Power Rangers Morph onto Mobile VR

To tie in to the upcoming release of the new Power Rangers movie, Lionsgate has partnered with Reel FX and QuiverVision to create a mobile VR experience for Google Cardboard users.

The new mobile VR experience is named Zords Rising and is based on a Power Rangers VR experience that was previously demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The new VR experience allows Power Rangers fans to watch the powerful robot Zords rise up from the earth.

The experience lasts for two and a half minutes, but the app also includes other features, such as an augmented reality (AR) colouring book that allows the user to use the camera like a paintbrush, or a function to create custom Power Rangers suits in 3D and place them against a real-world background, which can then be filmed or photographed and shared on social media.

The Zords Rising VR experience was made based on Qualcomm technology as a way to show off their new Snapdragon 835 processor, and the original version of the Power Rangers VR experience that Zords Rising was based on was originally shown at Qualcomm’s CES booth.

The Power Rangers movie is based on the popular 90s television series Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, which originally aired in the 1990s. The series was itself based off a series of Japanese ‘Tokusatsu’ shows called Super Sentai. While the original series used footage from the Japanese series to fill in much of the action, the new movie is all filmed from scratch, using state-of-the-art special effects.

VRFocus will keep you updated on VR movie tie-ins.

The Director Of The Book Of Life Is Making A New Google Spotlight Story

The Director Of The Book Of Life Is Making A New Google Spotlight Story

A new entry in Google’s now Academy Award-nominated Spotlight Stories series of 360-degree films will boast some serious directing talent behind it.

We somehow missed this when it was announced last month but Jorge Gutierrez, the director of animated hit, The Book of Life, will be heading up a forthcoming entry in the series. The piece will be named Son of Jaguar and, as the logo above implies, it will follow a lucha libre Mexican wrestler. Production studio Reel FX, which also worked on The Book of Life, is teaming its VR division with Gutierrez to create the piece, which it claims will build on the themes of both that film and his animated series, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rodriguez.

Reel FX was also behind the Power Rangers VR experience that debuted at CES earlier this month, and a Hunger Games experience among other 360-degree movies.

Yesterday, we reported that one of Spotlight Stories’ best pieces, the tear jerking Pearl, has been nominated in the Animated Short Film category at the 2017 Oscars, set to take place next month. It is technically VR’s first Academy Award nod, though Pearl was also adapted to fit 2D screens, which is what got it the nomination.

Since its release we’ve seen a number of other VR films from the group, all of which are posted on YouTube. Narratively, they’re all entirely disconnected, but each has a charming, family-friendly tone similar to the shorts you might see in front of a Disney movie at the theater. In fact, Pearl director Patrick Osborne actually did direct one of those shorts, Feast, which ran in front of Big Hero 6 in 2014.

There’s no date for Son of Jaguar just yet but we’ll be sure to be on the lookout for it.

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