Felix & Paul Studios had two experiences at Sundance this year: one featured the training of NASA astronauts in Space Explorers, and the other was a time-lapse VR story featuring characters from Wes Anderson’s new Ilse of Dogs film with a behind-the-scenes look at the production. Felix & Paul use their own custom camera technology, which means that they’re in a constant feedback loop of creating content, making innovations in cinematic VR camera technologies, which then opens up new storytelling possibilities. For their two pieces at Sundance, they created a cinematic VR camera that does time lapse for Ilse of Dogs, created a motion stabilization system to put a camera in a supersonic T-38 jet, created an underwater VR camera to shot astronauts training for space missions, and weatherized a camera rig to deal with extreme desert heat and sand storms.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
I had a chance to catch up with co-founder Félix Lajeunesse at Sundance to talk about their latest technological innovations, the tradeoffs of haptic feedback and user control that comes with using a Positron Voyager chair, the deeper themes covered throughout Space Explorers, and the experiential modulation and emphasis on emotional dramatic effects that comes from speeding up or slowing down time in VR.