Next month will see Vue and Cineworld re-open their doors as Disney’s Mulan and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet are finally released, while a number of big budget productions are already resuming filming.
The film industry’s slide out of the deep freezer is not only beneficial for actors, directors and cinema lovers, it also of paramount importance for thousands of businesses who rely on and enhance it.
From the manufacturing firms who build the sets to the technology companies who create the cameras and the special effects, to the beauticians who give the stars their A-list look, the film industry is really a hybrid of hundreds of industries who each play their small part in creating a magical big screen experience.
One such company is Performance Entertainment who this year celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. A forerunner in the prize package creation industry, Performance Entertainment was founded in 1990 in Tingewick, Buckingham and now has offices around the world.
The company specialises in crafting unique life-changing prizes that are often based around the world of cinema. Winners are flown out to exclusive movie premieres and offered the chance to visit the sets of some of the world’s most famous films.
Their partnerships with Columbia Pictures, Dreamworks, Universal Pictures, Lionsgate, MGM and others means that they are able to offer unrivalled prizes that take their winners closer to the action than they ever dreamed possible.
In May 2019 alone, they flew prize winners to Tokyo for Detective Pikachu and to New York for Aladdin. In Tokyo, this included a chauffeur-driven Pokemon-hunting tour of the city, while in New York it meant four tickets to a Disney musical on broadway and a trip to the top of the Empire State Building.
Naturally, for an organisation offering such immersive, hands-on experiences, Covid-19 has meant their thirtieth year has been their most challenging yet but, as the lockdowns are eased worldwide and as the film industry begins to return, Performance Entertainment will be itching to get back to what it does best.
On that note, there have been various good news stories recently. Nicole Kidman is heading to Ballycastle in Northern Ireland to start filming The Northman at Torr Head on a set that was built in February. Jurrasic World: Dominion has already started recording and Netflix has announced it will resume filming The Witcher in mid-August.
In an article in The Observer yesterday, Wendy Ide visited a cinema for the first time since a handful of them re-opened in the UK on July 4th. She said that, while there were only six people in the audience, the experience was ‘reassuringly ordinary.’ The small audience suggests, however, that the return of audience members is more likely to be a ‘trickle than a flood’ and this is borne out by the experiences in other countries whose cinemas reopened their doors sooner than ours.
Like much of the wider world, the film industry and the companies connected to it, will have to hold their collective breath over the next few months. But organisations like Performance Entertainment demonstrate that cinema is about so much more than simply sitting down and watching a film. At its best, it is an all-consuming experience that can transport you to another world. Its full return, therefore, cannot come soon enough.
Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash
