BONA International Cinema,
Hangzhou Joy City:
A Paradise for Moviegoers in China

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The system has positive influence in two aspects: First, automatic projection reduces human errors to a great extent; reliable and steady equipment improves the viewing and listening experience and the warning mechanism helps us prepare to minimize the failures in advance. Secondly, it helps save labor costs and improves operation efficiency by shortening work time through automation.”

Technical Lead - BONA International

Introduction

There are many ways to describe an amazing moviegoing experience. J.J. Abrams, director, producer and writer of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker said it this way, “What’s a bigger mystery box than a movie theatre? You go to the theatre, you’re just so excited to see anything – the moment the lights go down is often the best part.”

Those words describe how wonderful it is to experience a film in a cinema where the director intended you to see his or her vision. In fact, an enjoyable moviegoing experience typically often depends on two factors, the emotional affect that a film can produce and the physical cinema itself. At the end of 2018, audiences were treated to a new cinema to elicit emotions such as fear, happiness, anger and pain. This new cinema, near Hangzhou Culture and Art Center, Zhejiang, China, offers audiences an amazing experience beyond the two factors described above.

Hangzhou COFCO Joy City: A Shopping Mall Offering Flying and Diving Experience

Located at the intersection of Moganshan Road and Yinxiu Road in Gongshu District, Hangzhou Joy City is built on the planned Metro Line 10 and close to Metro Line 5. It includes a 200,000 square meter shopping center with eight levels above ground and three levels underground. The shopping center features shops like fast fashion, trendy clothes, premium supermarkets, home furnishing, sports and leisure, children products and entertainment, including themed streets, popular food and experience entertainment.

Furthermore, the shopping center is well known for offering both a flying and diving experience. On the top level of the shopping center is an 18-meter-tall wind tunnel device for people to experience high altitude flying, as well as a diving space with a 30-meter-long transparent pool wall along the street, the first of its kind in China. The overall design of Joy City reflects the joint efforts of several top teams in the world, including WET Design, creator of The Dubai Fountain, the world’s largest choreographed fountain system. By combining the commercial complex with the landscape of Hangzhou, it presents a spectacular scene featuring the natural beauty of lakes and mountains. Positioned to be the first street park-like cultural and creative space in Hangzhou, Joy City caters to the needs of the younger generation of consumers.

French Street-like Cinema

BONA Film Group consistently produces and distributes successful Chinese language films, and also owns a chain of movie theatres in China. The one opened on the 8th floor of Hangzhou Joy City in the latter half of 2018 is one of the company’s flagship cinemas. BONA International Cinema in Hangzhou Joy City covers 6,500 square meters and offers 11 auditoriums with nearly 1,700 seats.

Themed as the landscape of a French town, BONA International Cinema, Hangzhou Joy City features trendy catering and leisure elements, such as boutiques, self-service vending bars, Italian Barsetto coffee, Coco-Cola freestyle machines and popcorn with multiple flavors. Designed to be a streetlike “film park,” the cinema creates a fashionable and relaxing environment for consumers. Fully opened to all the people, there are no traditional ticket check-in gates, allowing audiences to enjoy leisure and social activities without any barriers. This open-air style has become extremely popular especially with young moviegoers.

The French cinema styled design permeates with culture and art. Consumers are treated to an extraordinary environment immediately after they enter the cinema. Once inside the auditorium, there are two factors that contribute to an amazing moviegoing experience and make it one of the busiest cinemas in Hangzhou.

1. The most advanced projection and sound equipment

The best possible moviegoing experience requires exceptional sight and sound. At BONA International Cinema, Hangzhou Joy City, 5 out of the 11 auditoriums are equipped with advanced digital cinema technologies to truly deliver a memorable experience: BONA ONE laser giant-screen auditorium , ScreenX auditorium, MX4D auditorium and two DTS:X™ immersive sound auditoriums.

“We focus on image and sound quality to deliver an impressive viewing experience. The BONA ONE giant screen auditorium features a 21.5-meter-wide screen with 4K laser projection equipment, and supports films made with advanced filmmaking technologies such as 4K, high frame rate, high dynamic range and wide color gamut. We equip two auditoriums with DTS:X immersive sound, the object-based sound format that gives audiences a sense of immersion,” said the technical lead at the cinema.

BONA ONE is a giant-screen brand created by BONA. Characterized by a customized screen with a high level of contrast and uniformity, it perfectly presents colorful and layered images while offering a wider viewing perspective. Moreover, the scientific design enables the best viewing section to make up more than 80% of the auditorium, and the comfortable seats to create a first-class cabin experience for moviegoers.

The auditorium installed with DTS:X immersive sound delivers cinematic boundless surrounding sound. In 1953, Harvey Fletcher, one of the greatest reformers of film stereo sound, said, “The truth about sounds doesn’t lie in the number of tracks, but the ubiquity of sound.” As a multi dimensional audio technology based on sound location, DTS:X immersive sound is no longer bound by track signals; instead, it can present precise locations of sound in combination with pictures and thus create a more remarkable sense of emotion according to the object of sound. Thus, in the DTS:X immersive sound hall, sound comes from speakers in different locations, enabling audiences to identify the spatial location and movement trail of sound with ears and feel like they are right in the scene.

2. Reliable technical equipment and support

To maintain its high-quality moviegoing experience, BONA International Cinema Hangzhou Joy City selected GDC’s SR-1000 media servers and Cinema Automation CA2.0 for cost efficiency and to ensure stability of equipment. GDC’s CA2.0 system not only increases management productivity but also provides programming flexibility with the reliable SCL centralized playback server, capable of storing up to 2,000 DCPs, making each available to any auditorium. In addition, it enables boothless projection, automatic DCP ingest and auto-show playlist generation. Supported with GDC’s diskless SR-1000 integrated media server, the entire multiplex can playback any movie without risk of failure with the systems fail-safe design.

According to the cinema’s technical lead, “The system has positive influence in two aspects: First, automatic projection reduces human errors to a great extent; reliable and steady equipment improves the viewing and listening experience and the warning mechanism helps us prepare to minimize the failures in advance. Secondly, it helps save labor costs and improves operation efficiency by shortening work time through automation.

To BONA International Cinema, Hangzhou Joy City, the cost saved from hiring projectionists is invested in more personalized services and advanced cinema hardware to deliver an unmatched experience. With its quality sight and sound, avantgarde decoration and comfortable environment, BONA International Cinema, Hangzhou Joy City has certainly enhanced moviegoing in Hangzhou.