Little Cinema And TNT Present “Play On” At House Of Yes
TNT joined forces with Little Cinema for a new immersive, cinematic show that brings to life content from premiere episodes of TNT’s new original summer series – Animal Kingdom , Claws and Will. We caught up with Jay Rinsky, the founder of Little Cinema, at the House of Yes to chat with him about the experience:
Q: Little Cinema has redefined the way people experience film and expanded their expectations of storytelling. How did you get started on such a unique idea, and how have you continued to grow what Little Cinema can do?
The idea stemmed from creative loneliness. I am a video DJ by trade and I was getting down being alone both in the editing suite and on stage. I wanted to see more integration between screen and live performance and felt my live video dj’ing skills would lend themselves to interesting collaborations.
The idea expanded and grew to what it is today thanks to the House Of Yes community and spirit of collaboration.
I set a few basic ground rules: fearless creativity, trying something new in each show, egoless collaboration and love of the actual work we do. The result of the growth has been an organic outcome of these foundations: we are a greater sum of all our parts and having film/tv as a base to work with injects a lot of passion from the creative people involved.
Little cinema today, 18 months into the project is all the lessons learnt from producing 30 unique shows with over 100 different people contributing creatively with each show adding a new creative tool to the arsenal.
It was a TV love story. A great one at that.
Our brief appealed to our ethics: make it the best you can. make it the most creative you can and we will do everything possible to support you.
Having a major network endorse a concept of a ‘remix’ and be fully on board with creative interpretation is not a given!
It’s a sign of changing times in the film & tv industry and the beginning of a realization of extending the story beyond the personal screen and into new and creative formats.
To be honest, it was really a dream project from TNT and the result is a creative piece we are all very proud of.
I hope more networks and studios embrace the concept of a ‘remix’ – a lesson the music industry picked up on in the early 80’s to great success.
Q: This screening involved never-before-seen content from TNT’s summer lineup, but it wasn’t the full episodes. You had to construct a cohesive plot, knowing that guests were viewing only part of each story for the first time. How did you tell each character’s stories in a way that made sense?
Great question. This was one of the biggest challenges trying to understand how to tackle the narrative and character arch as well as try and connect and tell a new story out of three very different pieces.
Our process involved first choosing the emotional range we wanted the audience to experience throughout the show.
We then chose scenes from Animal Kingdom, Claws, and Will that inspired a creative idea to be turned into a live performance and the interpretation that went along in designing the live act.
Once we settled on the live acts we created our own edits establishing just enough narrative and character to lead to our live climax where all these 3 shows came to life in a new fantasy world we built at the end.
Q: For this screening you merged the lives of TNT’s characters and storylines from three completely unique and unrelated shows into one broader narrative. How did you blend the shows together (or: how did you maintain the integrity of each individual show)?
We first established each show on it’s own right to allow the audience to identify and relate to the characters. We naturally designed our performances to suit each style of each show. For instance ‘Claws’ involved more ‘club’ like live elements while ‘Will’ saw us take on a 10 piece ballet.
Once each show and main character were established we upped the pacing using ‘cliff hangers’ to swap more quickly between narratives and shows. We resolved each individual show’s narrative and then blended them all together into one big finale.
Q: What’s next for Little Cinema?
On June 27 & 30 We will be remixing one our of our favorite directors in partnership with The Love Show. It’s a ’secret’ show and the audience needs to guess the film and come dressed in character .
We also started work on our first standing room 60 min show called ‘Cinema Club Immersive’ it’s kind of like a ‘best of little cinema’ underscored by house & techno music with non stop spectacle and performance. It’s a new direction we are experimenting with.
Always something new at Little Cinema…
Be sure to catch Animal Kingdom on Tuesdays at 9/8c, Claws on Sundays at 9/8c, and the premiere of Will on July 10th 9/8c on TNT!