Virtually Sundance
Bay Area firms will strut their VR stuff at Utah film festival
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, viewers of “Dear Angelica” can take an emotional, dreamlike journey within the stream of consciousness of a woman fondly reminiscing about her late mother.
Or they can chose “Asteroids!” and become a robot aboard a spaceship on a comical, yet potentially tragic journey with two extraterrestrials and their dog.
The twist: Neither are ordinary films. They are experiences in virtual realty.
These two Bay Area productions are among 20 virtual reality entries selected by the prestigious festival, which continues through next weekend. It’s a big step from five years ago, when Sundance showed its first VR flick using a duct-tape-bound forerunner of what would become the Oculus Rift headset.
“We’re at a very interesting moment in time where this technology and interest in it is accelerating in a very hyperbolic way,” said Shari Frilot, chief programmer and curator for Sundance’s New Frontier, a festival segment that kicks off Friday and includes both virtual and augmented reality experiences.
Artists “know this medium is very important and something that’s deeply profound,” Frilot said. “It’s interesting to see the technology and understand the potential for unlocking ways to tell stories that reflect the ways we are.”
The virtual reality portion of the 33rd annual Park City, Utah, film festival includes the computer-generated animated shorts “Asteroids!” from Redwood City’s Baobab Studios and “Dear Angelica,” created by San Francisco’s Oculus Story Studio. The festival also picked “Chocolate,” a music video by independent San Francisco game animator and tech artist Tyler Hurd.
The producers did not release information about how much the VR experiences cost to make. The question of whether VR costs than a regular film or video is tricky. Some producers say costs are
higher because the technology is not as mature as film or video, while creating or capturing one 360-degree scene takes more time than a standard forward-facing shot. However, Baobab CEO and co-founder Maureen Fan said her startup has been able to create VR for a lower cost than traditional animation studios.
“It's pretty much all over the place right now because the industry is just finding its footing,” Hurd said.
Sundance gives VR story creators a big stage to expose the technology to a wider audience. The overall market is still small because the major VR headsets came on the market only last year. Games remain the primary driver of sales. Dan Cryan, research director of digital media for IHS Markit, said VR games total about $244 million in sales last year, while revenue for non-games, excluding adult content, was only $10.9 million.
But the creation of non-gaming content like the experiences showcased at Sundance will be vital for long-term sales, analysts said.
“Our research shows TV and movies in VR are even more attractive to consumers than just games,” said Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors. “A solid trifecta of games, movies and TV shows will be a strong foundation for growth in VR.”
However, Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst with IDC, said nongaming content is “somewhat secondary” to games for owners of the higher-cost HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR and “more about keeping the owners happy, interested and their wallets open.”
Fan wants her company to be ready when the market matures.
“The problem is not enough content, and if we create awesome content, then we’re fulfilling a need,” Fan said. “A lot of the content right now is targeted toward hardcore gamers. We believe one of the reasons our content has resonated so much with audiences is because we create content that grandmas, children and everybody in between likes. We’re really focused on bringing VR to the masses rather than focus on niche groups.”
Baobab brings some star power to “Asteroids!” It’s directed by Eric Darnell, who’s credits include directing the DreamWorks “Madagascar” movie series. Actress Elizabeth Banks voices one of the characters, although her words are not in any Earth-based language.
The 10-minute short is a sequel to the company’s first experiment in VR, “Invasion!” which starred a cute bunny named Chloe that encounters extraterrestrials landing in a UFO. “Invasion!” became a popular downloaded VR video and a favorite for devices makers to show off their technologies. It helped draw investors that included Horizon Ventures, 20th Century Fox, Comcast Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.
The “Asteroids!” action takes place inside the spaceship from “Invasion,” with the viewer assuming a partly interactive supporting role of a robot, to the annoyance of an alien crew member named Mac. As the plot unfolds, Banks’ character, named Cheez, faces a life-threatening situation.
With “Dear Angelica,” Oculus Story Studio has actresses Geena Davis and Mae Whitman voicing a computer-generated 12-minute short that completely envelops the viewer in a seemingly infinite alternate world that stretches far beyond what the eye can see. It’s an emotionally moving tale of a woman writing a letter telling her mother how much she meant to her life.
Parts of the experience were inspired by Davis’ films “Thelma and Louise” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” but were created before Davis was involved, said writer and director Saschka Unseld, whose film credits included Pixar Animation’s short “The Blue Umbrella.” When Oculus showed the production to Davis “she started tearing up” and agreed to provide one voice, Unseld said.
The studio is part of Oculus, a Facebookowned company, which needs more VR content to sell the Oculus Rift headgear and accessories like touch controllers. But to create “Dear Angelica,” the studio also developed its own VR painting tool for art director Wesley Allsbrook. Oculus is offering the software, called Quill, for other productions.
Unseld said he announced the studio’s founding at Sundance two years ago as a statement that it was grounded “not with L.A. or Hollywood, or not with the Bay Area tech world, but with what Sundance represents. We wanted to be in conversations of people there, and we wanted people there to see the art and ... (evangelize) the medium.”
Another production is “Melting Ice,” from San Francisco’s Condition One. The production features former Vice President Al Gore showing the effects of climate change in Greenland.
“It’s one thing to watch Al Gore looking at a sheet of melting ice, it’s a whole other thing to be yourself standing in a torrential river created by ice melting,” Frilot said.
Hurd and his company, Gentle Manhands, didn’t have big-name Hollywood or political stars for “Chocolate,” set to the song by musical artist Giraffage. He also didn’t have as large a crew as the other studios to work on the project; he contracted out some of the work to three artists but did the animation and programming himself in his bedroom.
So the chance to show off his work for Sundance’s influential artistic audience is “one for the resume,” he said.
Gentle Manhands does have funding from Viacom’s VR funding arm, Viacom Next. But Hurd said he’s jumped into virtual reality to fulfill a dream to make music videos and to explore the artistic possibilities.
“I better enjoy this while I can, the industry is so uncertain right now,” Hurd said. “My focus is to make stuff and hope for the best. I didn’t get into this with the intention of making money. I went into this because I was excited about it and I felt this was the perfect medium for me.”