A Power Ranger With 5 Global Patents - How This Founder Solved Every Filmmaker’s Pain
15/07/2025
Hey there! Have you ever wondered why watching a movie could make you laugh or cry? Other than a great story, there is also sound. For this, you must know who Jason Chan is because his startup is the first in the world to crack an audio engineering problem to enhance your movie-going experience.
Jason was always taking big leaps of faith. Fresh out of medical college, he decided that medicine wasn’t for him and enrolled in drama school, landed a Disney gig, and then became the Green Samurai Ranger in Power Rangers: Ninja Storm (leaving his Disney gig in the process).
“Every boy wants to be a superhero, and this was probably my only chance. So why not?” he explained.
Jason Chan (kneeling) with the rest of the Power Rangers.
An Aha Moment About Engineering Emotions
After amassing a global following, Jason left fame behind for his next adventure in Singapore where he, together with fellow actor Christian Lee, created the breakout film “Jimami Tofu.” But instead of moving on to their next project, the duo attended every single screening for 2.5 years to gather audience feedback.
“People thought we were crazy,” Jason laughed. “But why wouldn’t you want to know how your audience reacts to your creation?”
Jason and Christian collecting feedback from movie-goers.
Through this period, the duo discovered that precise, in-situ sound volume was the key factor in accurately influencing people’s emotional reactions to a film. When cinemas matched the film’s inherently calibrated sound levels, audiences were left in tears. But when levels were off, people politely said “nice film” and moved on.
Yet, it wasn’t as simple as asking cinemas to be consistent with audio because even in the same movie theatre, only people sitting in the centre enjoyed the optimised audio mix. Everyone else received an unbalanced, subpar experience. This audio blind spot became even more amplified at outdoor screenings.
“Filmakers are obsessed with quality and we wondered what it would take to have everyone enjoy the same, perfect audio mix, no matter where they sit, indoors or outdoors,” Jason shared.
What happened next would test every ounce of the founders’ spirit.
The Impossible Problem
The solution seemed obvious: watch on a big screen, listen through your mobile phone. Perfectly synchronised audio for everyone, delivered through technology everyone already has.
“We thought this would be really easy to build,” Jason recalled. “A couple of coders could knock this out in two weeks, and we’d get back to filmmaking.”
Their startup, Cinewav, was launched in 2018. But 8 months, multiple freelancers and $30,000 later, there was no success in sight. Everyone’s feedback was consistent: perfect audio synchronisation amongst mobile phones with a computer playing the film could not be achieved.
Jason was stunned. “We were looking online for someone else who had done this. We couldn’t find anyone. This seemed so obvious…but why hadn’t anyone solved it?”
Every mobile phone plays audio at slightly different speeds.
The issue lies in a technical challenge most people never consider: mobile phones and laptops don’t actually keep time. They constantly ping the Internet for time updates, with inevitable lag and drift. Even if one can somehow play the same audio on multiple phones concurrently, the devices will gradually fall out of sync because each plays audio at a slightly different rate.
For solo listening, these millisecond differences are imperceptible. But when you are trying to sync audio to video for multiple people watching together, those tiny variations become obvious lip-sync disasters.
Breakthrough
After burning through more money and watching more engineers fail, Jason was ready to quit. But on the very last day of their final attempt, the development team showed up exhausted but triumphant.
“We’ve got 7 phones,” they announced, placing devices on the table. “We were all up till 4 AM, and we cracked it.”
They pressed play on a laptop. All 7 phones fired off in perfect sync and stayed synchronised for half a minute.
“We all got goosebumps,” Jason remembered. “This was a journey one year down, failing every month, thinking this was impossible.”
Early angel investors of Cinewav
By then it was early 2019 and the founders spent the whole year pitching to angel investors at conferences. Years of experience as actors came in handy as they beautifully sold the vision and secured $500,000 in funding just before COVID-19 shut down the world…and the cinemas.
But instead of seeing it as a disaster, the founders reframed the pandemic as a gift: 2 years of uninterrupted development time. While the world stopped, the Cinewav team registered their technology via 5 global patents and relentlessly iterated their product. By January 2022, the team launched a full prototype capable of handling feature-length films with hundreds of devices.
Global Fame of A Different Kind
That same month Cinewav had its first public screening with 50 people watching a movie at Singapore’s Keppel Bay. Everything was on point and their success became viral. By June’22, the team was not only doing screenings at Marina Bay Sands but concurrently took on a massive challenge – Vivid Sydney – the world’s biggest light festival. Cinewav was invited to synchronise audio across 10 sites throughout the city, complete with drone shows for thousands of people.
“We weren’t ready,” Jason admitted, “but we did it anyway.”
Today, Cinewav has evolved beyond cinema. They are projecting stories onto trees at Singapore Botanic Gardens, creating immersive experiences at tourist sites, working with 3 other major locations on storytelling installations that blend technology with location-specific narratives, and exploring new opportunities in Africa.
Making trees come alive with stories at Singapore Botanic Gardens.
No Magic Formula. Just Show Up
From being an actor with no engineering background to multiple patents and international partnerships, Jason’s journey defies conventional startup wisdom. And he wants to say this to all young founders out there: “Show up. Be very curious about your customers’ experiences. Observe their reactions. Measure what matters. And when everyone says something can’t be done, remember that sometimes the most obvious solutions are the ones nobody has bothered to perfect.”
Every superhero story starts with someone willing to take an impossible leap. If you are about to take flight, BLOCK71 can be your co-pilot. Join us and apply for our incubation programme today.
In the meantime, stay adventurous, remain curious.
P.S. – Fun fact: Jason still has his Green Ranger suit. Some transformations are permanent like that.