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The book presents a never-before-written case study of the UK-based organisation Secret Cinema – widely considered the leading provider of large-scale immersive experiences in the UK. They are used as a lens through which to understand the wider experiential economy. The book provides a comprehensive and encyclopaedic history of the organisation and its productions. It defines and examines the Secret Cinema format. It critically interrogates the work and operations of Secret Cinema as an organisation and analyses the many layers of audience experience. It combines rigorous academic study with practical industry insight that has been informed by more than fifty in-depth interviews with Secret Cinema practitioners and sector professionals who have worked on immersive productions in areas including performance direction, acting, video design, sound design and composition, lighting design, special effects, stage management, operations and merchandising. Framed within the context of the UK in late-2019, at which point the immersive sector had grown significantly, both through its increasing contribution to UK GDP and its widespread and global recognition as a legitimate cultural offering, we have captured an organisation and a sector that is in transition from marginal and sub-cultural roots to a commodifiable and commercial form, now with recognisable professional roles and practices, which has contributed to the establishment of an immersive experience industry of national importance and global reach. This book will appeal to scholars, students, film fans, immersive experience professionals and their audiences. It is written in an accessible style with rich case study materials and illustrative examples.
. Secret Cinema collaborator, on the founder of Secret Cinema If measured by turnover, box office returns and audience size, in 2019 Secret Cinema (SC) was the leading organisation operating within the immersive experience sector in the UK. During that year, their turnover was £15 million; they generated £8 million in box office takings and engaged a greater number of participants than any other experience with more than 120,000 people attending their production of Casino Royale and a further 110
, as well as what watching such films was like in the 1920s. In general, images function with more immediacy and affective persuasion than words do. The screen did not only offer a contemplative spectacle. Indeed, film-viewing was itself an immersive experience through the ‘magical immediacy’ of cinema technology ( Horne, 2012 : 15). Even more than today, it offered a privileged window to other parts of the world. And the publics who were attracted to the humanitarian screenings came in anticipation of seeing pain and care. Thus, animated pictures acted as
formulaic brand and format. SC achieved industrial-scale immersion, while offering individual and stratified experiences in which audience engagement could range from compliantly passive to intensely participatory. In this concluding chapter, we re-contextualise SC within the wider immersive experience industry of 2021, reaffirming and building on the ‘immersive experience industry ecosystem’ model that we established in Chapter 1 . Here we present the rich, overlapping experiences and collaborations within the immersive experience industry of 2021
that we identified in Chapter 4 – massification and individualisation. Through our interviewees, who reflected on their experiences of working on these two productions, we reveal the different specialisms, collaborations, languages and specific terminology that SC use. These can also be applied in the wider immersive sector – of which all of the professionals and their sector networks form a part. As we noted in Chapter 1 , there was a huge proliferation of immersive experiences in 2019, and many of those working for SC at the time were also
This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first traces economically the emergence of film as a medium in the late nineteenth century, noting its entanglement with many other forms of visual culture (not least the magic lantern). It is also observed that film’s current status as an object of analysis is complicated by digital developments. The second section turns to the emergence of film studies itself, briefly plotting the discipline’s consolidation from patchy beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century. The third section outlines the intentions of this book, summarises its structure and contents, and considers a number of questions readers may have as they begin work in film studies (for example, regarding the specialist, sometimes demanding terminology of film studies or how an increasing engagement with this discipline may affect the immersive experience important to many spectators when watching movies).
This chapter uses Sarah Turner’s Perestroika (2009) as a springboard for exploring the contemporary intersections of ‘art cinema’ and ‘artist’s film’ in the British context. Part essay film, part psychogeography, Turner’s experimental narrative blurs the boundary between documentary and fiction, turning a train journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway into a philosophical reflection on the relationship between interior and exterior reality. I argue that Perestroika opens a space for reflecting on contemporary viewing contexts. In his review in the Guardian newspaper, Peter Bradshaw stated that ‘it is the kind of film that is arguably better viewed on the wall of an art gallery’, while also acknowledging that the film’s raw affective power derives from the cinema setting. In its association of content to context, Bradshaw’s comment raises broader questions related to the ‘art cinema’/‘artist’s cinema’ dichotomy. What is this ‘kind of film’ that seems awkwardly positioned between two institutions – the cinema and the gallery? How does the hybrid aesthetic approach in Perestroika force us to evaluate viewing contexts in relation to the different traditions it encompasses? In analysing these questions, the chapter draws on notions of immersive experience and haptic vision (Marks, 2002) that locate the film between narrative and abstraction.
for the convenience of traditional dramaturgical methods – I see the demand for a more embodied and immersive experience as the key difference from all the other instances; a radio dramaturgy that focuses on bodily experience is not merely possible but absolutely needed. Will resonant dramaturgy one day form the new paradigm of radio drama? We have seen that the conditions for such a possibility are certainly rife, and that examples of resonant dramaturgy can be found. If a resonant paradigm is to emerge, however, it can be possible only if dramaturgy is not
‘value’ in the contemporary marketplace, where the most valuable elements become the experiences that people have, rather than any individual good. They articulate four realms of experiences ‘differentiated by the level and form of customer involvement’, and which serve to delineate and categorize the type of experiences individuals might have ( 2011 : 45). These realms are demarcated by two dimensions: how participatory experiences can be and how immersive experiences can be (see Figure 12.1 ). Of course, as
of the SC experience design and business model – the audience. As our immersive experience production model in figure 5.1 reveals, 2 the audience play a pivotal role in the SC event as it unfolds. Since SC's first screening, its audience has evolved considerably. They have transitioned from a group that we once described as the ‘early adopter hipster elite’, 3 who played the key role of acting as taste makers, supporting Riggall's cinephilia and the early