Do young adults still feel a powerful connection with cinema in this age of social media and constant multi-screening? DCM tasked us with finding out.

In the UK, 16-34-year-olds account for almost half of all cinema tickets sold each year and watch an average of eight big-screen movies every 12 months. With a share of over 80% of the cinema advertising market, DCM has a substantial investment riding on its hypothesis that the big-screen experience continues to carry so much meaning for this audience, so we looked to delve deeper into why this should be the case.

We partnered with cultural anthropologist Dr John Curran to analyse and interpret the movie-going experience through the lens of the 16-34 age group. To first map out the patterns of AV consumption we asked our audience to complete a media diary detailing all the videos they saw over a typical week. During the week we also sent them on a cinema trip with a friend, where they completed an auto-ethnographic record of how they felt throughout the visit, and we then rounded off the study by hosting a live ‘cinema night’ with respondents and their friends, watching a cinema ad reel in full glory on the big screen before heading straight into group discussions with the experience fresh in their minds.