Cinema Survival: Compare the ways in which Cinema City and Vue/Odeon attract audiences.

Different cinemas attract audiences in different ways especially independent and mainstream cinemas. Cinemas now have to attract audiences as they are losing sales for loads of different reasons such as DVD’s, piracy and recession. Another reason is TV, after TV was introduced in 50’s the cinemas didn’t do as well until Spielberg and Lucas films like Jaws and Star Wars were released.  

Cinema City is an independent cinema and attracts audiences in a different way from Vue and Odeon. Firstly, scheduling is chose in house to cater for the people of Norwich. This makes the cinema experience more personal at Cinema City. Whereas Vue/Odeon scheduling is done in central London which caters for England which is a much wider range. Both mainstream and independent cinemas give the audience an experience which is different. For example, Cinema City has a restaurant and organic chocolate, so you can have meal there too. Also they allow you to take wine into the screens which have sofas instead of normal cinema seats. Their main audience is middle aged and middle class people. Odeon gives a very different impression when you first walk in, some might say a Hollywood impression because they have a big atriums and curtains also Odeon allows you to hire out a box if you would like. Odeon and Vue have a range of different audiences for example, families, teens and adults. Another good feature of Odeon is that there is a seating area where you can watch trailers for upcoming films, when I asked people how they usually find out about films, most said cinema trailers. Vue/Odeon sells different food though for example popcorn and pick and mix which isn’t as classy and well thought out as Cinema City.

Cinema City are in the Picturehouse chain and attract their audience because as well as showing films, on Saturday mornings they rent a screen for people to play video games and also sometimes they hold opera evenings, where the cinema is connected up to the actual opera show and the show is being shown on a Cinema City screen. They also offer a membership which saves the customer money every time they go to the cinema. Cinema City shows independent and mainstream and they get subsidy for showing European films by the company Europa. This then gives the cinema a chance to show different films from Vue and Odeon. As well as Cinema City Vue allows customers to special offers allowing them to save money on tickets. It also offers competition so the public can win cinema tickets for a month. Vue/Odeon only show mainstream films. But all three cinemas have easy access. There is a car park in the mall where Vue is, at Odeon there is a cark park at the end of the road also at Cinema City there is a car park around the corner from the cinema. All three are in walkable distance from the city centre.

A reason people would prefer to go to Vue or Odeon is because they have more screens therefore more times and more films. Whereas Cinema City only have 3, but such a different variety of films. Vue had recently had most of there screens put in to 3D after the major release of Avatar and for the many 3D films still to be released. Also Vue have IMAX screens to display images of far greater size and resolution. But Cinema City has gone digital so people could prefer to go to cinema city.

Overall mainstream and independent cinemas have different way of attracting audiences, but both ways work. With a lot of 3D films being released at present and in the future is making cinemas are getting more and more popular as it is a different experience in the cinema than at home. All of the cinemas should get more and more popular again because of the new technology that is being made. Hopefully Cinema City will have a wider range of people to choose their cinema.