Immersive Events… May I comment?

If I hear of one more company doing immersive experiences, I might just throw my laptop out the window. What are immersive experiences anyway? The Van Gogh experience? Team Lab? 5D theatres? What are we all talking about here?

It’s like when the event industry starting pitching events that were “disruptive”. It’s a buzz word. It doesn’t mean anything. And immersive isn’t new. Heck, the theme park industry have been doing immersive for years. It’s just not new.

What we are really trying to grasp at is, the age old “build a show” and they will come, doesn’t work anymore. Also, in our “on demand” world, the idea of buying a ticket to turn up at a location, at a particular time, is less attractive than being able to go somewhere and do something, whenever you want.

I can watch movies on demand, I can listen to music on demand, why can’t my theatre be on demand?

Ahh, there lies the rub.

So what is our solution? Immersive experiences. The Meow Wolf’s (or should it be wolves) of the world, where you buy a ticket, wander around a strange supermarket, take some instagram photos, and move onto your next desired entertainment activity?

Is that the best we can do? I say no. Not to diss on the Meow Wolf experience, but operating budgets are a real thing. And there’s only so much you can do to create a profitable immersive experience.

Collectively the entertainment industry has not mastered this transition at all. We are behind and we are too attached to “how things have always been done”.

As a younger colleague said to me just recently, “We can’t be Blockbuster, we have to be Netflix”.

Also, let’s admit that the general public are not “WOW’d” by the WOW factor anymore. There was a period where new technology was a thing that impressed audiences, now when audiences see new technology they just think “oh, that’s cool” and move on. Can’t hang a show on that. Especially since AI is going to out smart us and accelerate that technology faster than we little humans can keep up.

And while we speak of AI, I’ve heard talk that “well AI will never replace creativity”. That’s just naive. I don’t think we can all comprehend how much AI will change the world.

I read an article where an AI generated artwork won first place in the Colorado State Fair and the other artists were furious.

You can now design stages and costumes through AI applications, and you know what, they are just the start to what will be possible in the next 20 years. A friend of mine threw a few words in an AI application and this came out:
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And these programs are only in their infancy. AI programs will soon be able to design our shows and do the technical drawings automatically. Like it or not, this is where we are. It’s only going to advance from here. For me, that is terrifying and exciting in the same breath.

As Canva knocked down a portion of the graphic design industry, AI is coming for us. We can embrace it, or fight it, but the entertainment consumers won’t care. Attention will go where attention wants to go. The creativity we must deploy is how we embrace these technologies or be prepared to be left in the dust.

You are probably hoping that by the end of this blog, that I might propose a solution. Well I am sorry to disappoint you. If I had one, I’d be making money off of it.

I just want to state that we (the industry) should all be working a little bit harder on these so called “immersive experiences”. We need to move people emotionally, in a visceral way. The way that digital media can’t. We need to use the technology, not as a WOW factor but as a tool to move people. That is our USP (unique selling point). We need to find ways to fit theatre into an on demand experience, that makes sense from an operational point of view. And we need to prepare ourselves for the onslaught of AI.

These are creative and a practical challenges and if we can crack them, the live entertainment industry, may just stay relevant.

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Thanks for indulging.
Anna x