What Can Technology Do for Cinema?

Technology has been transforming cinema in many ways, from production to the ways films reach audiences. But beyond the most visible changes, it can also create new forms of interaction between those who make a film, those who watch it, and those who follow a film’s performance.

It was by exploring these possibilities that Baablon began developing its own technology initiatives. The first was XBPIX, created in 2021 as an experiment in rethinking the relationship between films and audiences. Since then, the company has invested knowledge, time, and resources in developing solutions that can address concrete challenges in the audiovisual industry and create better conditions for projects to be made and reach their full potential.

XBPIX: An Experiment in New Models of Film Circulation

XBPIX emerged in a market already dominated by major global platforms. Rather than simply reproducing existing models, the idea was to experiment with new ways of discovering, recommending, and engaging with films.

The platform was built around a practice deeply rooted in cinema: one person recommending a film to another. Users could share a film and receive a portion of the revenue when their recommendation generated new rentals. In this way, audiences also became part of a film’s circulation. XBPIX featured films from production and distribution companies including Downtown, Paris Filmes, O2 Play, and Imagem Filmes.

But there was another question behind this model: what happens to the information generated through the relationship between audiences and films? How can we better understand what sparks interest, what motivates someone to recommend a film, and how this information might contribute to the work of producers and directors?

This connection between films, audiences, and information was directly related to the way Baablon understands authorship. Understanding more about how a film reaches its audience can also help reveal its reach and create new possibilities for its circulation.

The experience lasted approximately a year and a half. After that period, Baablon decided to discontinue the operation and wait for more favorable conditions for further investment. Maintaining a technology platform and capturing audience attention requires significant resources, especially in a market where global companies compete every day for that attention.

XBPIX did not continue as a platform, but it provided a concrete market experience. Baablon invested in creating and operating its own solution, testing ideas, observing audience behavior, and gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in bringing films and audiences closer together. That knowledge became part of other decisions made by the company and helped shape a broader understanding of the role technology can play in the audiovisual industry.

Plano Piloto: Technology for More Transparent Production

Today, Baablon’s most advanced technology initiative is focused on audiovisual production itself. The company develops and uses the Plano Piloto platform, designed to bring financial information, scheduling, and progress across the different stages of a project together in a single environment.

In a production, these elements are constantly interconnected. A change in the schedule can affect costs, crew, and other stages of the project. A change in the budget can require new decisions. Having an up-to-date view of this information makes it possible to identify problems earlier and make decisions with greater clarity, before they affect later stages of the project.

Plano Piloto also seeks to reduce the fragmentation of information across spreadsheets, emails, messages, and reports. Instead of requiring the team to gather data from different sources to understand the status of a production, key information can be monitored in an integrated way.

In co-productions, this approach also extends to partners. Co-producers can directly follow financial and scheduling information, creating a more transparent relationship between companies and allowing decisions to be made based on up-to-date information. For projects involving multiple partners, resources, and responsibilities, this visibility can be an important part of risk management and of building trust between teams.

Plano Piloto does not replace the experience of the production team. Its role is to provide a better structure through which that experience can be applied. Less time spent looking for information means more time to understand what it means and decide what needs to be done. And this efficiency is not only relevant to management: it creates better conditions for a film’s resources to be directed toward what ultimately needs to be on screen.

Technology, Authorship, and Competitiveness

This is where technology connects directly to the value of directors’ work. A more organized, transparent production capable of anticipating risks can better protect the creative work behind a project. When budget, schedule, and production stages are under control, directors have better conditions to focus their attention on the choices that define the film, while the production team can work to make those choices possible with greater security.

This also affects the film itself. Better resource tracking, informed decision-making, and problems identified in advance can reduce losses and preserve creative possibilities throughout production. The result is not simply a more efficient production, but better conditions for the director’s original vision to reach the screen with the force that motivated its creation.

In an increasingly competitive market, this capacity can also contribute to a film’s position among partners, financiers, festivals, distributors, and other industry stakeholders. A production able to demonstrate control over its resources, schedule, and processes provides more information to those involved in the project and can help build relationships of trust throughout its trajectory.

For Baablon, this relationship between technology and authorship is particularly important. Investing in production tools does not mean distancing cinema from its creative dimension. It means creating a structure that helps protect that dimension and gives directors better conditions to develop their vision. The stronger the structure supporting a project, the more room there can be for its cinematic identity to emerge.

Technology Development as Part of Production

Plano Piloto is currently Baablon’s most advanced technology platform, but it is part of a broader exploration of how technology can contribute to audiovisual production.

The experience with XBPIX revealed possibilities related to audiences, circulation, and data. The development of Plano Piloto brings that same willingness to experiment into the production process itself, seeking to improve resource management, reduce risks, and make workflows more transparent.

This continuity also reflects Baablon’s decision to invest in developing its own solutions, learning from problems encountered in practice and transforming that experience into tools that can be applied to its projects. In this sense, technology is not separate from filmmaking: it emerges from the concrete needs of those who produce films and then becomes part of their production infrastructure.

This development is connected to the way Baablon understands filmmaking. Technology can help organize a project more effectively, but it can also free up time, protect resources, and create better conditions for creative decisions to receive the attention they deserve. When management works better, the work of those making the film can also work better.

That is why Baablon continues to develop its own tools. Not to place technology at the center of cinema, but to discover where it can solve concrete problems, strengthen those who make films, and create new possibilities for projects.

From XBPIX to Plano Piloto, the journey has taken different forms, but they are connected by the same willingness to invest, test, learn, and develop new solutions for cinema. At their core is the pursuit of technology that does not replace creativity, but helps create the conditions for it to have more space, greater security, and greater strength to reach the screen.