Imagination Immersion

The innovative VR projects featured at this year’s Annecy program invite audiences to participate in emotional experiences.

- By Ellen Wolff -

The Annecy Festival has long been a mecca for animation lovers of all kinds, who travel to the picturesque French city every spring for a deep dive into the animation arts. This year, the festival organizers are again ensuring that virtual reality aficionados can experience the latest offerings of this emerging medium. Annecy’s VR category will present seven works in competition, representing productions from Taiwan, Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S. The subject matter of these works couldn’t be more diverse — in one, we experience the breakdown of a society over time in a handdrawn, mythical town; in another, we experience a high-flying encounter between an eagle and the pilot of a military drone.

At Annecy, the VR selections will be presented in a headset-equipped space in Bonlieu, the festival’s main venue. And organizers are planning ad-

Red Tail

Directed

by Fish Wang

The prospect of using virtual reality to evoke feelings of empathy is what inspired Taiwanese animator/director Fish Wang to create Red Tail. The 20-minute project follows a boy’s encounters with strange characters in fantastical places, including a train station floating amidst clouds.

Intrigued by the sight of a mysterious red tail, the boy chases it into a realm of illusion. “I used to believe that images have a deep immersion effect,” says Wang. “But VR expands this illusion even more. It’s like a waking dream. When memories are lost day after day, recollections become fragmented or flat, but with VR machines, they are comprehensive, continuous and inescapable.” ditional presentations in the XR area at the MIFA marketplace, which runs concurrently.

One Annecy attendee who’s excited about being immersed in such different worlds is The Book of Life and Maya and the Three director/creator Jorge Gutierrez, who’ll be co-judging the virtual reality competition alongside Canadian filmmaker Chris Lavis and Swiss indie artist Manu Weiss. Gutierrez, who’s currently developing the Netflix animated feature I, Chihuahua, knows first-hand the challenges of creating VR. Way back in 2016, (a lifetime ago in VR years) Gutierrez broke new ground by directing the Emmy-nominated VR piece Son of Jaguar for Google Spotlight Stories. “Even then, the pieces that worked best were the emotional ones — the ones that let you walk in another’s shoes,” he recalls. “If something can make you laugh or cry, it’s a triumph. And after you watch it, you think — which to me is the Holy Grail.”

“Although the VR medium is more or less compulsive, the subject of Red Tail is not too much about stimulating or assaulting the audience to gain a sense of fun,” adds Wang. “It’s more about allowing the audience to watch the boy’s encounter from a safe distance, and slowly evoke their own empathy.”

Wang’s 10-person team spent two years developing and animating the project, which has the look of clay figures brought to life. Wang, who began working in VR only in the past two years, describes how he achieved this look: “After the physical models were made, we used photogrammetry to scan them into 3D models. The subsequent process was like the operation of all 3D animation. When we finished the animation, we then used the Unreal game engine to do the integration.”

“One of the most difficult parts was the funding, which I believe most independents have encountered,” observes Wang. “We received funding from the government and semi-governmental organizations, as well as technical investment from technology companies.”

Wang’s experience reminds Gutierrez of what he calls “the chicken-and-egg question” facing VR creators today: “How can people justify the expense of making these? That’s the real conundrum.” (Even Gutierrez’s Son of Jaguar backers at Google retired the Spotlight Stories program years ago.) Without deep-pocketed patrons, Gutierrez likens VR creators to “an indie band that’s trying to survive!”

Sol-Air

Directed by Mihai Grecu

Funding VR productions remains challenging even for those who’ve been at it for a while, which is probably not surprising, given the evolving nature of the technologies being used. That’s been the experience of producer François Martin Saint Léon of Barberousse Films, the French company behind the 15-minute VR piece Sol-Air

“Since 2017, Barberousse Films has been producing virtual reality experiences in addition to its film and audiovisual activities,” he explains. “Sol-Air was initiated in 2018, but the search for funding and production were slowed down by COVID.”

Even without that unpredictable obstacle, a particular challenge of making Sol-Air was bud- geting the visual effects work that would be needed to realize the script. Romanian writer/ director Mihai Grecu wanted to film a living eagle for his story about the creature’s interaction with a military drone soaring above a desert landscape.

“We did that in a studio on a greenscreen with powerful fans,” explains Saint Léon. “It was difficult to film, but it was important not to give in completely to full 3D. This is an experience that mixes all possible VR techniques: pre-calculated 3D, interactive real-time 3D and 360-degree imagery. There’s a variety of techniques that make the experience undoubtedly strange.”

Saint Léon notes that his project an experience that is easy to access with a simple installation designed for Meta Quest 2, and the producer plans to accompany the director for the piece’s world premiere at Annecy. “I have never presented a film at this festival before, so I’m looking forward to discussing it with the audience,” he says.

The logistical challenges of showing VR pieces to as large an audience as possible is also a factor that Gutierrez worries will keep limiting the prospects for artists who want to work in this medium. “Typically, if you’re lucky, maybe 50 people per day will get to experience your piece,” he notes.

That’s not a drawback which is likely to deter student creators, however, who Gutierrez expects will be primary drivers in VR production going forward. “Students are going to do it. Their inventive, rebellious, punk rock spirit can lead to interesting things.”

From the Main Square

Directed by Pedro Harres

Annecy’s VR competition does include a high-profile student project created at Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg called From the Main Square. The 19-minute piece, which was funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, is the Animation MA thesis film of Brazilian-born writer-director Pedro Harres. He led a team of students and freelancers from 14 countries over four years.

“From the Main Square was my first VR piece and also my first contact with a game engine,” says Harres. “This was also the case for 70 percent of the crew, since we come from a film school. There was a lot of trial and error and a long ‘dark tunnel’ before the experience finally worked narratively.”

The story that unfolds in From the Main Square chronicles the broad sweep of a society’s turmoil. As Harres explains, “It puts you in the middle of a city that transforms around you.

As time progresses, everyday scenes start to become more and more hostile. This is not about the destiny of a character, but about something more general unfolding in that space. The amalgamation of places that constitute our VR city surely reflects the diversity of our team.”

From the Main Square also reflects Harres’ background as a 2D animation director, as well as the distinctive hand-drawn style of layout chief Dani Eizirik. “There were so many challenges,” the director admits. “We wanted to tell the story in a way that we hadn’t seen in VR, but that we assumed to be possible. All the steps of 2D animation had to be adapted to some extent. There is no established canon, nor was there a model to mirror our project to. In the beginning, we honestly didn’t know how to structure the experience, both in technical and narrative terms. And to be honest, none of our teachers had much experience on how to do this — at least not at the scale we envisioned. Since VR is so new, we made many mistakes until we could get it right.”

The students’ ambitious theme is evocative of the ways in which VR draws upon traditions from movies, video games and even theater. “You can see VR pieces as virtual plays,” observes Gutierrez. “Audiences watching a play can look anywhere they want to!”

While many conventional animation fans might see VR as a private experience that’s more akin to playing videogames than the collective experience of being in a movie theater, Gutierrez hopes that Annecy’s VR jury will be able to witness how these nominated pieces affect his fellow festivalgoers. He says, “I’d rather see the nominees surrounded by the audience and experience the reaction that they have. Going to a festival and getting in line with other people is all part of it!”

For more information about the VR projects showcased at Annecy this year, visit annecyfestival.com.