Carmike Cinemas And Timeplay Team Up To Innovate Movie Going

To kick off CinemaCon 2015 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, an interactive event took over the Palace Ballroom. Timeplay, an engaging app aiming to innovate the movie going experience, hosted a demonstration of their new product which is now being adopted in Carmike Cinemas around the country.

The installation of the app is simple for the movie goer. It is available in the app store for free. Once installed, the user will have to connect to the Timeplay Wi-Fi network to instantly integrate their responses to the competition in their auditorium. From there, the user enters their name and follows (usually) simple instructions.

The interaction began with trailers. Lionsgate's The Age Of Adeline aired. The film is about a woman struck by lightning and giving both the blessing and curse of not aging. When the trailer concluded, the audience was prompted with the question of which decade they would want to live in given the choice between the 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. The participants used the app on the phone to vote and the results were instantly displayed in percentages on the screen.

Another style of interaction included trivia which wisely integrated McDonald's product placement. A Big Mac took the screen with a question asking how many seeds are typically on a Big Mac's bun. The faster you answer, the more points you get - if you're right. By the way, there's 350 seeds on those buns. Some other trivia included ordering four movies by their release date as quickly as possible, selecting movies Jennifer Lawrence starred in, and picking 3 Star Wars villains out of 6 villains pictures.

Then, there's the interactive commercial which could make movie going much more interesting and engaging. A Ford commercial began to play and at times would split in half. On one side, a male actor on the other, a female. When the screen split, the Timeplay app prompted the users to select whether they wanted to see what the guy did next or what the girl did next. Majority wins. Imagine intense emotional scenes or action sequences where you could pick which character or angle you watch? Brilliant.

Lionsgate was not the only studio to participate in the demonstration. Warner Brothers' The Lego Movie became a game for the viewers where they would tilt their phones along with the chase scene. This game, however, was the most distracting. It was nearly impossible to focus on both the game and the movie. On top of that, for folks who choose not to participate in Timeplay while at the movies, the instructions across the bottom would only be frustrating.

Of course, there were games that had no relation to movies but were quite fun. There were hockey, soccer, and raccoon tossing which were easy to grasp and play along. One game that involved launching balloons full of paint in a Luigi's Mansion-looking setting was terribly confusing. All in all, though, not enough to stop Timeplay from shining, but more so giving movie goers a reason to show up to the theater early.