The inaugural VIFF Immersed Exhibition recently took place at the Vancouver Film Festival, presented by Samsung VR Video with the aim of featuring compelling content from creators from all over the world. Several virtual reality (VR) experiences were featured, with one VR film, Homestay, being awarded the BC Spotlight Audience Award from Creative BC.
The public exhibition was sold out, and featured fifteen VR experiences, including three world premieres. Homestay, a film by Paisley Smith, Matthew Borrett, the National Film Board and Jam3 celebrated its Canadian premiere and the award it was subsequently given.
The VIFF Immersed Exhibtion took place between 29th September to 2nd October and was curated by StoryTech Immersive, focussed on the best available immersive storytelling and aiming to showcase leading creators in VR as well as augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).
“VIFF has celebrated excellence in screen-based storytelling since 1982 and in 2018 inaugurated a new initiative to engage both audiences and creators by diving into the art and science of narrative on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality platforms,” said Jacqueline Dupuis, VIFF Executive Director. “VIFF Immersed is a place for excellence in narrative content that is available for distribution to audiences across multiple immersive platforms. It is also the forum for creators, buyers, distributors and technologies meet, learn, experience and collaborate to raise the bar for narrative content and grow the industry.”
VIFF Immersed also launched the ‘BC Tech Crawl’ where a group of international distributors, producers, tech companies and guests are given an opportunity to experience the technical ecosystem of British Columbia, Canada. Delegates are able to experience various immersive projects, such as the HoloLens Transformation Mask, and meet up with a collection of immersive content creators visiting from South Korea. The Tech Crawl is intended to offer networking and business opportunities to attendees.
For future coverage of VIFF Immersive and other VR-related events, keep checking back with VRFocus.