“If you look at any discipline through the lens of emerging technology, you’ll find a group of people who are exploring what’s next for that discipline,” said James George, cofounder/CEO of Scatter, sitting across from me in its Bushwick studios. “For us, it’s filmmaking.” George and his eventual Scatter cofounder and CPO, Alexander Porter, whose background is in photography and documentary film, began collaborating—hacking and modifying cameras—back in 2010. “I reached this place of feeling constrained with those [conventional filmmaking] tools,” Porter told me. The third cofounder and CMO, Yasmin Elayat, a trained computer scientist and artist, joined the team […]

Filmmaker Eliza McNitt’s second VR film, SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime, has made history as the first VR film to sell at Sundance. CityLights, a VR financing and distribution company, acquired the project as a three-part series for a significant seven-figure deal. Narrated by Jessica Chastain, SPHERES is inspired by the recent discovery that gravitational waves make their own music, and it visualizes the collision of two black holes that produce these movements. With the Oculus Rift headset and hand controllers, the viewer uses their voice and body to interact with the cosmic landscape, drawing stardust circles while being pulled into […]

UK-based cinematographer Tristan Oliver has worked on stop-motion features, shorts, music videos and commercials for more than 20 years. Oliver served as DP on Fantastic Mr. Fox, Chicken Run and Wes Anderson’s forthcoming Isle of Dogs. For that last feature, Anderson also tapped Oliver to shoot a VR short on the making of the film, which enters theaters on March 23. Oliver spoke with Filmmaker about the cameras used on the film, translating Anderson’s aesthetic to stop-motion and the film as “an homage to Japanese cinema.” The short will screen as part of Sundance’s New Frontier program. Filmmaker: How and why […]

Although dance and virtual reality seemingly lay at polar ends of the creative spectrum, they can come together to make incredibly moving artistic experiences. That, at least, holds true for co-directors Lily Baldwin and Saschka Unseld in their new piece Through You, a VR film heavy on physical choreography that premiered at Sundance earlier this year and on August 1 was released on Samsung Gear VR via the Oculus Video app. The piece features a couple as their relationship evolves over the course of decades through discovery, fulfillment, loss and rejuvenation. It uses handheld camera movement to create a very visceral […]

When I studied at the London Film School just over a decade ago, students originated all of our projects on 35 and 16mm film and cut them on Steenbecks and Avid Media Composer. What a difference a dozen years make: Now schools have moved beyond the digital video revolution and computer animation to whole new media and formats. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are forming increasingly large components of university curricula, giving a shot of innovation to narrative filmmaking in the academy and bringing university computer science programs into the realm of traditional film schools. You might expect VR courses […]

[The following guest post is from director John Wilson. Click here to watch his short film Escape from Park City.] I was recently editing a commercial for a popular footwear company and my client kept referring to “the future of content” to his colleague. I had a hard time telling if this was just another bit of ad jargon or a sinister prophecy about the future of media. When I finally asked him what he thought “the future of content” was, he delivered a flippant “you are!” and asked me to reposition their logo. The advertiser’s role in culture reminds me […]

Saschka Unseld and Lily Baldwin explore the phases and facets of love in Through You, a dance-infused VR piece that premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Unseld is an animator who directed the Pixar short The Blue Umbrella and is a cofounder of Oculus Story Studio, a VR media company. Baldwin arrived at filmmaking by way of dance, having worked with everyone from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet to David Byrne. As a creative challenge, the two decided to edit Through You themselves. Below, Unseld and Baldwin discuss the roughly 150-200 hours they spent editing a 14-minute VR experience. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

During its development, production or eventual distribution, what specific challenge of communication did, or will your film, face? How did you deal with it, or how are you planning to deal with it? Tree transports users into the body of a rainforest tree, where they can experience not only its splendor but also its untimely fate. One challenge we faced was how to communicate with our audience without using traditional dialogue – and to keep that message and execution organic while in a CGI landscape. Essentially, to “show,” via real-time experience and interactivity, rather than “tell.” In order to immerse users […]