Thanos · · 2 min read
The experience is the work
A remarkable film shown badly is a bad experience. Why everything around the headset matters to us as much as what plays inside it.
Most people who sit down in one of our pods have never watched a film in a headset. Some tried VR once, years ago, and didn’t like it. A few came only because a friend insisted.
That is our audience, and it is why viewer experience comes first for us.
One chance to change a mind
On a flat screen, a weak first impression costs a film a few minutes of attention. In a headset, it can cost the whole medium. Someone who leaves uncomfortable, confused or bored rarely blames the film. They blame VR, and they don’t come back.
So we treat every screening as the first one that person will ever have. Often, it is.
The twenty minutes around the film
A film can be remarkable and still be a bad experience. If the headset sits badly, the room leaks into the sound, the wait is long and unclear, or nobody explains what is about to happen, the work never gets a fair hearing.
That is why we design what surrounds the film as carefully as we choose it.
Before
Someone from our team greets each visitor, tells them what they are about to see, and helps them fit the headset and headphones.
During
- A swivel chair, so they can look anywhere without standing up.
- Noise-cancelling headphones, so the room falls away.
- An operator watching every pod from one tablet, ready to step in.
After
A moment to come back. Taking the headset off is part of the experience, not the end of it.
Behind it all
When the queues grew faster than we could manage them, nothing off the shelf did what we needed. So we built our own software, Poetics Pods, to keep every pod on one schedule and every visitor’s wait short and clear.
Curation is part of it too
Viewer experience starts long before the venue. We watch every title ourselves before it enters the catalog, and we program for the room we are in.
A piece that wins a jury prize might overwhelm a first-timer; a quieter one might be the reason someone falls for the medium. The order of the films, the length of a session and what we say before it are all decisions about the viewer.
What it gives back
- 5,000+ screenings at more than 15 events
- 4.92 out of 5, the rating visitors give us
- 250+ five-star reviews
We read those numbers as a measure of care, not of technology.
For creators, it means their work is seen the way they made it. For venues, it means visitors who leave talking about what they saw, not about the wait. For the medium, it means one more person who sat down unsure and stood up curious.
The film is what people come for. The experience is what they remember.
→ Learn more: how a Poetics cinema works