Film programming is a delicate and complex craft, one that takes expertise in a vast range of elements from audiences to cinema operations and studio and distribution agreements.

With 32 cinemas across the Netherlands, Pathé are not only the market leader for the country, but need to develop very complex film programs every week for all of their sites.

With Pathé recently completing their Vista Cloud journey—adopting all Vista Cloud capabilities across their 130 sites worldwide—they can leverage the latest technology, including cutting-edge film programming innovation. Pathé and Vista have a long history of collaboration, and we were extremely excited to work together to create the latest development in Film Manager: Assisted Scheduling.

“We were very happy to have partnered with Vista again,” said Evert Nuijten, Content Acquisition Manager for Pathé Netherlands, “to develop a completely new algorithm with the latest technology.”

The art of film scheduling

“Film scheduling is really a craft,” Evert explained. “You don’t learn it in one day. It requires a deep understanding of what our audience wants, the operation dynamics of each cinema, and of course the agreements we have with distributors and studios.”

Pathé keeps a customer-centric approach, aiming to make movies accessible for everyone in their film schedules. This results in a very diverse slate of movies. With so many sites and elements to balance, all of this combined makes manual film scheduling increasingly time consuming.

“A seven-screen cinema can show up to 35 or 40 different films in one week, which makes the puzzle very complex,” Evert said.

“This new Assisted Scheduling tool will help us to more quickly and accurately create the very complex film schedules we have today for all 32 sites here in the Netherlands, and hopefully expanding its use across our business.”

With Pathé’s 130 sites worldwide running all Vista Cloud capabilities, the adoption of Assisted Scheduling across other countries offers an enormous opportunity for efficiency and effectiveness with the latest film programming technology.

The impact of Assisted Scheduling

To answer this time-intensive challenge of manual film programming, Vista and Pathé worked closely together to develop Assisted Scheduling; a smart feature that creates an initial film schedule in moments. Film schedules are generated rapidly, in a matter of as little as seconds to under 2 minutes, based on forecasting and past performance data. This schedule provides film programmers with a starting point to refine from, making film scheduling more efficient, especially for junior and intermediate programmers.

By taking historical attendance data, and collecting ongoing data each week, this smart feature generates a data-driven schedule for film programmers to work from, reducing time requirements.

“We have been using it for more than half a year now,” Evert said, “and comparing manually dragging sessions into the schedule with what we’re doing now, refining, fine-tuning, and optimising the schedule, we have saved 50% of that time.”

“So, we’ve reduced the hours spent by half.”

Balancing art and science

“We’ve already learned some things from the system,” said Evert. Because Assisted Scheduling is entirely data-based, it can challenge some preconceptions in film programming, where gut decisions might not align with the truth in data.

“For example: We might look at a Hollywood romantic comedy and a local romantic comedy and presume to schedule them very similarly. But their audiences are actually very different in terms of their preferred showtime. Because the tool combined multiple data points, for example genre and audio language, it can highlight these blind spots we might otherwise miss.”

Film programmers, of course, still have the final say. Assisted Scheduling produces a starting point, taking the task of scheduling from one of manually dragging sessions into the schedule into one of refinement and optimisation. Film programmers can override suggestions from the Assisted Scheduling tool and add in requirements of sessions they know are the right call.

By eliminating the need for manually creating the initial schedule, the film programmer gains more time to focus on optimising the film schedule for the week, and to apply their expertise and knowledge of each cinema’s particulars.

Collaborating and challenging expectations

Much as film programmers collaborate with Assisted Scheduling, the project of developing this new feature meant open conversation between Pathé and Vista with the freedom to question and challenge each other’s preconceptions.

“It was very valuable in the project that Vista sometimes questioned me on the subject,” Evert said. “Because while I’m the expert on film programming, by asking why we do things the way we do, that kept us looking for the best solutions.”

Since introducing Assisted Scheduling into their work, Pathé have received very positive feedback from film programmers.

“It’s really easy to use in the front-end. We do one day of training, and then basically they start using it,” Evert said. “One important thing about it is that they are still in control. It’s the combination of the system and our experienced colleagues that leads to the best results.”

Pathé’s use of Assisted Scheduling has seen results of higher quality film programs each week, tailored for every different audience and location, in half the time that their manual processes used to take.

Pathé have always been committed to continuously improving, delivering the most comfortable and enjoyable cinema experience through PLF formats, seating, and technology. “Innovation is at the heart of our organisation,” Evert explained. “That’s why we invest in our digital experiences and our technology. It’s why we really value our partnership with Vista.”

To stay up-to-date with all the latest innovations across film programming and more, check out the Vista Roadmap's latest and upcoming releases.