Felix and Paul Studios – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

February 14, 2024

Felix & Paul Studios Secures Multi-Million Dollar Financing for Next Location-based VR Experience

Felix & Paul Studios, the Emmy Award-winning XR studio, announced it has secured funding for its next location-based VR (LBVR) experience based on what it says will be a brand-new IP.

The studio hasn’t released the exact figure of the financial backing, however says it was a “multi-million dollar” amount which came from Export Development Canada (EDC), The Bank for Canadian Entrepreneurs (BDC), the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), and National Bank of Canada’s Creative Industries Group.

Felix & Paul have been pioneers in the VR space since the release of early 360 films Strangers and Zarkana. Founded by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël in 2013, the studio is known for original immersive film productions such as the Emmy Award-winning The Space Explorers series, Traveling While Black, Jurassic World: Blue, Cirque du Soleil, and immersive videos for Fox Searchlight’s Wild and Isle of Dogs.

The yet unnamed LBVR experience, which is set to launch in 2025, is being couched as the studio’s “most ambitious project yet.”

“We are proud to count on the backing of creative financial partners like EDC, BDC, SODEC, and National Bank of Canada, whose support is pivotal to our pioneering role in the immersive entertainment market,” said Stéphane Rituit, CEO of Felix & Paul Studios. “Their support strengthens our commitment to the evolution of digital entertainment. Space Explorers: THE INFINITE, has demonstrated the potential of location-based VR for both financial returns and popular appeal. As we embark on our most daring and ambitious project yet, we’re setting the pace for our Studio’s growth.”

Space Explorers: THE INFINITE, the studio’s most recent location-based VR experience was created by Felix & Paul and Quebec-based PHI Studio. The experience lets multiple users explore the International Space Station, see the Earth from above, and view other 360-degree videos as you experience the life as an astronaut in low Earth orbit.

Showings are currently available in Vancouver and Denver, with an additional showing planned to come to Houston in May.

The post Felix & Paul Studios Secures Multi-Million Dollar Financing for Next Location-based VR Experience appeared first on Road to VR.

March 2, 2022

Quick Review: Spacewalkers Is A Must Watch For Quest Owners

A new, free 10-minute immersive VR movie, Spacewalkers, from Felix & Paul Studios is available to Quest, and it’s a must-watch for any who owns a headset. Here’s our quick review.

Despite an interest in outer space and the wider universe, before this week I had yet to dive into any of Felix & Paul Studios’ Space Explorers content. With the launch of the new (and free) Spacewalkers special feature, available in the Space Explorers app, Oculus TV or Horizon Venues, I figured I’d jump in and give a spacewalk outside the ISS a try.

After the short 10-minute experience was over, I was left completely astounded, my breath taken away by the scope of what I had just watched. It comprises mostly of 30 – 60 second to minute-long vignettes set at different locations just outside the ISS, showing astronauts completing actions and attending to the space station in low Earth orbit.

spacewalkers

The scale and perspective that this immersive, 3D video offers is overwhelming – it is likely the closest you will ever feel to being in space, using cutting-edge technology to achieve the effect.

The studio is known for having the best capture technology in the industry, and it shows in Spacewalkers. It’s easy to think that you’re watching some kind of recreated 3D model of the ISS, with animated astronauts floating around. I certainly caught myself thinking that a couple of times, and then remembered that I was looking at 100% real 3D footage captured in space.

Most of the space station itself is stationary throughout each scene, with astronauts moving around it as it floats slowly through low Earth orbit. But for me, there was one moment that brought home the realism of what I was watching – while the mostly-static ISS floated above Earth, I looked around and saw a tiny flap of unsecured fabric on the side of the station, flapping in zero gravity. While a tiny detail, it was an astounding moment of realization – this isn’t just an immersive model or recreation, it’s a proper captured event, in all its glory and detail, filmed in outer space.

For any Quest owner, Spacewalkers is a must-watch. It’s available now on Oculus TV (in the highest quality, when you enable device caching for an episode in question), or through Horizon Venues and the Space Explorers app.

August 27, 2021

This VR Documentary is Filming Outside of the ISS so You Can See Space With Your Own Eyes

Image courtesy TIME, Felix & Paul Studios

Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is a multi-part VR documentary from Felix & Paul Studios and TIME that lets you see what life is like aboard the International Space Station. The first two episodes transport you to the rarefied air of the ISS interior, however the studios today announced that they’ve begun filming episodes three and four outside of the ISS, letting you virtually experience the edge of space via 3D, 360 video.

Exterior scenes are being filmed by Felix & Paul’s customized virtual reality ‘Outer Space Camera’, making it the first such attempt to capture 3D, 360 video using the ISS as a space-based camera dolly. Those scenes are slated to be featured in Episode 3 Unite (coming fall 2021) and Episode 4 Expand (coming winter 2021).

The series is an Oculus exclusive, offering VR support across Rift, Quest and Quest 2 via the Oculus Store. Here’s a view from the ISS Cupola to give you an idea what it might be like looking out at the pale blue dot sans air.

The studio says its custom-fitted ‘Outer Space Camera’ is built on a Z-Cam V1 Pro camera consisting of nine 4K sensors allowing for a 3D, a 360-degree image at 8K resolution.

It’s also been “specially hardened” by the company Nanoracks to withstand a host of conditions including the vacuum of space, solar ultraviolet radiation, ionizing radiation, plasma, surface charging and arcing, temperature extremes, thermal cycling… the list goes on.

a look at a 360, 3D camera used in Space Explorers | Image courtesy TIME, Felix & Paul Studios

The Outer Space Camera, which has been attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm, is built to store around 15 hours of 3D, 360-degree video, complete with custom lenses made to withstand extreme light and heat to minimize flare when directly exposed to the Sun—quite a feat when external temperatures can range from -250° F to +250° F (-155° C to +121° C).

Felix & Paul is an Emmy Award-winning studio responsible for VR films such as MIYUBI, the Nomads series, Strangers, and The Confessional. The Montreal-based studio has also created several productions for existing franchises such as Jurassic World, Cirque du Soleil, Wild, and Isle of Dogs. High-profile collaborations have seen VR experiences created for NASA, SpaceX, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, LeBron James, President Bill Clinton, Wes Anderson, Brie Larson, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Murray.

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If you want to catch the first episodes of Space Explorers in VR, you’ll find them over on the Oculus Store for $3 a piece, each of which take around 30 minutes to watch. They’re also available from select telecoms LGU+ in South Korea, KDDI in Japan, AIS in Taiwan, Orange in France, and Deutsche Telekom in Germany.

The post This VR Documentary is Filming Outside of the ISS so You Can See Space With Your Own Eyes appeared first on Road to VR.

April 17, 2019

Felix & Paul Studios’ Gymnasia to Premiere at Tribeca

The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival begins next week in New York and prolific virtual reality (VR) content creators Felix & Paul Studios will be premiering their latest short film, Gymnasia to guests.

Gymnasia Felix & Paul Studios

Created in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, Gymnasia is a six-minute cinematic VR experience which blends 3D 360-degree video, stop motion animation, miniatures and computer-generated graphics (CGI).

Produced by Felix & Paul Studios‘ Stéphane Rituit and Dana Dansereau (NFB) and directed by the award-winning duo Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (Clyde Henry Productions), the experience is billed as a weird dark dream, where viewers step into the stillness of an abandoned school and enter a place where the ghostly ephemera of a lost childhood await them.

“We are honoured to once again premiere our work and be part of the official selection at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival,” said Paul Raphaël, co-founder and creative director of Felix & Paul Studios in a statement. “We collaborated with Chris, Maciek and Patrick on our very first VR experience, Strangers with Patrick Watson, so it was both fascinating and rewarding to see how much the medium has evolved in the short five years since our studio produced that inaugural VR piece.”

Gymnasia Felix & Paul Studios

Gymnasia isn’t just about donning a VR headset and watching a film for a few minutes. Being shown in Tribeca’s Virtual Arcade Gymnasia is a theatrical event, designed to distort visitors perception of scale right from the start by integrating life-size puppets into the environment. This was produced and installed by Montreal’s Phi Centre, supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Niepodległa programme.

“For us, creating VR has always been as much about the neuroscience of this fresh medium as it is about art theory. Indeed, in no other art form are aesthetics and science so aligned,” said Chris Lavis, co-director of Gymnasia. “The Gymnasia installation at Tribeca will be an engaging and surreal experience for festival-goers and our hope is that this unique installation will completely upend their sense of scale and reality.”

Gymnasia might be premiering at Tribeca but VR fans will also be able to watch the film soon, with a release scheduled to take place via the Oculus Store on 26th April. For further Felix & Paul updates, keep reading VRFocus.

March 1, 2019

Resolution Games, Felix & Paul, More Win Magic Leap Indie Creator Grant

Last week, we reported that Magic Leap had seen over 6,500 applications to its Independent Creator Program. Today, the company revealed a handful of the winners.

The Independent Creator Program provides funding and resources to smaller studios looking to work with Magic Leap One. Teams with less than 20 members were able to apply for grants between $20,000 – $500,000 to work on specific projects. They’d also be given free headsets and access to mentorship and other resources.

Winners span various industries and include names that will be familiar to VR fans. Angry Birds VR developer Resolution Games was one of a handful of gaming companies to win, for example. Experiential studios like Felix & Paul and Within were also successful.

While it’s true that studios like these are on the smaller side, they’ve also raised significant investment before or are already well-established in the immersive reality industry. Resolution Games, for example, raised around $13.3 million in funding over the past four years. Felix & Paul, meanwhile, regularly works with the likes of Oculus among other partners.

We reached out to Magic Leap asking why it had chosen some of these studios over lesser-known applicants. The company didn’t immediately respond for comment.

There were many lesser-known winners, too. Medicalholodeck uses 3D scans of the body for education and surgeon training, for example. Future Sight AR, meanwhile, is looking to bring AR solutions to construction sites. Cosmic Trip and Starbear Taxi developer Funktronic Labs also joined the list.

Magic Leap lists 31 companies in total. Magic Leap says these are only some of the winners picked from the applications. Others remain in stealth mode.

Tagged with: Felix and Paul Studios, Magic Leap, Magic Leap One, resolution games

The post Resolution Games, Felix & Paul, More Win Magic Leap Indie Creator Grant appeared first on UploadVR.

February 21, 2019

Eminem’s 360 Experience Marshall From Detroit Arrives Today on Oculus

After making its debut during last month’s Sundance Film Festival New Frontier exhibition, Felix & Paul Studios’ 360-degree film Marshall from Detroit featuring 15-time Grammy winning musician Eminem, will be arriving later today for Oculus Rift, Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR.

Marshall from Detroit

Marshall from Detroit is a 21-minute experience produced in conjunction with Oculus. Featuring Marshall Mathers (Eminem) and Sway Calloway and directed by Caleb Slain, you join Eminem on a night ride through Detroit with an up-close-and-personal view into the rapper’s thoughts and views on the city

“In Marshall From Detroit, we sought to explore the city impressionistically: Detroit as a memory, a feeling, a dream,” said director Caleb Slain in a statement. “With a front row seat down memory lane alongside Marshall and Sway, this lyrical experience offers an unprecedented glimpse into its eponymous titans. We all have a home. And the extent to which it shaped us is one of life’s great mysteries. But as any native would tell you, Detroit, Michigan is one hell of a place to call home.”

Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg and his producing partner Stuart Parr executive produced the experience via their Shady Films banner. The experience was captured and produced by Felix & Paul Studios with Headspace Studio providing the spatial audio capture.

“It was a remarkable experience to collaborate with Marshall on this project,” said Paul Raphaël, co-founder and creative director of Felix & Paul Studios. “Marshall and the place he calls home are deeply intertwined — a motif we have explored with virtual reality since we produced the Nomads series, Through the Ages, and The People’s House. Here we used VR to tell a new side of Eminem’s story, one where audiences will get closer than ever before to this musical icon.”

Check out the preview from last month below before it arrives on the Oculus Store as a free download. Felix & Paul Studios is continually producing new immersive content, with its latest endeavour possibly the most complicated, collaborating with TIME and NASA on ISS Experience where they’ll capture the first-ever spacewalk in 360. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Felix & Paul Studios’ work, reporting back with the latest updates.

January 28, 2019

VR Cameras Now on International Space Station to Capture Space Walks & Missions

Last month, TIME and Felix & Paul Studios launched VR cameras to the International Space Station (ISS) in a new project to bring viewers an intimate look aboard one of the most exclusive places in human existence.

Dubbed The ISS Experience, over the course of the next year VR cameras will provide what the makers call “unprecedented access to a participatory experience—one that will culminate with the first-ever filming of a spacewalk in cinematic virtual reality.”

The year-long project was announced at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this weekend. The project’s first VR scene was filmed on Friday, January 25th.

“We will take audiences inside and outside of the space station through the immersive and experiential power of virtual reality,” said Felix & Paul creative director Félix Lajeunesse in a statement obtained by Collect Space. “We’re going to look at the research, the science and the work that is done on the International Space Station. And we’re also going to look closely at the reality and challenges of learning to live in space.”

“Most of what we will film is going to be captured inside of the space station over a period of about nine months. But as the story builds up, it’s going to gradually ramp up to a spacewalk, where we will take audiences outside the space station, alongside the astronauts, to capture the first ever cinematic VR spacewalk. We’re pretty excited,” said Lajeunesse.

The team launched two VR camera systems on board a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft last month. The cameras, which provide a 3D 360-degree view, are an array of Z CAMs and custom-built, made-for-space motorized rig that’s anchored to specific places on the station.

“A very vital thing to virtual reality storytelling is where you actually place the camera, and in our practice at the studio, we like to think of the virtual reality camera as if it were a person. We generally want to place that VR camera where a person could actually physically be or stand, and that’s a massive factor in building a sense of immersion for audiences,” said Lajeunesse.

“That’s good on Earth, but when you bring that philosophy to the space station, then it brings a lot of problems, because the space is not that big on the station and there’s some pretty critical operations being done by the astronauts in space where a big camera could be in the way,” he continued.

The team behind The ISS Experience collaborated with NASA to map out ideal locations for the cameras, and what times they could film within a maximum “184 hours of crew time” that NASA set aside for the project.

Two more VR cameras are said to arrive to the ISS later this year which will be specially built to not only withstand microgravity, but to undergo what the creators claim will be the “first-ever extravehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk) in cinematic virtual reality.”

It’s still uncertain where the cameras will be anchored too, be it the Canadarm2 robotic arm, the Japanese robotic arm that is mounted at the end of the Kibo module or on Dextre, a two-armed manipulator.

Step Inside the International Space Station Like Never Before With Cinematic VR Series ‘ISS Experience’

Felix & Paul Studios are one of the most prolific creative companies when it comes to cinematic virtual reality (VR), with two of its pieces Marshall from Detroit and Traveling While Black currently at the Sundance Film Festival. Continuing its relentless content creation, the studio has announced that in collaboration with TIME the pair will be combining their expertise in the creation of a new VR series called ISS Experience.

ISS Experience - inside

ISS Experience will be a documentary series filmed both in and around the International Space Station (ISS) over the course of a year. Thanks to the support of the International Space Station, U.S. National Laboratory and the access provided by NASA, will document life on board, capturing the first-ever spacewalk in cinematic 360, learning about what it’s like to live there whilst providing insights into the future of space exploration.

“We are excited to be working with Felix & Paul Studios to bring this project to many different audiences, across many different platforms,” said Mia Tramz, Emmy-winning VR producer and editorial director of Enterprise and Immersive Experiences at TIME in a statement. “This project will have a life on digital, immersive and physical platforms, and will ultimately serve as an educational experience to inspire generations to come.”

To begin capturing content for the ISS Experience TIME and Felix & Paul Studios launched two specialised Z CAM V1 Pro cameras to the ISS on 5th December 2018. These were adapted by Felix & Paul Studios incorporating purpose-built hardware and software that allows the crew of astronauts to shoot in these unique conditions.

Two additional cameras are slated to reach the ISS early this year, built to film outside of the ISS and to capture the spacewalk.

“Everything we have done to date as a studio has led up to this moment. We’ve immersed audiences around the world in extraordinary settings—from the White House to Eminem’s Detroit to the plains of the Serengeti—but space is the ultimate destination,” said Félix Lajeunesse, Emmy-winning creative director at Felix & Paul Studios. “We’re proud to be on this ambitious journey with our partners at TIME, producing the single most immersive experience ever made of life in space on the International Space Station.”

When completed the series will be distributed as both a digital XR experience and physical ticketed experiential exhibition at select museums and public locations. When these details are made available VRFocus will let you know.

January 27, 2019

Oculus Debuts Two VR Experiences at Sundance, One is an Oculus Quest Title

The Sundance Film Festival is currently taking place in Park City, Utah, showcasing not only the best in original film but also the very latest in immersive experiences. As part of the event Oculus has premiered one title while teasing another, they are Traveling While Black and The Under Presents, respectively.

Traveling While Black

Traveling While Black is the work of Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams and co-directed with Ayesha Nadarajah and Felix & Paul Studios, created in collaboration with The New York Times Op-Docs. It is a 20-minute documentary focusing on the long history of the restricted movement for black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in communities.

“I hope Traveling While Black sparks a conversation that inspires real solutions and awareness,” Williams told Oculus Blog. “If this film asks the right questions and gets people to think about this ongoing crisis in America — not avoid or gloss over it, just to have a profound discussion about race in America instead of looking the other way — then we’ve succeeded.”

If you own an Oculus Rift or Oculus Go headset then you can watch Traveling While Black for yourself, available through the store for free.

The Under Presents

The Under Presents, on the other hand, is merely a teasing glimpse at what’s to come later this year. Created by the team behind Virtual Virtual Reality and augmented reality (AR) experience Tendar, Tender Claws aim to blend immersive theatre and virtual reality (VR).

“There is a lot of interest in exploring the overlap of immersive theater and VR,” says Samantha Gorman, co-founder of Tender Claws. “The project’s narrative revolves around fate and free will and as part of that we’re interested in playing with the change of feeling of interacting with both pre-recorded and live characters. As well as other players and past recorded versions of themselves.”

Merging live actors and scripted performances with a narrative arc that centers on themes of time, fate and free will, for The Under Presents Tender Claws collaborated with NYC-based theatre collective Piehole to feature both motion-captured characters and live actors throughout the story.

The Under Presents will be coming to standalone headset Oculus Quest later this year. When VRFocus has further details we’ll let you know.

January 23, 2019February 22, 2019

Eminem’s VR Documentary ‘Marshall from Detroit’ Now Available on Rift, Go & Gear VR

VR film production house Felix & Paul Studios debuted Marshall From Detroit at Sundance 2019 last month, a short virtual reality documentary featuring famous rappers Eminem and Sway Calloway. Now Oculus platform users can hop into the limo with Eminem too on his pensive ride through the streets of Motown.

Update (February 22nd, 2019): Oculus has released ‘Marshall from Detroit’ for free on Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, and Gear VR.

The original article announcing the film follows below:

Original Article (January 23rd, 2019): Marshall from Detroit is a 3D, 360-degree video featuring Marshall Mathers (Eminem) and Sway Calloway. Directed by Caleb Slain, the short film takes the viewer on a night ride through Detroit, featuring a candid conversation about the rapper’s thoughts and views on the city.

Created by Felix & Paul in partnership with Oculus, the full 21-minute VR experience is set to premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibition starting tomorrow. Marshall from Detroit is being shown alongside Traveling While Black, another Felix & Paul production.