Project for innovative post-confinement film distribution via QR Codes stuck on coffee tables. Project for innovative post-confinement film distribution via QR Codes stuck on coffee tables. Project for innovative post-confinement film distribution via QR Codes stuck on coffee tables.
New social uses
At café terrace tables, after the confinement, the cards for choosing your beer, tea or menu are replaced by QR Codes. People approach their phone to the QR Code, then immediately look at the card together on their personal mobile screen. No problem, the use is fluid, the technology is well developed and has been integrated in phones for a long time (for train tickets for example).
What if, instead of the card in the café-restaurant, it was a short film that was shared on the phone? What if this café was a movie theater, on a terrace on the sidewalk? What if it was a space for short films, trailers, quizzes where you have to guess who the actress or actor is? What if the QR Code on each small table became an open window on projects of mediation with cinema, which are qualitative, playful and participatory?
Technical implementation
A QR Code is a simple shortcut to a “URL” (the address of a web page, or a video or audio file). There is no technical cost of implementation, the conversion between the url and the QR Code can be done by any site of the domain, such as https://fr.qr-code-generator.com/.
For example this address: https://www.benoitlabourdette.com/ will always give, whatever the site used, this same QR Code (you can test it with your phone) :
Specific mediation work
This proposal is a “frame”, just as a movie theatre is a “frame”. Within this framework, it is necessary to invent activities and adapted mediations. These can be very well framed, or more flexible, like the “cafés philo” for example.
Technical work
You can simply put a film behind a QR Code, but you can also send, in the same QR Code, a different film every 10 minutes to make a real programming, via a unique QR Code. Depending on the chosen mediation proposal, the technical work to make the activity exist can be extremely simple (it can be just doing the QR Code for a video on YouTube for example) or more sophisticated (a specific platform that changes the film every 10 minutes, or takes the votes, etc.).
Example
In 2015, the QR Code on the beach of Saint Marc sur Mer (where the film “Les vacances de M. Hulot” was shot) offered the viewing of short extracts of the film, shot at the place where the QR was set up, in order to announce the open-air screening of the film at the end of the summer. Young people discovered the film through these excerpts and came to discover it during the screening.
The beautiful holiday : « Mr. Hulot’s Holiday »’s flashcodes.
Singular Mediation Ideas
In this very singular system, new and adapted proposals must be invented. I don’t think we can “cut and paste” a principle of debate, for example.
Here are a few ideas for mediation:
- We change the film every 10 minutes, for a real programming, with different themes.
- The fact that the films are seen together by the people at the table produces a common experience: for example, the common laughter for the comedies will be fully experienced, and people will be able to look at each other, really interact during and after the screenings.
- In the café of a movie theatre, complementary content to the programmed films, “bonuses” (interviews with actors, filmmakers, analyses, etc.) could be broadcast in the QR Codes.
- We could take inspiration from the cafés philo, and use films that set the pace of the evening, to launch a debate on different aspects of a subject.
- A lighter idea, proposed to the cafés and restaurants of a city, could be to create stickers with the QR Code, stuck on the tables with a very short explanatory text, which would be the link to a mini video platform gathering local productions. This platform, following the example of the TikTok application, would directly propose a video, then another video, automatically recommended, with the possibility of subscriptions and customization.
- Quizzes, collective games whose images would be the support: what is the actor’s name? Who is the director of the film? What is the year of the film? Who composed the music?
- More precise themes, such as “Male gauze / Female gauze”, with discussions (short each time) on the perception of an extract of flim, in order to become aware of the stereotypes which the images carry. Work with extracts from heritage films for example.
- Etc.
The name Le Café des images is in honour of a wonderful movie theatre in Hérouville-Saint-Clair, which bears that name.
