now just a case of letting the punters in and pressing play. But although the full-time projectionist is becoming a rare breed, there’s still a lot of work to be done before a film is ready for its big debut.

From here, it enters into a world of software, technical specifications and what NASA calls TLAs or Three Letter Acronyms. After the DCP is ingested into the TMS, it must first be checked for a credit offset. This is the signal that tells the computer point at which to turn the auditorium lights back on after the feature has finished, particularly important in the age of the post- credit payoff. Some films have preset credit offsets, but for others this has to be checked and inputted manually by cinema staff.

In multiscreen cinemas, films are then transferred to a separate server linked directly to the projector in the screen they’re due to play in. Now they’re ready to be inserted into the screen’s daily playlists, taking their place just after the ‘Goldspot’ (the name given to the final advert before the feature presentation, when advertisers know everyone, okay almost everyone, will be in their seat). And even then, the film isn’t ready to play, because although it’s out of its box, it still needs to be unlocked.

Keys to the vault

This can only be done with what is called a KDM or Key Delivery Message. These keycodes are issued by the film’s distributor and arrive separately to the DCP, this time electronically. KDMs are like a time lock. They unlock the film at a specific time and date, and also contain an expiry date, after which the film will no longer play.

Not only this, but each KDM is linked to the specific projector and screen the film is scheduled to play in. So if a problem in the auditorium means a last-minute change of screen, it’s not just a simple matter of transferring the files to another server. A new KDM can be required as well. If a film turns out to be an unexpected hit and the cinema wants to keep playing it past the original KDM expiry date, they need to contact the distributor and request a new one.

This tight security means gone are the days of cinema staff being able to sneakily watch new films before the official release date, but it also means your plan to hijack the courier carrying the next instalment of the Marvel universe definitely isn’t going to work.

Reels and RAM

Security matters, especially to distributors, and it’s another of the reasons for the popularity of the digital model. A 35mm film print is playable by anyone with a projector and a screen to point it at, but a digital film is locked until the distributor says you can open it. That’s the theory at least.

35mm prints are also subject to wear and tear, degrading in quality the more they’re shown. Jim Mathers, Digital Content Manager at INDY Cinema Group, explained one advantage of digital cinema is that you know the last showing of your film will be as good as your first.”

And, as Linda and Jim both explain, they still check the films before they’re screened, making sure the picture is correct and the volume is set just right. Thus, while there may not always be someone in the booth behind your head, there are still hardworking people guiding that all-important light.

Message in a bottle

And speaking of light, it’s a subject that often comes up in another link between those behind the camera and those in the cinema: the letter from the director.

There’s a long history of filmmakers sending letters to projectionists alongside their films. They range in tone from earnest entreaties to enthusiastic pep talks. Stanley Kubrick’s letter accompanying the release of Barry Lyndon stressed the “infinite amount of care” he put into the film, reminding projectionists “all this work is now in your hands” and the films success would ultimately come down to “your attention to sharp focus, good sound and careful handling”. No pressure, then.

David Yates, in his letter accompanying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two chose the more encouraging approach, casting the person preparing the film as “the extra member of our crew” and charging them with a mission “to complete this journey with us.”

Most films don’t come with a letter, making it a nice surprise when they do, says Linda, but whether a film comes with one or not, “our aim is always to show every film at its best.”

The inside of a cinema

There’s no set day when new releases arrive at the cinema (perhaps another way to keep budding Danny Oceans on their toes). DCPs can arrive a full month before screenings start and sometimes only 24 hours before. But with fully trackable deliveries handled by a combination of specialist film couriers and the good old Royal Mail, lost or delayed deliveries are very rare.

Slightly more common is missing keys. Despite the KDMs needed to play a film having a pre-programmed start date, some distributors like to hold on to the precious lines of code until just before screenings are due to start. More troubling is when gremlins in the system means the key doesn’t arrive at all and cinema staff have to track them down. Projecting a film with the wrong credit offset is one thing, but no one wants to sit in the auditorium and see the buffering symbol appear.
Normally a phone call to the distributor does the trick, but Jim remembers one incident where it went down to the wire. “We’d already started the trailers and the key hadn’t arrived. Even worse, it was a Saturday showing so there was no one in the distributor office picking up.”

Luckily, the key arrived just in time and the audience was none the wiser. The same couldn’t be said for those in the projection booth. “We were definitely sweating that day,” says Jim.

Howl’s Moving Cinema

Every day, films are rushing back and forth between distributors and cinemas all across the country. But what if the cinema is on the move as well? Along with film festivals and community screenings, INDY Cinema Group also supply films to Regional Screen Scotland’s Screen Machine, the UK’s only full-time mobile cinema.
Pulled by a specially customised lorry, its cheerful blue auditorium brings the magic of cinema to remote communities across Scotland’s highlands and islands. As the Screen Machine’s devoted drivers negotiate the narrow roads and ferry crossings, Jim’s mission is to make sure that when they arrive at the next town or village, the films are there waiting for them.

“We often send the films to the B&Bs the drivers are going to be staying at,” Jim tells me, “and they pick them up from there”.

Audience plus one

Community screenings hold a special place for Jim too. “People are always excited and so thankful when the cinema comes to town,” he says. We are all susceptible to taking things for granted when they’re easily available, but in places that don’t have their own cinema, “going out to watch a film for the evening is still a big event.”

And the thrill is still there for the people behind the lamp too. Jim explains, “Paddington has been one of our most popular films in recent years and every time we reach that part in the chimney you get this great gasp from the audience. That’s a great moment”.

All change?

When all the great moments have been seen and the last KDM has expired, it comes the time to delete the film from the cinema’s server. The files are sent on their way to silicon heaven, and the hard drives go back into their red boxes, ready to be returned to the distributor. There they have new lives and new stories written on top before being sent back on their way. The cycle begins again, part of it old, part of it new.

Even the humble, battered red boxes have a link to the past. The reason they’re so big is they’re the same boxes 35mm reels used to be sent in (and occasionally still are). Reusable and secure, sometimes the old ways are the best.

I started my journey by trying to find out what a film looks like. The answer I found is that while things are always changing in the movie business, there’s a constancy too. Because no matter what changes the future brings, “there’ll always be new films out on a Friday.” And another constancy is, perhaps, for as long as those films keep coming, they’ll pass through the hands of people who care, who are passionate and who always try to show every one in their best light.