The Brief
Filmnight contacted Digital Marmalade to act as multimedia advisors during the funding stage of the business venture. Our task was to establish the company’s digital branding, advise on technology and build a broadcast management system to feed multi-store plasma screens. We went on to produce and manage Filmnight’s in-store television channel.
The Solution
We started working with Filmnight right at the company’s inception. It was a complex project to work on as nothing had, at that stage, really been established.
We worked with the hardware installation team at Filmnight to attain the exact technical specifications of the kiosks’ screens, internal network, and communication infrastructure. In doing so we established that DVS’s Blade II hardware would be the ideal solution for feeding the screens and managing the playback of video footage.
The next step was to design Filmnight’s channel branding and programming. This included conceptual designs for logo animations, channel stings, chart countdown animations, promotional messages, and film trailer skins. The movie clips were then produced to the specifications required for the Blade system, and named following a strict convention. This allowed us full control over channel playlists and enabled us, with broadband connections, to deliver content to the kiosks remotely.
Due to the date-specific nature of film releases and the changes in station footfall during the day, a broadcast management system needed to be deployed to enable channel content to be easily updated and seamlessly activated.
Two channels run at the same time on alternate screens within the kiosks; one shows movie trailers and the other stock availability, charts, film information and promotions. Content can be manipulated to suit the date, current footfall or commuter demographic. Playlists can be compiled and activated with a few mouse clicks, and promotions can easily be scheduled to run more frequently.
The work that we did with Filmnight was a great success. It went on to become Filmnight.com and is now the 4th largest video rental chain in the UK, and the largest in the Greater London area.
Mark Evans“There was a lot of work involved in setting up Filmnight, a small team of us worked hard on everything from online stock systems and data warehousing to kiosk design and DVD distribution. Having Digital Marmalade there from the beginning to help us with our branding and broadcasting requirements was great. The quality of Filmnight TV gives the right impression of our brand and sets apart our stores the others. I particularly like the control of the broadcast content; we’ve been experimenting with different play-lists to see how effective changes in content can be towards driving up subscriptions and sales.”
Managing Director, Filmnight,