Raindance Film Festival this year is embracing Virtual Reality with over 40 immersive experiences competing in ten separate categories.

Well, summer is now officially over, so it’s time to get out your mac, brollies and wellie boots. On a happier note, it’s also Raindance time! 2017 sees the 25^th Raindance Film Festival running now from the 25^th – 30^th September. 25 is a significant anniversary for any independent festival and one that sees Raindance looking to the future of film-making and storytelling during a tough time for independent cinema.

It's a tough time for independent Cinema, but Raindance is looking to the future and embracing immersive storytelling
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Tech Trends was invited to the very red Raindance offices next to Trafalgar Square to talk about the future of the festival and the exciting programme for this year. Maria Rakusanova is the Director of VR and New Media and VR Curator at the festival and she brings with her a fantastic industry background at Samsung as well an unstoppable enthusiasm for Virtual Reality, and boy has she made an impact!

20 pieces were showcased at this year's VR arcade at Raindance
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Raindance is the first film festival in the world to acknowledge ten categories of VR storytelling with 20 pieces taking part in the VR Arcade, running from the 29^th – 30^th Sept at Covent Garden’s excellent Hospital Club and 40 experiences competing in ten categories for the inaugural Raindance VRX Award to be announced on the 29^th September.

Big film festivals around the world have opened their doors to VR before, with a few even offering an award or two, but as Maria explains, the technical medium and the ambitious creators out there are now producing work that is more exciting and groundbreaking than ever before. This year’s festival entries certainly reflect that, which is why Maria decided it was the right time to welcome VR and other emerging immersive technologies into the main competition alongside traditional cinema and really recognise the exciting work being produced in the medium.

Creators are producing more exciting work than ever before
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It felt like the right time to welcome VR into the main festival competition
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You can check out all the VR categories here, but since here at Tech Trends we’re always keen to try out new experiences we tried quite a few of them ourselves.  The most interesting for fans of traditional cinema, and a strong contender in the Best Cinematic Narrative Experience category is Alteration from Dir. Jérome Blanquet. Here the narrative jumps around elegantly as you follow Alexandro, a volunteer for an technical experiment who is targeted by a malicious Artificial Intelligence hell bent on feeding off his digitized subconscious.

The experience uses beautiful cinematography mixed with the new tricks of 360 VR video to create a very absorbing and unsettling mood that sucks you into Alexandro’s head and memories. I really loved this one!

The most fun, interactive and annoying experience we tried is from creative Tender Claws and is entered in the Best Mobile Interactive VR Experience category. Virtual Virtual Reality is a fully computer generated VR environment where hectoring AI Overlord, Chaz badgers you through a series of levels – each with a small challenge attached – to which you advance by donning a Virtual VR headset, dropping you, level by level, further into (Virtual)VR.

This was really fun and the critical encouragement of Chez has to be experienced! The way you change levels is really simple but effective and the cartoon characters and environments belie a complexity of design with the challenges making use of the Daydream HMD and controller, a really fun experience overall. There are too many awesome experiences to detail them all here, but they are all open to the public to try at the VR Arcade this year so we strongly advise you to pop along this Friday or Saturday and test them out for yourselves.

Festivalgoers could experience VR storytelling for themselves in the latest edition of the Raindance Film Festival in London
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Raindance is also famous for its education and training programs, and Maria has thrown VR filmmaking onto this mix as 2017 sees the festival partnering with Facebook to deliver the VRX Summit on awards day (September 29^th ) when Award nominees, jurors and special guests from Facebook and Blend Media will take part in a series of talks, panel discussions and keynotes on all things 360 & VR.

Tech Trends was sad to miss yesterday’s 360 Filmmaking Masterclass presented by experts from Facebook’s 360 team, covering topics including camera systems and audio techniques, but Maria confirmed Raindance’s commitment to VR, AR and emerging storytelling technologies in future festivals, so we can’t wait to hear more. Watch this space, but in the meantime Raindance are running a Hands on VR Course on the 21 & 22^nd October so do sign up to get those virtual hands dirty!

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

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The post VR is the Future of Storytelling at Raindance 2017 appeared first on Tech Trends.

It’s getting easier to make VR content, but showing it off is still a daunting task. WeLens is the start-up looking to change all that 

The VR industry is growing rapidly, with PwC estimating that 68 million VR headsets will be in use in the U.S. by 2021 with an expected revenue of $4.6 billion. That massive hardware growth needs to be matched by quality content, however, as well as the ability to share it in a streamlined way. And this is what San Francisco start-up  WeLens is setting out to do.

The VR hardware boom needs good quality, shareable content
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68 million VR headsets will be in use in the U.S. by 2021
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WeLens has worked for years on delivering VR solutions for high profile events such as the Sundance film festival. Working at the coalface of delivering smooth audience experiences, and having managed and facilitated hundreds of VR activations around the world, they saw a growing demand for a simpler way to bring that “communal theatre” vibe to personal screens by syncing multiple devices with the same content. The idea that emerged was that there was a real need to make it easier for Marketers, Filmmakers and Educators to screen their own VR content.

“Right now, VR is very difficult to use in real-world settings outside of your living room, especially when you’re using multiple VR headsets,” said James Levy, WeLens’s founder and CEO. “Devices need to be manually setup one at a time, there’s no way to control and track devices, and the result is chaos, stress, and elevated tech support costs.”

With LensPass anyone can orchestrate their own VR screening without the need for tech support
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LensPass is their recently launched software that is looking to fill that gap, by letting anyone setup their own VR screening, eliminating the need for technical staff at events. You can prepare and play VR content to multiple devices, it tracks engagement analytics with real-time device performance alerts, and offers the extra bonus on not relying heavily on WiFi to work, essential for environments such as festivals and conferences – which often suffer from chronic tech fails at the most inopportune moments. It’s available as a subscription service that allows users to assign screenings to any number of mobile VR devices from a simple customizable online dashboard.

“LensPass is designed to create opportunities for anyone to easily incorporate VR into different settings without the need for deep domain expertise,” explains Levy. “There is already a range of VR devices offering a variety of capabilities and benefits, from portable mobile VR systems to room-scale VR that can make use of an expanding number of peripherals and sensors. Especially now that hands-free augmented reality is looming on the horizon, at WeLens we expect to see VR expanding into an entire spectrum of immersive computing experiences, ranging from watching Netflix on a large virtual screen, to viewing a 3D scene play out on a table top using AR, to viewing a 360-degree video, to fully virtual experiences with positional tracking.”

VR headsets are individual by nature, but that doesn't preclude making the experiences social
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But what all these devices have in common is that they are fundamentally designed for individual use, much more so than smartphones, tablets, or even wearables like smart watches. However, Levy doesn’t think this precludes making immersive experiences more social:

“Our goal is to help make VR and other immersive computing more of a communal process,”he says. “As a first step toward achieving that, we’re focused with LensPass on the needs of organizations that are sharing and screening VR experiences for groups. That’s a critical part of the emerging media landscape where lenses will start to gradually replace other screens”

“In the last couple years, we saw a lot of experimentation in VR from brands, marketers, non-profits and other organisations. In many instances, they’ve just been figuring out their production and post-production workflows. For those creating live-action video VR experiences, there’s been a lot of learning about how to capture video in 360, how to tell stories in that medium, and many technical learnings about how to perform well within current constraints.”

Accordingly, the early users of LensPass have included top marketing agencies, media brands, VR production houses, and major theme parks across the country.

“We’ve seen our customers discovering that immersive content is a truly powerful storytelling tool, and not just a novelty,” said Levy. “We believe that improving the communal aspects of mobile VR and other personal display technology is a critical part of the emerging media landscape.”

As well as the increased interest in the Augmented/Mixed reality end of the VR spectrum, Levy points the fact that where companies were previously only dabbling with VR have started incorporating it into their long-term strategy and investing much more heavily in the technology.

“A lot of organizations and brands are coming back to us and saying that they have much more ambitious projects, and in some cases aren’t doing one-off screenings but are incorporating VR into their retail strategy, or they’re doing a traveling campaign of marketing activations or screenings that put the VR front and centre.  VR is starting to become more than just a novelty, and that’s because it’s really the best possible form of experiential marketing there is. After all, this immersive content is literally delivering an experience directly to your brain in a way that is completely unprecedented.”

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to get a foothold in the growing Mixed Reality spectrum and enhance their brand strategy with these exciting new technologies. 

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedInand follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

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