Venice film festival – Page 3 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

August 29, 2017

Venice Film Festival to Premiere Melita, Snatch and Argos File VR Films

Last week VRFocus reported on the 74^th Venice Film Festival (VFF) taking place this summer in Italy. As with a lot of film festivals around the world, the event will also be home to several virtual reality (VR) films with three set to premiere, Melita, Snatch and The Argos File.

Melita is a 20-minute animation created by Future Lighthouse. Consisting of three parts, with the second and third still in the development, Melita tells the story of two strong female characters on their quest to save humanity due to climate change’s irreparable damage to Earth.

“What really sets this apart from other VR experiences is a combination of cinematic movement, character development, actors, and dialogue,” said Nicolás Alcalá, director Melita and CEO of Future Lighthouse. “The experience pushes the boundaries of VR cinematic narratives and visually appears as though the viewer has been placed inside any of your favorite animation films”

The Argos File image

The Argos File is a VR proof of concept create by Cinaptic in collaboration with Future Lighthouse and Magnopus. The film is an interactive, live-action VR experience integrating 360-degree stereoscopic footage and cinema-quality visual effects where find themselves as a detective solving a murder by exploring the recorded memories of the victim.

As a first-person experience The Argos File incorporates augmented reality (AR) overlays to add extra layers of engagement for viewers whilst featuring a mockup of future intuitive controls allowing users to rewind, pause, and fast-forward the memories.

“We wanted to imagine a world that took our most complex fears about the modern age, and explore it within the intimate, sensory-overload experience of VR,” said Joshua Rubin, writer and co-creator of The Argos File. “What do we become as a culture when every moment we experience is saved and shareable, and in constant danger of being hacked?”

“The different elements allow viewers to piece together emotionally-charged fragments to solve the mystery, and understand the context of the main character’s final moments,” said Josema Roig, director of Argos. “This truly explores what VR really is, and addresses the question of who am I? Why am I here? Why should I care?”

Lastly there’s the Snatch VR Heist Experience featuring Harry Potter star Rupert Grint. An off-shoot of Sony Pictures Television’s Crackle programme Snatch which first aired last year, the experience transports viewers into the middle of a safe-cracking diamond heist alongside Grint, Luke Pasqualino, Lucien Laviscount, and Phoebe Dynevor.

“VR gives the viewer power and controls over the outcome,” said Future Lighthouse CEO Nicolas Alcala. “Our goal is to teleport you alongside Rupert Grint and his thieving friends to make you feel the adrenaline of the heist. We want the viewers to have agency over where they want this caper to go.”

The experience is platform agnostic, and currently available on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR.

For further VFF updates keep reading VRFocus.

August 21, 2017

Float On Over To The Venice Film Festival This Year And You’ll Find The Island Of VR

The Venice Film Festival is the oldest film celebration in the world, founded in 1932. The 74^th Venice Film Festival is due to be held from 4^th August-9th September 2017, and in line with several other film festivals, the festival is introducing a line-up for virtual reality (VR) experiences. However, there is one twist, the VR Festival is getting its own island.

Venice has dedicated as island in the lagoon for the presentation of VR experiences during the festival. The island, called Lazzaretto Vecchio, sits less than 50 meters from the centre of the festival location. The island has a dark history, having previously housed a leper colony and a plague quarantine zone between the 15^th and 17^th centuries and widely reputed to be haunted.

VR Director Michel Reilhac, who is co-programming the Venice VR festival with Power to the Pixel Co-founder Liz Rosenthal, said: “We will have something like 4000 square meters to just do the installations,” says Michel Reilhac. But it’s not just about the space, he adds. The atmosphere on the island is “simply magical.”

Venice VR will feature a dedicated VR theatre with 50 revolving leather seats, which is located in a huge hanger-like building that dates back to the 16^th Century. VR experiences on offer at the theatre include The Deserted by Taiwanese direction Tsai Ming-Liang, Proxima by Mathieu Pradat, Gomorrah VR – We Own the Streets by Enrico Rosati and the The Argos File by Josema Roig.

There will also be several VR installations available to experience, such as The Last Goodbye, a story about a holocaust survivor visiting the camp where his family died; Draw Me Close, a VR piece about dealing with a dying loved one and Alice, a blend of live-action and animation based on Alice in Wonderland.

Further information can be found on the Venice Film Festival website.

VRFocus will bring you further information on VR Venice and other VR-related events as it becomes available.

July 27, 2017

George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence and Matt Damon jostle for Oscar advantage in Venice line-up

Damon stars in two of the Lido’s big films, Downsizing and Suburbicon, while Lawrence steps into horror movie territory with Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!

Renowned in recent years as a key launchpad for heavyweight Oscar contenders, the 74th Venice film festival has unveiled a lineup heavy on potential award-season frontrunners, as films start to jockey for position in earnest.

Alexander Payne, Darren Aronofsky and George Clooney are some of the big-name directors whose films will receive world premieres in competition at the festival, along with indie favourites such as Andrew Haigh, Abdellatif Kechiche and Hirokazu Koreeda, and even Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

September 2, 2016

Jesus VR: The Story of Christ review – virtual reality cinema gains disciples

Bad acting, clunky camerawork and overheating headsets … VR’s first feature-length 360-degree movie is no miracle – but the medium might be a blessing

The acting? Dire. The direction? Awful. The adaptation? Conservative and pedestrian. In conventional terms, everything about this new retelling of the Jesus story – showing here in Venice in an abbreviated 40-minute cut – is ropey. It is all too clearly influenced by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: the film has the same executive producer, Enzo Sisti and the same religious adviser, Fr William Fulco. But technologically it’s a different story. It’s the first feature film to be presented in complete wraparound 360-degree virtual reality. And it’s a startling, bizarre, often weirdly hilarious experience. With your bulky headset on – it began to overheat during the crucifixion scene, alarmingly – you have the urge to giggle. Not necessarily mocking. You just feel skittish.

The camera position is fixed and so are you. You can’t walk up to people or back away. There is little or no intercutting within scenes. But you can revolve around completely on the spot and look up at the roof/sky or down and even back through your legs to look at people upside down, should you so wish. I was filled with the weird, paranoid urge to turn my back on the main action and check that reality really was carrying on as normal and that the actors weren’t having a cheeky cigarette.