[ecrea] CFP - Participations Special Issue - Inside-the-scenes: The rise of experiential cinema

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies

Special themed issue - Inside-the-scenes: The rise of experiential cinema

Guest Editors: Sarah Atkinson and Helen W. Kennedy, University of Brighton


In recent years, there has been a growing trend toward the creation of a 
cinema that escapes beyond the boundaries of the auditorium whereby 
film-screenings are augmented by synchronous live performance, 
site-specific locations, technological intervention[1], social media 
engagement, and all manner of simultaneous interactive moments including 
singing[2], dancing, eating, drinking[3] and smelling[4].  Whilst 
recognizing that these experiences are not radically new (some belong in 
a continuum of peripheral marketing around film screenings that have 
existed since early cinema) we do now see these previously marginal 
experiences (i.e.  The Rocky Horror Picture Show) beginning to find 
access to a much wider public, and a significant rise in organisations 
dedicated to the design and delivery of augmented cinematic main events 
(such as Secret Cinema[5] and Sneaky Experience). We would like to make 
the distinction between the focus of this CFP – which is directed toward 
the study of ‘event-led’ cinema - the creation of live events around a 
particular film screening, and its contrasting proposition - ‘event 
cinema’ - the coverage of live events in cinema auditoriums (such as 
sport, opera and theatre - around which there is already much lively 
academic discussion, and an organization established to support such 
activities[6]). This CFP is situated with the context of a growing 
demand for atmospheric, immersive and participatory cinematic 
experiences and the recent turn towards event-led distribution models, 
within a burgeoning experience economy. This area presents a fertile 
site for analysis and one that remains relatively untapped within past 
and current academic literature. This special issue aims to bring 
together the latest audience research into these areas to interrogate 
and explore the experiential cinema economy and to provide deepened 
understandings of recent immersive cinema phenomena through the analysis 
of both industrial and audience perspectives; to reveal economic, social 
and technological imperatives which underpin these innovations; and to 
evolve new conceptual frameworks and language of analyses suitable for 
their study.

The editors are particularly interested in encouraging submissions from 
a range of research contexts and from a diversity of methodological 
approaches. We are happy to receive submissions from a variety of 
disciplines such as film, media, games, theatre & social media studies. 
We are keen to encourage submissions from work that has combined 
multiple methodologies leading to innovations in audience research. 
Contributions will be welcomed, but are not limited to, articles 
addressing the following questions or areas of enquiry:

·      To what extent do these experiences extend and intensify 
narrative affect, heighten spectatorial absorption and enable vicarious 
audience engagement?

·      How are non-fictional augmentations such as cast and crew 
satellite link-ups to Q&A staged in order to engage an audience with a 
greater expectations of interactivity?

·      What new business models are emerging?  At recent film festival 
events, industry talk and focus has turned to ‘eventising’. This is high 
on the agenda of an industry seeking to evolve new business models which 
address an apparent audience demand for enhanced and/or augmented 
experiences.

·      How do such experiences embrace or challenge existing fan 
practices including cosplay?

·      How are the relations and tensions between the experience economy 
and the social media economy played out within these experiences?  (i.e. 
participation in events engendered by the experience economy  provide 
audience members who are engaged in the social media economy with the 
fodder with which to sustain their voracious social media streams)

·      How far can these augmented cinematic events be understood with 
recourse to a wider understanding of a shift in focus towards the design 
of experiences and multiple points of access around key (and often much 
loved) intellectual properties?

·      Where do the boundaries of the filmic-text, traditionally the key 
site for analysis in film studies, begin and end within immersive and 
participatory cinema experiences?

While we expect that not every submission will include any specific kind 
of audience research, we would welcome submissions that address the 
implications their investigations and arguments have for audience 
experience.

Please submit 500-word abstracts along with 100-word author biographies 
to both :

Sarah Atkinson: (S.A.Atkinson /at/ brighton.ac.uk) and Helen Kennedy: 
(h.kennedy /at/ brighton.ac.uk)

·      Deadline for abstracts: Tuesday 5th May, 2015

·      Decisions issued to authors: w/b 1st June, 2015

·      Deadline for full papers: Tuesday 1st September, 2015

·      Journal publication: May 2016

Please see journal information including submission guidelines at: 
http://www.participations.org/


[1] The first 4DX cinema opened in the UK earlier this year in Milton 
Keynes, UK.

[2] See http://www.singalonga.net

[3] Last year, Edible Cinema delivered a screening of Paolo Sorrentino’s 
The Great Beauty, using ‘taste, aroma and texture to heighten the 
viewers’ sensory experience of the film’s most famous scenes.’

[4] Polyester, the 1981 John Waters film was recently re-screened at 35 
UK cinemas, in the way that it was originally intended, accompanied by 
audience interaction with the Odorama ‘Scratch n’ Sniff’ cards, as part 
of the National Scalarama film festival.

[5] The editors have themselves carried out extensive analyses of Secret 
Cinema, see both Atkinson, S. and Kennedy, H. (2015):

-        Tell no one: Cinema as game-space - Audience participation, 
performance and play, G|A|M|E: The Italian Journal of Game Studies, 5/2015

-        Not so secret cinema: when independent immersive cinematic 
events go mainstream, SCMS conference, Montreal, March 2015

[6] The Event Cinema Association seeks to support and promote event 
cinema – see http://www.eventcinemaassociation.org/



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