Byron Bay Film Festival director J’aimee Skippon-Volke experiences paranormal activity in Cannes as she plunges into the future of Virtual Reality.
1. How many times have you been attending the festival and for what reason?
2016 was my second year at Cannes. I came initially to experience the festival for myself after hearing so much about it and to meet filmmakers and engage with distributors.
This year I had perspective of who I wanted to engage with and a clearer idea of the business I wanted to achieve. Deepening existing relationships was on my agenda and engaging more with NEXT, Cannes’ tech and digital content arena which I had only briefly engaged with in 2015.
2. As director of a film festival what do you personally look for in a good film?
I like to be compelled to follow the story, it needs to hold my interest every step of the way. I feel a good film has the audience in mind as well as the director’s own creative vision.
3.What have you seen that has impressed you the most and why?
As well as running the Byron Bay International Film Festival, I work in VFX and more recently VR (Virtual Reality). As a result, I dived right into the wealth of VR experiences and talks presented at the NEXT Pavilion.
NEXT itself was my personal highlight. The quality of presenters and range of experiences available was outstanding.
Within that though, 3 particular pieces stood out to me: Philip from the Parisian based OKIO-Studio, a VFX driven 3D 360 narrative experience; Body·Mind·Change·Redux from the Canadian team at Occupied VR which is a re-imagining of key scenes from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome – a film that was highly influential for me as a film loving teen and I was also very fortunate to be among the lucky few to experience Penrose Studio’s Allumette – a very beautiful interactive animation.
4.What have been the highlights of the festival in terms of people you met and things that inspired you?
I met a number of teams and minds being part of the new movement exploring VR as entertainment and story sharing. Having helped establish GreenhouseFX 3DVR in 1999, I’m passionate about this realm beyond just an extension of screen culture. VR was on everyone’s lips at Cannes. I left feeling inspired that it’s moving forward so quickly.
5. What is the future of VR?
Virtual Reality is a fast track to creating empathy and really taking people into another space. In the short term it will be an adjunct to traditional film and gaming. But as technology develops and we lose the need for helmets I believe we’ll see society switch to the new mediums of VR and AR (Augmented Reality) as we lose both the big and little screens in order to dive into full immersion.
It sounds like the stuff Sci-fi’s are made of and it is… The future is pretty exciting.
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