Over half a million people have participated in one of the Secret Cinema events over the last decade and with their new presentation of Blade Runner set to open later this month – and already extended into July – it seemed the right time to chat with its creator, Fabien Riggall, as he worked on the recreation of a world that’s not as far from our own as we might like to think…

Secret Cinema put on Blade Runner some years ago; why repeat something you’ve already done successfully?

We’ve done 46 productions in 10 years. We did Blade Runner back in 2010, and it was relevant then, and it feels even more relevant now to what’s going on in the world. It feels like we’re on the brink of it – it’s set in 2019.

We felt that we wanted to create a much larger scale experience: reimagining it, taking what we did before but [doing it] on a much much bigger scale; get inside the themes of the film, and the existential questions around humanity and robotics, and what it means to be human. It felt like it would be a great celebration of Secret Cinema to bring it back and make it bigger.

And a bigger chance for people to get involved with it, as you’ve announced what it’s going to be.

There’s something of a myth about this. Secret Cinema has two distinct sides to it. In the last year we’ve done three Secret Productions. Doctor Strangelove and The Handmaiden were both Secret Tell No One Productions where we don’t reveal anything.

We have two strands: Secret Cinema Presents, where we reveal the film but we don’t reveal the location, and then Secret Cinema Tell No One where we don’t reveal the film or the location.

What dictates what goes into which strand?

Essentially, Tell No One tends to be a little bit more edgy, subversive films; films that are a little bit more challenging, but we also have done films like Prometheus. It tends to be more of a surprise so we try to look at different kinds of films.

Presents tends to be more guided to bigger films – although that’s not an absolute rule – such as Back to the Future, Star Wars, Dirty Dancing. Bigger titles, where the audience have seen the movie and they have an imagined idea of what it might be like. That’s a rich place to start creating how we would bring the film to life.

Last time Blade Runner was Tell No One, but this is a celebration of the film and ten years of Secret Cinema, and we’re hoping that this will be our first production that heads into new cities and new places.

When you go to a movie, are you automatically thinking of the creative hinterland that could be around it, or can you switch off and just enjoy a movie for itself?

I can switch off, very much. I love watching films and losing myself in the story without thinking “How can we build it?”, but I guess there’s always part of me thinking “How could this work as an experience?”. For me, when a film really works and you feel it’s really grabbed you, it’s inspired you to think “How can I do something with this?”

It’s like a book that you don’t want to end – it feels as if the characters are carrying on without you.

That’s exactly right. It’s the resonance of the story.

I just feel that so much cultural product is based around candy entertainment. It’s enjoyable but it doesn’t really stay with you. When a film stays with you, or it’s a film like Blade Runner that stays through different generations, that’s where it feels like you can explore deeper. What would it be like to inside this film, inside the history and the context of it, be in the scenes?

How involved are the original creative personnel involved with the film, or do you license it and then your team starts to build the world around what they see from the script and the final movie?

We have a relationship with [the creatives]. Ridley Scott endorsed the productions which we did – Alien, then Blade Runner then Prometheus. Same with Wes Anderson; same with Baz Luhrmann. I think they like the concept of what Secret Cinema is and they endorse it, but they don’t get involved creatively.

What we do is take the film and the mood and the history and the experience, the feeling of the film, and work diligently on how we would build a world inspired by it, that has elements of it. In the same way someone will take a book and create a film, we take a film and create a theatrical world.

We want the audience to feel that they’re inside a film and also the extended world of that film. Blade Runner has a tight camera frame in certain scenes, but with us there’s no camera. The audience become participants, characters in the story, and they can literally interact with any single part of it. They can move in and out of certain areas. Obviously they’re given an identity in the story and they have to abide by the rules of the stage we give them.

Do you work from a central script, or do you work out character bios for the sorts of characters you’re going to have and build from there?

As the creative director of the show and the founder – I created the format of Secret Cinema – I create the top line narrative, story and script then I have a team of associate creative directors who come in and ideate and generate how we’re going to do it.

The audience are split into categories of characters and different narratives, then we start designing this experience, according each different character a route. Then the set designers and sound designers get to work. For Blade Runner, there are 300 people working on it, almost like a large scale film production.

It sounds like it mixes elements of a murder mystery dinner party on a huge scale with a large degree of improvisation for the participants.

Our crew and team come from the world of film and theatre; it’s a real hybrid of skillsets that we bring in to realise these worlds. I think people are quite taken aback by the level of detail and complexity that we go into to create these worlds. We build a website that has a digital story that plays out, that starts the moment you buy a ticket. You have this online experience where you get taken in, you’re given a character, biography, dress – all these little things, like an actor being given a role.

The way I see it is so much of culture has been boxed up into different sections, and I think what we’ve done is broken all of those, and created something new. We work very hard – we have this incredible team of actors who are very specialised in breaking the fourth wall and working with audiences at close range. The audiences aren’t just audiences – they become part of the world, part of the story.

It’s difficult to describe it – some people say “Rocky Horror on steroids” – but it’s a new format. We’re trying to make it real. We want people to feel the deep messages of the films, and lose themselves for a night where they can get away from everything. They seal their phones into bags, and have a night where they can be anything they want to be. In a world where everything is available on line and everyone knows what everyone is doing, the idea of having a night where you can be completely anonymous in a different character is exciting.

Disney’s idea of EPCOT was that people would actually live in the worlds – and Secret Cinema sounds like a chance to visit the world and spend a night living in them.

When we did The Shawshank Redemption the audience actually became prisoners and stayed the night. There were 30 or 40 each night who stayed in cells. They lived inside the prison for the night, were woken up and had to go on a morning run, had breakfast and left.

Disney is a great comparison in many ways. I think what we’ve done is taken this idea – what if you could live inside a movie, walk through a door and become part of it? – to the extreme. It is about building these worlds that live and breathe and have their own rules.

What world would you choose to spend longer in?

With Back to the Future, we created this 1950s marketing campaign where the audience became citizens of Hill Valley. They lived inside Hill Valley in 1955, the year that the clock tower was hit. With that, we were building a town of 3,500-4,000 people, a living breathing town with a town hall, garage mechanics, and it was so nice that people could come and stay there.

What’s next?

A film that I think people are going to love. It’s connected to love and to an undercurrent in society that’s very prevalent right now.

Secret Cinema presents Blade Runner – The Final Cut: A Secret Live Experience will run from 21st March until 8th July at an undisclosed London location. Click here for more details

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All photos (c) Secret Cinema

BLADE RUNNER and all related characters and elements © and TM Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s18) (c) 2018 Alcon Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.