Slamdance Documentary Ask No Questions Moves Festival Run Onto Bigscreen Tomorrow

Ask No Questions

If you own an Oculus Quest or Go headset then hopefully you spent some of last week enjoying Tribeca Immersive’s Cinema360 programme which had 15 short films to enjoy. Tomorrow that trend continues as Bigscreen will play film festival host to documentary Ask No Questions.

Ask No Questions

Toronto-based Lofty Sky Pictures will be holding the event on the popular virtual reality (VR) app due to the current pandemic halting its festival run. Premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City during January, the VR screenings will offer a live Q&A with the filmmaker whilst helping to support the nonprofit Roxie Theater.

Four shows will take place tomorrow with tickets available through Eventbrite. The times for each screening are as follows.

  • 1st Screening – 10 am PT / 1 pm ET
  • 2nd Screening – 1 pm PT / 4 pm ET
  • 3rd Screening – 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET
  • Final Screening – 7 pm PT / 10 pm ET

“VR is not a replacement for the cinema,” says “Ask No Questions” director/producer Jason Loftus in a statement “But with the world on lockdown, it’s the closest we can get to that shared experience that makes a film festival so unique. We also wanted to support an independent theatre because we believe it’s such an important platform for independent filmmakers.”

Bigscreen Cinema - Official Press Image

Ask No Questions tells the story of a former Chinese state TV insider who is held in a brainwashing camp and compelled to accept the official narrative on a fiery public suicide, which he believes was a government plot,” explains the synopsis. “The film’s themes of misinformation, propaganda, and the perils faced by whistleblowers in China are timely given the initial coverup of the coronavirus and the reprisals faced by the initial whistleblowing doctors.”

Bigscreen Beta supports a wide range of headsets including HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go and Oculus Quest, all for free – no PlayStation VR support at the moment. As Bigscreen Beta continues to add further content, VRFocus will keep you updated on all the latest announcements.

Clever Fox’s Latest Project Coming To Slamdance Film Festival

Throughout 2017 we saw an increase once again in the use of immersive technology being used to tell a story. After a 2016 which saw a combination of both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) – but mostly VR in this instance – being incorporated into various festivals as special attractions, 2017 saw the technology much more firmly entrenched in proceedings. With a number of festivals dishing out specific awards for VR related projects and elsewhere VR projects gaining critical acclaim and recognition with a number of high profile awards for storytelling and more.

Slamdance Film Festival - DIG

And while it is still only mid-January. the march towards a number of film festivals has already begun with the likes of the Raindance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and more already coming into view on the horizon. One of the first film festivals of the year is the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival. Which this year will run from January 19th to January 25th in Park City, Utah. It just so happens that one of the studios involved in the first time Slamdance hosted submissions for immersive film that has announced a submission for this week’s event.

Immersive entertainment studio Clever Fox was one of the studios, along with the likes of Littlstar, that encouraged production houses in 2016 to submit in the immersive category. Over the years on VRFocus we’ve covered a number of their projects including last year’s The Summoning, 2016’s Broadcast and 2015’s Warp Chase. This time they’ve teamed up with ARwall to present a new AR experience called What We Leave Behind.

An exercise in curating social experiences, What We Leave Behind takes people into a fantastical other world and, using AR to conceal their identities, encourages them to tell personal stories, thoughts and opinions which they would not neccessarily do if their identity was known.

As Clever Fox explains – “We curate our digital life and hide behind it like a mask; a wall that separate us from each other. As we balance on the edge of a tipping point between a brave new world and social, economic and environmental disaster we invite you to enter an alternate reality where you’re free to share your hopes and fears for the future. We give you a new face and the freedom to say the things you can’t. What We Leave Behind is a collaborative storytelling experience using AR technology. Your story is collected online to inspire others.”

“ARwall is thrilled to participate in this ground breaking project at Slamdance. We are always looking for new collaborations that blur the lines between filmmaking, VFX, and augmented reality.” Says Eric Navarrette, CEO of ARwall. “What We Leave Behind will show festival goers first-hand how AR can be used by filmmakers to create visually stunning content in ways that have never before been attempted. We truly believe AR will play a strong part in the future of filmmaking and we’re immensely proud that Slamdance attendees will be among the first group of people to see our pioneering new technology.”

What We Leave BehindThe idea was conceived by artist Dekker Dreyer who worked on a number of the projects previously mentioned. “This is such an important project to me. We feel so isolated sometimes. We’re afraid to express ourselves because of what the comments will say or what we imagine our colleagues or friends will think of us. Creating this alternate reality / identity where we can tell our stories in a visually powerful environment is liberating. I’m humbled to be able to help bring this experience to the Slamdance Film Festival. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a project being created during a festival with the participation of both audiences and filmmakers. Slamdance is an incredible creative community and I can’t wait to see how they bring this project to life.”

What We Leave Behind will be featured daily at the festival and VRFocus will bring you more news from it as we get it.

Slamdance Announces 2016 Lineup for DIG Festival

Several months ago VRFocus reported on Slamdance Film Festival expanding its virtual reality (VR) section as part of the event’s Digital, Interactive, & Gaming (DIG) program. Now the organisers have announced the lineup featuring cutting edge work from eight emerging artists.

These projects include a virtual reality (VR) music sandbox, reality blurring installation-based videogames, and an interactive dance experience that rewards movement and dancing with real-time animations.

Slamdance Film Festival - DIG

“DIG’s purpose is to explore the landscape of storytelling and our program this year shows how a group of emerging artists are shaping its future,” said Peter Baxter, President and co-founder of Slamdance. “Our curation is coming from the core of what Slamdance is about: an open, DIY aesthetic involving alumni—artists themselves—who are committed to talent development on a local and international level.”

Being showcased at DIG are:

  • 3VR (THREE² x 3P2:VR) by FLOAT (Kate Parsons and Ben Vance) – an interactive virtual journey heightened by optical illusions and atmospheric audio, spherical hybrids act as portals as the viewer navigates through simulated aural space to an original score by Kid606.
  • Bad News by Expressive Intelligence Studio Design (James Ryan, Ben Samuel, Adam Summerville) – an installation-based game that combines procedural generation, deep simulation, and live performance.
  • Infinit-O, a video game by Corazon Del Sol – a conceptual portrait on the life & influence of three generations of women artists, Eugenia Butler, Eugenia P. Butler and Corazon Del Sol.
  • Manifold Garden by William Chyr – a first-person exploration game where the player rediscovers gravity and explores an Escher-esque world of impossible architecture to solve physics-defying puzzles.
  • Natural History by Lilian Mehrel and Serena Parr with original Music by Eric Beam – a wonder at the natural world through 360-degree video.
  • Soundstage by Logan Olson – a VR music sandbox built specifically for room-scale VR.
  • The Magic Dance Mirror by Kyle Ruddick – an interactive visual music and dance experience that creates stylized mirror image of those using it with dynamic animated visuals based on a user’s movement, audio, and social interactions.
  • You Must be 19 or Older to Enter by Seemingly Pointless – this recreates the feeling of being a prepubescent kid looking at porn for the first time through interactive fiction elements combined with ASCII styled art.

“DIG is one island in a sea of ‘digital content’, an opportunity for artists to showcase expressive art in forms and technologies that are built to be impersonal by default,” shares Slamdance Special Projects Manager, Deron Williams. “This year’s DIG Showcase underlines the essential role artists have as creative voices in a crowded mass media landscape.”

The Slamdance DIG showcase, hosted by Big Pictures Los Angeles, opens free to the public on 2nd December, 2016 through 10th December, 2016. It’ll then feature at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City from 20th – 26th January, 2017.

For all the latest VR news from around the world, keep reading VRFocus.