Secret Cinema creates ‘worlds’ that turn films and music into real life, large-scale cultural experiences.

More than 550,000 people have attended Secret Cinema’s worlds which vary from smaller experiences of a few thousand over a few nights to larger ones of up to 100,000 over several months. My work for Secret Cinema began as they started planning their latest event, Secret Cinema Presents Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

My task was to immerse myself in both the worlds of the two Blade Runner films and Philip K Dick’s source novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and to create a detailed prequel narrative from all these sources. That narrative had to be watertight from a continuity point of view, but also had to create narrative intrigue and interest, as well as providing space for the kinds of existential questioning these properties are known and loved for. Having created that holding prequel story, I then had to break it down by character (40 of them in total) – working with every cast member one-to-one on their journey for the show – again, ensuring we didn’t create continuity errors in this development phase. We then also had to produce 10 distinct narrative tracks for different audience members to experience on the night. These tracks all had to weave, converge, cross, and diverge again seamlessly, and in strict adherence to the story we needed to tell.

What’s more, we also had to ensure all these threads fed back perfectly through the online pre-narrative website that primed audience members for the world they were about to step into. The resultant production is, to all intents and purposes, a real-world gaming experience that segues perfectly into the Blade Runner films, and which lives and breathes as an organic immersive experience for every cast and audience member.

The project has also been hailed across much local, national and international press as Secret Cinema’s very best yet.