Behind the projector

Our projection team starts at 9am at Ring Road with a picture and sound check on every screen in the building. By 10am the Bodija and Iwo Road teams have done the same, and a shared checklist shows green for all eighteen rooms.

Every Sapphire roof is covered in solar panels feeding a bank of batteries. On a sunny day the batteries run the projectors and cooling until about 8pm. After that, or on cloudy days, the generator takes over without a flicker.

The switch from grid to battery happens in a fraction of a second. Last year we lost less than ten minutes of film across all screens, almost all of it from one storm in June.

New films arrive as encrypted files with a digital key that unlocks them for a set number of weeks. The team loads them overnight and runs every film from start to finish before it opens.

Lights fade up slowly at the start of the credits, not before. Volume is set by ear in every room, and the Kids' Den is always five decibels softer than a standard screen.