What’s This?

The only other people in the theater got up and left. I assume they wanted to watch the regular version of The Nightmare Before Christmas, not the “Second Screen Live” version that my wife and I were there to see.

The invitation I received from the publicist said, “Break the rules, bring your iPad with you to the movie.” Neither my wife nor I have an iPad. Fortunately she was able to borrow one and to download the free app.

Before the film started, there were on-screen instructions on how to set up the iPad. We were told to turn airplane mode on, WiFi on, log on to SSLIVE, turn multi-tasking off and to launch the app.

Throughout the entire movie, there were captions along the bottom of the screen that were from either Jack Skellington or Oogie Boogie. The audience would normally be divided into two teams. My wife and I spun the on-screen wheel and landed on Jack’s team.

Occasionally the movie would stop so we could play a game on the iPad. We had to spot the differences between the picture on the big screen and the picture on the small screen. There was also a Simon-like game in which we had to tap out the same color pattern as displayed on the movie screen. Sometimes we won points and sometimes we lost points.

At the end, we had the high score. Of course, we also had the only score. Nevertheless, it was a fun time and well worth the extra effort to borrow an iPad.