Here’s why to know them is to avoid them

If you own a non-themed venue, such as a mall, a small amusement park or any entertainment center that hasn’t got a specific theme, you understand the potential of a digital attraction to entertain your guests. 

And you probably already know what kind of experience people look for when visiting such places (spoiler: it’s licensed titles!).

So, once you get your media-based attraction, you have to decide which content to buy, how many titles you need, and to understand which genres your target will love the most: adventure? horror? fantasy?

Making the wrong choice is incredibly easy, because there is such a wide variety of titles around and one thing is for sure: they can’t all be good. 

Some of them are too long and result boring to the public - and boring is the exact opposite of what you want them to be; some of them are just plain old and your guests will notice it; some of them come directly with the simulator, and they have been used by so many other venues that six out of ten visitors who come to your place will have likely experienced them already, thus classifying you as cheap and second-rate. 

It’s as if you find yourself in a locked room with several doors, but only one of them hides a treasure chest - the other ones will lead you to a ravine that it will be difficult to climb back up.

What to do then? 

Until a few years ago, the only way to get a CGI title was to lease it from a distribution company. Things have changed now, but chances are you have already had to deal with distributors in order to get new content.

How to recognize distribution companies

What is a distribution company and how does it differ from a production company? Basically, a production studio creates the content, whereas the distributor sells it.

But why should you prefer one over the other? What difference does it make to you?

You should know that distributors exist because generic CGI studios are usually composed of “technicians” who are often unable to promote their own products. This means that distribution companies basically act as brokers, relying on generic and/or local CGI studios to produce the content they sell. 

This makes it actually easy to recognize distribution companies: you just need to visit their websites and look for the content they sell. 

Pay attention to these features:  

• • Do they showcase a huge number of titles?
  • Are they all different in style from one another?
  • Do they only release one title a year?
  • Are these titles produced by other companies than the one selling them? 

If you notice at least two of these four features, then you are definitely looking at a distributor’s website.

That is why CGI content is more expensive than it should be, if licensed through a distributor: after all, these companies aren’t charity organizations. They have to earn over the products they sell. In order to do so, distributors mostly rely on their marketing skills. They don’t have time to focus on immersive content production.

Not just a matter of cost

As another consequence of not producing the content they sell, distribution companies cannot guarantee you fast after-sale support, because they don’t know all the details about their titles or the technology behind them. And you wouldn’t even have direct contact with the production studio: should something go wrong, from technical difficulties to you being unsatisfied with the final product, you would always have to rely on some middleman to manage all communication. Imagine if every time you wanted to ask some information about the content you bought you had to play an interminable game of Chinese whispers, only to have uncertain answers in return!

This would either dramatically extend the time of delivery or make you reluctantly accept a product that is not at all like you wanted it.

The attractions business is also very competitive: as a result, all the content libraries from distributors around the world are very similar. Distributors heavily rely on quantity: they only grab as many products as possible without thinking about your specific needs. They don’t really differentiate each other. And their catalogs are enormous. At the end of the day, these companies release a new title per year and keep offering hundreds of old-fashioned ones.

As a matter of fact, more professionals than you imagine have shared that they had found out that distribution companies had tried to sell them some very old content at full price, passing it off as brand new. What’s even worse, they had already sold that same content, lifetime, for a definitely lower price, to some low-quality cinema in the middle of nowhere! 

We think this is unacceptable, but unfortunately, these kinds of hustles happen too often in this business.

Strong cooperation between those who make CGI content and professionals who are going to screen them can give birth to experiences that people actually want to try out. If you work with a specialized CGI production company you can take advantage of exciting movies created around your target audience’s wishes - and you can get better assistance and save money too, since you don’t have to deal with any middleman upfront.

The most esteemed professionals in the industry work directly with specialized CGI production companies, becausea specialized CGI production company offers content focused on specific target audiences, so you can immediately understand if its content is suitable for your guests. 

The best strategy to pick your next immersive content is to get in contact with a production studio that has a stylistic approach that matches the philosophy of your venue. 

But keep your eyes wide open. There are companies that promote themselves as producers, but actually, they also sell movies made by other production studios.

Forewarned is forearmed. 

Why trust the CGI studio specialized in media-based attractions

Now that you know something more about what happens behind the scenes of movie production and distribution, you may be scared of looking for new content. 

But it’s actually not too hard or dangerous, once you find the right partner. 

That is why you need to rely on a specialized company with a transparent, direct communication, that won’t sell you old content just to fill their pockets!

Speaking of content, remember that here at Red Raion we produce ours entirely in house: nothing shady about our titles! 

Our immersive movies are founded on a solid ground of market research and targeting, with a profound knowledge of the technology we use. 

Only by combining these factors can a movie match the standards your audience looks for in a media-based attraction, thus providing you with quality content.