Twentieth Century Fox is no stranger to virtual reality or 360-degree media, having used the mediums for promotion of their recent sci-fi blockbuster The Martian. Thus, it’s no surprise that the film studio and distributor and their Fox Innovation Lab is partnering with a company specializing in virtual reality to develop more experiences for the studio’s properties.
Fox and the Innovation Lab are teaming up with Felix and Paul Studios to co-develop immersive productions. Utilizing proprietary 3D 360-degree camera systems, Felix and Paul Studios have produced content for movies like Jurassic World, and impressive performances like Cirque du Soleil, and they’ve even collaborated with Lebron James and President Barack Obama. They handle a great deal of production in house including designing and processing the audio content through their Headspace Studios division. Ryan Horrigan, the CCO of Felix & Paul, spoke highly of the partnership in a prepared statement.
“The Fox Innovation Lab has long understood that virtual reality requires an entirely new language of storytelling, enabling audiences to engage with characters and stories in ways never before possible,” he said. “Fox continues to take a major leadership role in this new medium and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to co-produce premium cinematic VR experiences and series that will captivate audiences worldwide.”
Twentieth Century Fox president Mike Dunn adds, “Felix & Paul Studios is a visionary studio that represents the highest caliber of immersive and engaging experiences, and their vision for bringing virtual reality to mainstream audiences makes them a perfect partner to help realize the possibilities for the future of consumer entertainment, from both a creative and technical perspective.”
The first productions from this partnership will be announced early next year. There could certainly be some interesting properties represented, including Logan, War For The Planet Of The Apes, Hidden Figures and more, but we’ll have to wait to find out.
In a move that could prove to be the making of the studio, cinematic virtual reality (VR) creators Felix & Paul Studios have announced a deal with Twentieth Century Fox’s Fox Innovation Lab that will see the Montreal based company tasked with developing and producing VR experiences based on Fox’s rich catalogue of films and television shows.
The announcement caps a great 2016 for Felix & Paul, who, along with continuing to develop their team, celebrated winning an Emmy® Award earlier this year and who since their founding worked on a number of critically acclaimed projects. Having previously worked with films such as Jurassic World, with Cirque du Soleil (twice) and notable figures in both sport and global affairs.
The Fox Innovation Lab had previously worked with Felix & Paul in 2015 creating an experience based on Fox Searchlight’s WILD. It’s own mandate goes far beyond VR however, and to all areas of the product cycle from production and marketing to distribution across all of Twentieth Century Fox’s divisions. Its this partnership that sees it continue to develop the conglomerate’s use of new technologies, such as 4K Ultra HD which has begun to become more popular in recent months.
Felix & Paul Studios’ Chief Content Officer Ryan Horrigan explained the deal. “The Fox Innovation Lab has long understood that virtual reality requires an entirely new language of storytelling, enabling audiences to engage with characters and stories in ways never before possible. Fox continues to take a major leadership role in this new medium and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to co-produce premium cinematic VR experiences and series that will captivate audiences worldwide.”
“Felix & Paul Studios is a visionary studio that represents the highest caliber of immersive and engaging experiences.” Continued Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Fox Innovation Lab President Mike Dunn. “And their vision for bringing virtual reality to mainstream audiences makes them a perfect partner to help realize the possibilities for the future of consumer entertainment, from both a creative and technical perspective.”
According to both parties the first collaboration will be revealed early next year. VRFocus will bring you news about it when it is announced.
In mid-October we learned about an upcoming VR experience was in development to accompany the theatrical release of the Assassin’s Creed feature film starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Inglourious Basterds). As it turns out, the project is a large-scale collaboration between AMD, Alienware, Practical Magic, 20th Century Fox, New Regency, and Ubisoft. Here’s how they made it happen.
The 360-degree experience was filmed by Practical Magic in cooperation with 20th Century Fox and New Regency. The theatrical activation will feature kiosks with Oculus Rift headsets powered by Alienware Aurora PCs using AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics cards.
The five-minute experience promotes the upcoming Ubisoft Films and 20th Century Fox movie starring Michael Fassbender, which opens Dec. 21. Matthew Lewis, CEO and founder of Practical Magic, told UploadVR from the outset the goal was raising the visual quality bar for VR videos.
Michael Fassbender as Aguilar de Nerha in the Assassin’s Creed film.
“The film Justin Kurzel and Adam Arkapaw shot is beautiful, and we wanted to make sure the VR experience kept up,” Lewis said. “This meant we were going to be building a lot of new production and post-production technology, which is what ended up happening at Practical Magic.”
While the Spanish Inquisition scene in the big budget film was shot on location in Malta, the VR experience was shot in Los Angeles. Lewis said his team went out with drones and scanning equipment to painstakingly scan the set, props, and other elements from the film production in Malta and London.
“Over the course of a few days, we scanned the world of the movie, and took it back with us to Los Angeles,” Lewis said. “We were then able to recreate the set both physically in the art department, and in the computer at extremely high resolution.”
A cast of 50 to 60 people assembled in Los Angeles to bring the Spanish Inquisition to life. Because of the 360-degree nature of the experience, Lewis said a lot of the background talent ended up featured very prominently in the sequence.
The Animus from the original Assassin’s Creed video game.
“There’s action happening all around you,” Lewis said. “If you watch it more than once, you definitely see things you missed the first time that add to the experience. Right at the very beginning, you get a full true 360 view of the Animus — every last inch of it — so you can study it in great detail and see things you might have missed in the movie. It’s a gorgeous set full of props and eye candy, and it’s the same exact set you see in the film.”
Practical Magic produced the show in segments over the course of 2016 in London, Malta, and Practical Magic’s VR studio in Burbank, and it took a laundry list of new technology to pull it off.
“We weren’t happy with any 360 camera rig at all, so almost all of the action was captured using motion control rigs, including some of our own invention,” Lewis said. “We used mostly RED Dragon cameras and shot multiple passes of everything, with a baseline resolution of 6K. The hallway fight scene is actually 26 passes of 6K images composited together covering different angles of the scene. When you see it at full resolution, it feels cinematic — it’s rich, sharp and detailed. The dynamic range is there — it doesn’t feel muddy or overly-compressed. That was hugely important to us. We also really need to call out Litegear, our lighting supplier, who provided literally hundreds of individually controllable LED light fixtures that allowed us to perfectly manage the world light during motion control. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
Post-production was done in-house at Practical Magic, using Nuke and CaraVR for compositing, Maya for 3D and Vray for rendering, and After Effects for a few key tasks, along with some custom software, plugins, and tools of their own. Lewis said his studio has a pretty solid on-premises render farm that is built specifically to deal with VR, so every frame seen on screen was generated there specifically.
Michael Fassbender fighting as Aguilar de Nerha in the Assassin’s Creed film.
“Editing itself was only a fraction of the post-production work,” Lewis said. “The visual effects component was very complex, and took months of work. The post-production pipeline for VR industry-wide is very immature and the software is alpha quality at best. We were also pushing our hardware to the absolute limit — imagine trying to work with 26 video streams of 6K footage at the same time in the same shot. We needed the best hardware you can get your hands on, and that’s what it took to get the job done. Otherwise, we’d still be sitting here watching progress bars.”
Fassbender plays Aguilar de Nerha in the film, an original character that’s part of a new story that ties into the universe of Ubisoft’s bestselling video game franchise. While filming last year at Pinewood Studios, Practical Magic shot Fassbender for this exclusive VR experience.
“We shot him on stage in London and he was a great sport,” Lewis said.
While Fassbender is the central character in the big screen adventure, the VR experience allows users to step into the boots of an original character.
A screenshot from the Assassin’s Creed VR Experience trailer embedded above.
“The viewer is not playing Aguilar — that’s a job best left to Michael Fassbender’s talents,” Lewis said. “I don’t want to give too much away, but yes the viewer is an Assassin.”
Gamers will also recognize Easter Eggs in the VR piece, according to Lewis. These occur mostly in the first scene, which was shot in the Animus set from the movie. There are other elements inspired by the video game franchise, as well.
“We move the camera a lot, which means there are a number of major parkour-type moves the viewer will experience,” Lewis said. “There are plenty of classic, tried-and-true Assassin’s Creed moves. There’s one part that always makes people scream a bit, which is exciting to watch.”
Lewis said the team knew the games and immediately everyone went to,“We have to do the Leap of Faith in VR!” So naturally, Lewis jokes, “I don’t want to give it away by saying we did a Leap of Faith in VR, but I mean, we did a Leap of Faith in VR, obviously.”
Lewis said the last few years of experience working on complex cinematic projects like Capture for The CW have been invaluable.
“We like to move VR cameras while we’re shooting, which is traditionally considered very difficult — so moving VR cameras has kind of become our thing at Practical Magic,” Lewis said. “A couple of years ago we built a cinematic VR camera rig for Google that Justin Lin used to produce Help!, which won the Gold Lion for VR at Cannes this year. We’ve continued to build all manner of cinematic VR rigs since. If we didn’t have engineering and rapid prototyping in-house to build our own VR gear, and a lot of really experienced technical people, we couldn’t have pulled any of this off.”
Gamers will get a first look at the Assassin’s Creed VR Experience today for free through the Oculus Video app on both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, as well as a 360-degree video on Facebook. Additionally, moviegoers will see a national theatrical roll-out of the experience at AMC theaters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and New York City between Dec. 2 and Jan. 1.
There’s been a few cinematic and virtual reality (VR) tie-ins, with The Walk and Ghostbusters being two recent examples. One of the most well known and eagerly anticipated is The Martian: VR experience, which debuted at CES 2016 back in January. Today Fox Innovation Lab at Twentieth Century Fox has announced that PlayStation VR and HTC Vive users will get to enjoy the experience tomorrow.
The Martian VR Experience is described as an “interactive, immersive adventure with viewers participating from astronaut Mark Watney’s perspective, performing tasks that will facilitate his chances for survival. Viewers can fly onto the surface of Mars, steer at zero gravity through space, drive a rover navigating over craters and experience key scenes from the hit film in a 360-degree virtual reality environment.”
When VRFocus previewed the experience we said at the time: “The Martian: VR Experience is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful VR titles VRFocus has yet witnessed. Putting most other Oculus Rift and HTC Vive titles to shame, [it] presents a landscape that is truly unbelievable.”
In the trailer Ridley Scott, Executive Producer of The Martian VR Experience says: “I’ve always tried to approach film-making from the standpoint of creating an immersive experience. Now with the tools that are available to us in virtual reality, we can raise the bar even higher. The audience can experience storytelling in ways we previously could only imagine.
“With VR you’re inside it you’re the person walking on the planet, it’s uncanny. Mars has never been closer to being within our grasp and I’m so thrilled that we can invite people into The Martian VR Experience,” he adds.
The title will be available to purchase for $19.99 USD from the respective headset stores on 15th November. While no date has been confirmed for Oculus Rift, as the original CES debut did include Oculus Touch compatibility its likely that the experience will arrive around the same time as the controllers next month.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of The Martian VR Experience, reporting back with any further updates.
The Fox Innovation Lab are all set to finally release their virtual reality tie-in with last year’s sci-fi blockbuster The Martian starring Matt Damon to a VR headset near you as the title launches tomorrow on both PlayStation VR and SteamVR platforms.
I was lucky enough to go hands-on with The Martian VR Experience at CES at the beginning of the year and came away impressed, entitling the article on the experience “A Triumph in Motion.” At the time, the platforms I trialed it on (HTC Vive and Oculus Rift with Touch) were still months from release and as a result, despite the high level of finish and polish evident in what I saw, Fox Innovation Lab (the VR-focused division at 20th century fox tasked with building the title) have waited until now to launch.
The Martian VR Experience represented at the time the best experience of its kind I’d yet seen, that is, an application that designed as an accompaniment an original film – a good old fashioned movie tie-in. Unlike many other examples of primarily marketing-lead immersive attempts that we’ve seen since VR’s renaissance began, The Martian VR Experience represents an offering that works as standalone entertainment and at the same time, it manages to push expectations of visual fidelity and polish for applications of these types up a notch or two.
Executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Robert Stromberg, The Martian VR Experience is described as “an interactive, immersive adventure with viewers participating from astronaut Mark Watney’s perspective, performing tasks that will facilitate his chances for survival.” Players get to fly through the Mars atmosphere in zero gravity, grapple with Watney’s all-terrain rover, there’s also snippets of the film thrown into the mix to remind you of the original inspiration behind the experience.
“I’ve always tried to approach film-making from the standpoint of creating an immersive experience. Now with the tools that are available to us in virtual reality, we can raise the bar even higher. The audience can experience storytelling in ways we previously could only imagine,” said Ridley Scott, Executive Producer of The Martian VR Experience and co-founder of RSA Films. “Mars has never been closer to being within our grasp and I’m so thrilled that we can invite people into The Martian VR Experience.” Scott himself narrates the new launch video for the experience too, which you can watch embedded above.
Director of The Martian VR Experience and co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Virtual Reality Company said “With The Martian VR Experience, we were able to take Ridley’s cinematic vision and create an immersive VR experience that gives people the ability to be Mark Watney, to face his struggles, experience his successes, as if they were part of the film.”
The Martian VR Experience will be available from November 15th on PlayStation VR and on SteamVR for the HTC Vive. No mention of support for the Oculus Rift, but given the reliance on motion controls it’s likely this will appear later once Oculus Touch has found its way into users homes next month. The experience will be priced at $19.99 on release, which may present a high price for those looking for hours and hours of gameplay in return for their money. We’ll have impressions on the final release version of the experience and on whether we believe it’s worth the cash soon.
When Ted Schilowitz was looking for what to do after traveling the world as the first RED Camera employee, he happened upon an opportunity to serve as a futurist for 20th Century Fox, looking at how to use emerging technologies for storytelling. Over the past three years, he’s had a lot of early access to hardware from all of the major virtual and augmented reality companies ranging from Oculus, Valve, Sony, Google, Magic Leap, ODG, and Microsoft.
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He’s been exploring what’s possible with VR and AR, and he says that “the abilities of a new medium start to define the demands of a new medium.” He’s worked on a number of different VR experiments to discover how to best blend together narrative and interactivity within the context of these new “spatial mediums.”
One of the first and most ambitious experiments was a half-hour long Martian VR experience that was one of the hottest tickets at Sundance. It integrated the D-BOX 4D effects chair and Oculus Touch controllers, and put you in the first-person perspective of many key scenes from The Martian movie.
I had a chance to catch up with Ted at VRLA where he told me the story of introducing VR and AR technologies to Hollywood studio executives and storytellers. He shares some of his favorite interactive narrative experiences ranging from Pearl to Valve’s Aperture Robot Repair to The Gallery, as well as polished interactive experiences like NVIDIA’s VR Funhouse and Valve’s The Lab.
We also talk about the balance between global and local agency in interactive narratives, what can be learned from storytelling in theme park rides, the emerging language of storytelling in VR, and what it takes to become a viable practitioner of these future technologies.
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