François Aymé, Director of Cinéma Jean Eustache in Pessac, near Bordeaux, has been offering live pre- and post-screening presentations, conferences, panels and Q&A audience participation sessions to accompany screenings of selected films.  VEO Cinémas wanted to bring the same live content to any cinema wishing to take part around France.

Pierre Ramon, Sales Manager at Globecast, said, “We were approached by VEO Cinémas to create an end-to-end B2B OTT service to bring subscribing cinemas around France the live content from the cinema in Pessac. We worked closely with our long-term partner EasyBroadcast to create a comprehensive service that distributes value-added live and on-demand content. The new service is called Unipop de Ville en Ville and was delivered in just three weeks, in time for the start of the season in September 2021.”

It allows participating cinemas that purchase a subscription from VEO Cinémas to receive a live broadcast of the event accompanying the screening of the film. Audience members in remotely connected cinema auditoriums can send questions via text message to the host of the event in Pessac or their guest. This brings value-added cultural discussion to the cinemagoing experience.

The event produced in Pessac is recorded on multiple cameras and then broadcast live online via AVIWEST technology to the Globecast site in Paris. It is then distributed over the public internet to participating cinemas. To maintain a high-quality minimum standard at all times, Globecast uses adaptive media streaming. Participating cinemas must have a certain amount of bandwidth to subscribe to the service and to display content with the right quality on a large cinema screen (8 to 16 m). More than 30 events are offered over the course of the season. The cinemas are committed to broadcasting at least 12 per year which they are free to choose at their own discretion.

Globecast chose EasyBroadcast to provide the OTT video platform – providing subscription management, an events catalogue, the ability to view analytics and an easy-to-use web portal. It also allows VEO Cinémas to update and display the content catalogue for the season.

Jean-Pierre Villa, CEO of VEO Cinémas, said, “The Pessac Unipop events have been very popular, helping to grow the cinema’s audience. We knew that if we could expand this to other screens around the country, then their audiences could also benefit from them, providing a significant value-added service and additional revenue to the cinema owners."