Oprah, Legend in VR passion project

IT’S BEEN AROUND for decades, but, unlike regular 3D, virtual reality (VR) has yet to make a big impact in the movie industry, something a maker of Hollywood animations believes can change - if the films are good enough.

Eric Darnell, who co-wrote and directed the Madagascar movies, showed his own VR film at the Venice Film Festival, Crow: The Legend, in which the viewer is immersed in the story of a mythical bird that has to fly to the sun to bring back warmth to the Earth.

With a voice cast that includes Oprah Winfrey, John Legend and Crazy Rich Asians star Constance Wu, Crow is hardly an amateur affair, but Darnell’s Baobab Studios will be giving the movie away rather than selling it, as a way to generate interest in the medium. “I don’t expect it’s going to be today or six months even,” he said of when VR might go mainstream.

“The technology has to get better, headsets have to get cheaper, the content has to get better and that’s at least as important as anything else,” Darnell said. “It’s a chicken and an egg thing. You can make all the great headsets you can but if there’s not great content ... what’s the point?”

Darnell said he was attracted to VR after becoming “a little bit stale” making regular animation. “When I put a VR headset on, it just blew me away and it reminded me of the first time I saw computer animation back in the early 80s ... (That) launched a whole career for me and so when I put that headset on it reminded me of what I felt like back then.”

The ongoing Venice Film Festival runs till September 8.