Five Questions to Alexandre Roux from UNFRAMED COLLECTION

This time we talked to Alexandre Roux from Paris – not about the Olympic Games but about their B2B immersive distribution platform dedicated to cultural venues and educational institutions. Since 2023, he has been overseeing the activities of UNFRAMED COLLECTION, which is the name of the platform. In 2018, he joined Lucid Realities to develop its national and international distribution strategy.

Before that Alexandre spent over 8 years at CPB Films / CLPB Rights as the Head of Marketing and Business Development after earning a master’s degree in International Business Administration from INSEEC and a master’s degree in Design, Media, and New Technologies from Université La Sorbonne – Paris 1. Here we go:

1 What was the initial idea to create the UNFRAMED COLLECTION?

The Unframed Collection is the first B2B distribution platform dedicated to bringing immersive experiences (virtual and augmented reality) to cultural venues and institutions. Our primary ambition was to better structure the location-based entertainment (LBE) distribution market by offering a curated catalog of immersive works, services, and tools designed to help distribution venues deploy immersive setups.

Lucid Realities collaborated with cultural institutions to create innovative distribution models in response to the growing public interest in these new forms of experiences and the need for cultural venues to enhance their digital offerings.

Our numerous LBE experiences exposed us to recurring obstacles and challenges in the field: poor understanding of the tools, inadequately trained staff, poorly adapted devices, and fragile economic models. We aimed to offer solutions to these problems by developing tools and documentation tailored to our partners’ working methods. Simultaneously, we refined our operating models, optimizing traffic management while ensuring a quality experience for visitors.

2. What are the categories of the works that you present and which categories are most popular. How often do you integrate new content?

The Unframed Collection catalog features over 100 VR experiences produced by the most talented international creators, studios, and producers.

Our editorial team has curated various themed playlists specifically for libraries, including Fine Art, Fiction & Animation, World History, Social Issues, Architecture, Cinema, Wildlife, Exploration, Music, and more. This offering is aimed at both existing audiences, who will discover a new form of entertainment and engage in a series of exchanges in a recognized cultural meeting place, and younger audiences, who are often curious about technological innovation.

Unframed Collection also serves as a platform for documentary resources highlighting trends in the cultural immersive sector. We publish weekly portraits of creators, exhibition reviews, and practical advice to encourage knowledge sharing and strengthen links between various industry players.

3. Who are your customers and who is the audience that benefits from the UNFRAMED COLLECTION?

Unframed Collection’s services are intended for a variety of cultural venues (museums, heritage sites, libraries, art centers) and educational institutions (schools, universities) in France and internationally. We are not an online publishing company but a comprehensive B2B distribution company with a strong focus on innovation and the cultural landscape.

Our special offer for libraries was developed in France with Reseau Carel, an association located at the Centre Pompidou, which promotes the development of digital resources in libraries.

4. What are your plans for the future?

We aim to expand our service to include other types of immersive experiences (multi-user VR, MR, etc.) and develop new software features, such as a full Mobile Device Management (MDM) system, to easily manage access to multiple VR headsets simultaneously.

We are also in discussions with several international partners to deploy our service in targeted countries, including South Korea, China, and the United States.

5. What would be helpful to further improve the distribution of immersive content to cultural institutions?

First of all, I think it’s very difficult for an institution to have a clear vision of the VR experiences produced and available in the market. By providing a spotlight for all these projects and a distribution marketplace, we hope to improve the clarity of what’s on offer. On the other hand, these experiences are often misinterpreted because many institutions developed so-called virtual visits during the Covid crisis, or because some studios, at the start of the VR emergence, produced poor-quality experiences. Our approach, and that of our partners, is very different. We use the VR medium to tell stories in a unique way, amplify the impact of the storytelling, and give a central place to the author’s perspective. This method of producing projects can convince even the most tech-savvy curators and change their perception of these new technologies.

Finally, the lack of training for the supervisory staff of these institutions remains a significant obstacle that we are trying to overcome by providing specific expertise and software tools to facilitate the exploitation of these experiences.