Philips and Syfy Sync Your Lights With ’12 Monkeys’

By Karen Fratti 

There is something to knowing your audience. Syfy has partnered with Philips to enhance the viewing experience of its show “12 Monkeys,” which is already a hit according to Twitter fans, having premiered in January.


Fans can download the Syfy Sync app, and if they have Philips Hue lightbulbs, the lighting will change. According to the network:

lights will react to what’s happening on screen—be it to reflect the mood of the scene or directly relating to the action (thunderstorm = flashing lights) — changing colors to match the action of the show.

Talk about geeking out over an experience. They’re also syncing the lighting for airings of Sharknado and Sharknado 2: The Second One. It’s a very cool integration of mobile and playing around with the connected home. Matthew Chiavelli, head of digital media and strategy for Syfy told Steve Smith over at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider blog that it’s like “scoring the movie with light.” Smith continues that:

Interestingly, they learned that viewers want to know the track is there and working, so the light scoring needs to front load a number of effects early in the narrative…Like a musical score, it needs to be scripted manually. And there are technical challenges. The system relies on the audio detection in a mobile app that is in turn connected to a home network and the Hue lights. You have to script for variable performance at that last 30 feet to and from the router and anticipate lag.

Uh, yes, viewers want to the track is there. How creepy if your living room lights were just randomly changing hue? SyFy is the the perfect place for effects and trials like this. During the Sharknado viewing, about 15% of people that were using the app were also synched up to Hue. For the “12 Monkeys” premiere, about a “third of second screeners” were enjoying the light show. It does make you wonder, though. What else can they mess around with?

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