Hidden Gems: Meet Jay Rinsky of Little Cinema

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jay Rinsky.

Hi Jay, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been a collage artist at heart, a multidisciplinary, multimedia kind of guy. I studied multimedia in school, worked at a record store, DJed, and I fell in love with what music does when you sample it and reshape it into something new.

That instinct came to a head after I turned 30. I had just sold my first business, in online learning, and I decided to focus on what I loved most: music and film. A new technology let me control video from my turntables, and I quickly fused the two, creating multimedia shows built on live film rescores that drew a completely new emotion out of an audience.

In 2016, on a whim, I experimented with a new format at House of Yes in Brooklyn: playing a movie on turntables and remixing it live. Looping it, cueing it, mixing new music into it, and inviting performers to have a live dialogue with a film they loved through multi-media performance. Dancers, aerial artists, even chefs moving through the crowd, handing things to the audience. No rules, pure creative conversation with the film itself. It started with a Bowie tribute show around Labrinth the night after Bowie passed, and with that Little Cinema was born.

It became a hit instantly. We committed to a new film every single week, and shows sold out in under an hour. A year and a half later, we had staged 50 shows around 50 films of every shape and form, and studios began hiring us to create unique experiences to launch their new releases. That grew into Little Cinema’s agency arm, where we’ve had the privilege of working with nearly every major studio, WB, Disney, Paramount, Apple, Netflix etc building experiences around new IP as it came into the world.

About three years ago, an unknown, well-funded sports and entertainment startup reached out. A new LED dome was opening, and its leadership team had followed my career all the way back to those early House of Yes shows. They asked if we could bring our art form- turning movies into new experiences- into their dome and their technology. That became Movies in Shared Reality at Cosm in partnership with WB, launching with The Matrix.

We poured everything we learned in those early days into it, taking an almost digital theater approach: site-specific environments and atmospheres that enhance the film and make people feel like they’re standing in the middle of it. ‘It’s not about seeing the flames. It’s about feeling the heat’. Through the partnership with Cosm and Warner Bros., we’ve now launched four films in Shared Reality: The Matrix, Willy Wonka, Harry Potter, and IT. And we’re still chasing the question that started all of this: what can the film experience become next?

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Life is not a smooth road, and that’s exactly what makes it so special. You’re constantly faced with challenges, and each one is a choice between glass half full and glass half empty. I’ve always loved the idea of turning lemons into lemonade, and that’s been our story of growth.

Some of it was structural, like figuring out how to license films for experiences that had never existed before, with real roadblocks along the way. COVID was the biggest one. We were set to premiere Snowpiercer with Jennifer Connelly and exhibit our first major installation at South by Southwest with Paramount, and it all got shut down overnight. So we pivoted, pioneering a new interactive technology for cinematic live streams, and that pivot ended up growing the business in ways we never imagined.

Day to day, the challenges keep coming, from difficult personalities with a great deal of talent to a constantly shifting landscape in an industry weathering one storm after another. With every single one, we put a smile on our face, kill cruelty with kindness, look for the opportunity hiding inside the challenge, and move on to the next.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve never really had a real job; I’ve always worked for myself. Early on, I discovered a talent for multimedia using Flash at the peak of Internet 1.0, and at the ripe age of 18 I started my own business in online learning and web development. It put me through university, fully self-funded, and afterward I started a company with a business partner that we were fortunate enough to bootstrap and exit before I turned 30.

With a bit of money in the bank, I turned to doing exactly what I loved: experiencing the world through music and film. That is where Little Cinema truly comes from. In the early days, I was hands-on with everything, leading, producing, creating, editing, performing. Over time I learned the most important lesson of my career: find people who do things far better than you can, and give them the support they need to do their best work. That’s Littte Cinema, the sum of many parts fused together to create new things in unexpected ways.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Staying calm, and staying self-aware. I try to be an open, straight communicator who welcomes feedback, and I carry a true love for life and for what I do.

I’m also very comfortable in the unknown and happy to sink or swim.

A lot of it comes down to instinct. There is always a vibe that can’t be put into a system or a formula or process of right and wrong. You have to listen for it. In a nutshell: ‘do the right thing’

But the biggest characteristic is enjoying other people’s talents. I love giving people the confidence, the backing, and the support to put their heart into something, with full permission to fail. If they fall, I’ll catch it and take the fall. More often than not, that turns into results none of us could have reached alone.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlecinema.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/little.cinema/