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Little Cinema were very much in the limelight at COSM in Los Angeles during their immersive premiere of The Matrix (not least because all the lights in the venue were genuinely Matrix green).
Little Cinema founder Jay Rinsky gave one of the evening’s celebratory speeches, and his team’s work on the project was acknowledged over and over again by representatives from Warner Bros and COSM.
While this particular kind of immersive film event is a whole new area for Jay and co, it’s a natural amalgamation of all their work over the last ten years, having conquered each element separately already; the theatrical, the technical, and the collaborative.
Following my visit to COSM, I caught up with Jay to chat about their lead-up to this monumental project.
Your first events at House of Yes were very focused on live performance and physical interactions with the audience. How did you make the move from that kind of immersion to the huge tech set-up at COSM?
Jay: We always did projection mapping using multiple projectors on a secondary screen around the space. We’d run the movie through turntables, I’d DJ it live, and we’d have performers throughout the venue. It was a fusion of theatre, circus, and the 3D practical effects we used to do. As Forbes put it, ‘Little Cinema felt like the movie poured out of the screen and into the audience.’
At House of Yes, we used practical effects — humans, props, rigging, and theatrical techniques — to bring the film into the space. With COSM, we applied the same creative philosophy, but executed it through immersive content. The 3D elements weren’t built physically, but the digital content was crafted to feel just as real — using the same lessons and approach we’d developed from the start.
Over the years, Little Cinema has built deep immersive experience expertise, producing XR content for Disney and projection-mapped experiences for Amazon, Skull Candy, and Hall des Lumières. Our teams are skilled in both realms.
And throughout Little Cinema’s history, we’ve deconstructed countless films into experiences, so translating a movie into immersive storytelling has become second nature.
Where did Little Cinema come from?
Jay: I started as a DJ, making film mixtapes in a DJ Yoda style. When I came to New York, I met the House of Yes crew and had the idea to evolve those film-dance mixtapes into single-film events with live performance.
In 2016, the night David Bowie died, I launched the project: each week, I’d pick a film, run it through turntables, invite as many collaborators as possible, and enforce simple rules:
- Try something new in every show
- Avoid any creative low-hanging fruit
It became a dialogue between the film and artists in the show, with no creative limits. We covered everything from Requiem for a Dream to The NeverEnding Story, obscure Russian and South African films – over 30 different titles in the first year, around 50 by the second.Since I manipulated the film live as a turntablist, shows weren’t fully rehearsed; they worked like DJ sets. I could loop, stretch, or stop moments on the fly. For example, in our Roger Rabbit event I hired a plate spinner to dress as Roger Rabbit, and he acted out a plate-smashing gag live while I looped the scene and cued a jazz band to improvise. Another time, for The Big Lebowski, a was literally ‘rug’, ‘tying the room together’ from a balcony.
Eventually, we grew beyond House Of Yes and started performing at the Brooklyn Museum; National festivals and more. Budgets were tiny and very DIYBut the work taught me creative lessons that will last a lifetime
As our shows kept selling out, studio and agency folks started coming. Bigger budgest, and found an accidental business in creating experiences for film premieres and marketing stunts. We also got a lot recognition: Forbes called us ‘the SNL of immersive cinema’, we won Best of New York Magazine, performed at Bonnaroo, premiered Meow Wolf’s film in a truly meow wolf immersive unhinged way, featured at Future of Storytelling, and were hired by TNT, TBS, HBO, and Paramount for major festival and events
Larger budgets followed. We did Secret Cinema-style takeovers – like the Paramount Lot – with sets, choreography, and performances blending unreleased content, live DJing, orchestras, and crowd interaction.
Then Warner Media hired me as ‘their innovation guy’ on retainer. Which put me in the front seat to re-invent with them as soon as COVID shutdowns hit, I pivoted, brought in a CTO and built a secure, multi-room, interactive digital platform for immersive film and theatre online. It exploded. We grew to rapidly, formed Little Cinema Digital, and ran brand activations virtually and filled with story. For Borat, we built a Kazakhstan-style site, invented a fake ‘DJ Skoyach’, brought goats on set, and hosted a live in-camera stream with Sacha Baron Cohen.
We created a kind of immersive Twitch; live hosts, multiple rooms, and branded story-driven content. During COVID, we were one of the only companies in Hollywood still busy working, delivering over 500 events for all major studios.
That growth launched the business side: now we have about 30 staff across content, event production, and tech teams.
What’s next for your work with COSM?
Jay: We signed a multi-film deal with Warner Brothers and with Cosm and have new projects in the works, it’s all I can say for now.
I noticed that Little Cinema elements of the night include theatrical touches like the eat-along – with corresponding food being served at the moment it also appeared on screen.
All those elements playing in concert are what make up a Little Cinema event, it is the multi-disciplinary story every touch point that is at the core of what we do.
I was watching the premiere screening with a friend who had never seen The Matrix before and it got us wondering: do you think this format is best suited to watching films you’ve seen before or new films too?
My personal opinion would be that it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen a particular film before, because it helps you to feel and understand the story so much more than if you just saw it in a movie theatre. Of course it’s also great to see something you know in a new light and with a great group of fans surrounding you.
To back that up, I will say that several people involved in The Matrix – including the film’s producer Joel Silver – said it felt like seeing the movie for the first time for them.
From a film purist perspective, it makes sense to preserve the director’s vision—letting the story play out against a black space, untouched. But today, people often watch films for the first time on phones, planes, or subpar screens—even in some cinemas.
So experiencing a film in a stunning, immersive environment that draws you in and enhances the story ultimately offers a better viewing experience, whether it’s your first time or not.
Little Cinema’s latest project is the De Niro, New York immersive experience at Mercer Labs in New York
