Gloomy Eyes – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

July 26, 2019

HTC Vive has Five Original VR Titles Chosen for the 76th Venice International Film Festival

The 76th Venice International Festival will take place at the end of August and HTC Vive has announced that five of its original virtual reality (VR) works will be on display.

HTC Vive - 5x1

The five original VR pieces are films 5×1 — O, 5×1 — Only the mountain remains and 5×1 — The Making of, interactive art INORI and VR animation Gloomy Eyes. 5×1 — O, 5×1 — Only the mountain remains, INORI and Gloomy Eyes have all been entered into the Venice VR Competition, going for awards including Best VR Immersive Work, Best VR Immersive Story for linear content and Best VR Immersive Experience for interactive content.

While 5×1 — The Making of has been selected for the Venice VR-Best of (Out of Competition), joining other titles including Fable’s Wolves in the Walls: It’s all Over, Baobab’s Bonfire and A Fisherman’s Tale by Innerspace VR.

5×1 — O: Directed by Qiu Yang
5×1 — Only the mountain remains: Directed Wei-Liang Chiang the film discusses foreign labour issues.
5×1 — The Making of: Directed by Midi Z, the film “was shot on the first day we made Nina Wu, which means we made a VR film during movie shooting. This VR work mirrors Nina Wu,” he said.
Gloomy Eyes: Previously show at the Sundance Film Festival, the animation chronicles a remote town where being a zombie is against the law.
INORI: Created by Japanese contemporary artist, Miwa Komatsu, and music creative master, Kay Huang, the art piece will make its world premiere at the festival.

“This is a record-breaking time for HTC Vive Originals, with four originals VR work entering the Venice International Film Festival VR Competition and one film invited to be screened in Venice VR-Best of as an out of competition film, said HTC Vive Originals president, Szu-Ming Liu in a statement. “We have reached a milestone where we can truly build our reputation in a first-grade film festival. This is not just the pride within the Chinese cultural and creative industry. HTC is making an oath to develop a complete VR ecosystem. We will be the pioneer of VR content and witness the great leap of creativity, communication, and experience happening from 2D to 3D immersive spaces of human history.”

The Venice International Film Festival runs from 28th August to 7th September and is one of the most prestigious in the world alongside Cannes International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. For further updates on VR content at the festival, keep reading VRFocus.

January 25, 2019

Animated VR Story Gloomy Eyes Adds Colin Farrell As Narrator

Colin Farrell will narrate the animated VR project Gloomy Eyes.

The visually striking project is premiering in the New Frontier section of the Sundance Film Festival from directors Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado, produced by Atlas V and 3dar with a collection of co-producers and supporters including Ryot, HTC Vive, CNC, ARTE, Unity, and Rhone Alpes Cinema.

A still from Gloomy Eyes by Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado, an official selection of the New Frontier Programs at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

It’s a love story between “a zombie kid called Gloomy and a mortal girl called Nena” set in a world “where the sun got tired of the humans” and “decided to hide and never rise again.”

Here’s the official synopsis:

It’s 1983 on a cold night in Woodland City. Being a zombie is against the law. The undead have been around for almost a decade now, but peaceful coexistence with the “normal” people continues to fail. They hide in the forest, away from the dangerous zombie hunters. Nights are calm and quiet, but Gloomy still tries to stay out of sight. Hunters are a real threat, but this zombie is hiding from something else as well…Truth is, he doesn’t feel too comfortable around others of his kind. But really, Gloomy not completely like other zombies. He has access to things we don’t see or understand. Nature knows he’s special.

While zombies certainly sound like a spooky subject, Gloomy Eyes appears to have a lot in common with The Nightmare Before Christmas. Like last year’s Spheres, which debuted at Sundance, Gloomy Eyes might be the kind of project to get picked up at Sundance for release on VR headsets late in the year.

Tagged with: Colin Farrell, Gloomy Eyes, sundance film festival

The post Animated VR Story Gloomy Eyes Adds Colin Farrell As Narrator appeared first on UploadVR.

January 25, 2019

Colin Farrell Narrates VR Series ‘Gloomy Eyes’, Debuting at Sundance 2019

Colin Farrell (The Lobster, In Bruges) is lending his voice to a new three-part VR animated series called Gloomy Eyes, the first installment of which is making its premier at Sundance Film Festival 2019, Variety reports.

Farrell is narrating all three episodes of the VR series, which was co-directed by 3dar’s Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado, the creators behind animated short Shave It (2012).

Here’s a synopsis of Gloomy Eyes:

1983. Woodland City has been plunged into a perpetual night for ten years now due the experiments of a mysterious priest. This man’s madness engendered to Gloomy, a half-human, half-zombie child who lives away from everyone else in the forest. How do you find your place when you’re not entirely dead, nor entirely alive, and when, in spite of your better instincts, you can’t manage to control your need for human flesh?

“Anything that invokes a sense of magic and total immersion is worth gold, and it was amazing to be a part of the vision Fernando and Jorge created in Gloomy Eyes,” Farrell told Variety. “It’s a completely transportive and beautiful experience, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and really connected with my passion of storytelling.”

“The world we imagined in Gloomy Eyes shows the darkest side of humanity. But we balance it with the hope that two little kids bring in their eyes. To love what’s different will bring harmony once again,” Tereso and Maldonado said.

Gloomy Eyes was produced by 3dar and France’s Atlas V, and co-produced by Ryot, ARTE France and HTC Vive, with the support of the CNC, Unity and Rhône Alpes.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival takes place January 24th – February 3rd. Like many VR experiences and films premiering there, Gloomy Eyes is presenting at the festival’s New Frontier section, which highlights new media and storytelling styles.

The post Colin Farrell Narrates VR Series ‘Gloomy Eyes’, Debuting at Sundance 2019 appeared first on Road to VR.

January 19, 2019

RYOT to Debut 3 XR projects at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Next week sees the start of the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, bringing filmmakers together from across the globe for the industry’s first big event of the year. As VRFocus has seen over the previous few years, there’s been a growing contingent of immersive films appearing thanks to initiatives like the New Frontiers exhibition. Recently, award-winning content studio RYOT has revealed its slate of XR projects debuting during the festival.

Premiering as part of the festival’s New Frontier programme will be Gloomy Eyes, A Jester’s Tale and The Dial.

Gloomy Eyes – “The animated virtual reality series Gloomy Eyes, directed by Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado, chronicles a remote town where being a zombie is against the law. Like all of his kind, young Gloomy is hiding in the forest, away from bounty hunters. But Gloomy is different. While bitterness plagues the city, he strives to find a balance in his mysterious dual nature.”
A Jester’s Tale – “Experience the viscerality of a psychologically taxing children’s fable merging with the physicality of our world as you come home cold and tired, just in time for a bedtime story. In this interactive augmented reality narrative, directed by Asad J. Malik, the characters are just hollow meshes, but maybe so are you.”
The Dial – “The Dial, an interactive narrative that combines augmented reality and projection mapping, is centred around a woman who smashes through the stone wall outside her family home. This visual tale unravels the formerly wealthy family’s emotional underbelly and what happened that fateful night, as seen from shifting perspectives where you control time by moving your body.

All three films have been created with help from Unity, with the software company also sponsoring the Sundance Film Festival. “Unity doesn’t exist to create games or other commercial content. We exist to provide creators with the best real-time platform to achieve their artistic vision,” said Isabelle Riva, Head of Made with Unity, Unity Technologies in a statement. “Just last year, ‘SPHERES,’ a project created using Unity, was acquired at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival for seven figures – a critical moment for immersive films and validation that Unity is enabling unprecedented success for creators pushing the boundaries of what is possible in entertainment.”

The Sundance Film Festival will begin on Thursday, 24th January and run through to Sunday 3rd February 2019. For further updates on immersive media at the event, keep reading VRFocus.