Montreal, Canada, April 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Felix & Paul Studios, the EMMY® Award-winning creator of immersive entertainment experiences, in collaboration with the Academy Award®-winning National Film Board of Canada, one of the world’s leading digital content hubs, has been selected to premiere their virtual reality experience—GYMNASIA—at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 24, 2019 through May 4, 2019 in New York City and tickets to GYMNASIA, playing in the Virtual Arcade, are now on sale at
https://www.tribecafilm.com/immersive.
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GYMNASIA is a groundbreaking cinematic VR experience that is a collaboration between Felix & Paul Studios, the National Film Board of Canada and Oscar®-nominated Clyde Henry Productions. The six-minute experience flawlessly blends 3D 360-degree video, stop motion, miniatures and computer-generated graphics (CGI), and pushes the art of puppet animation into uncharted territory. GYMNASIA will be available for download on the Oculus Store beginning April 26, 2019.
GYMNASIA was produced by SteÌÂphane Rituit (Felix & Paul Studios) and Dana Dansereau (NFB) and directed by the award-winning duo Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (Clyde Henry Productions). Montreal-based musician Patrick Watson composed music for the experience with immersive sound design and capture provided by Headspace Studio.
“We are honored to once again premiere our work and be part of the official selection at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival,” said Paul Raphaël, co-founder and creative director of Felix & Paul Studios. “Our first collaboration with Chris, Maciek and Patrick dates back to our VR beginnings with Strangers with Patrick Watson. It was a real treat feeling that synergy again and was a striking measure of how our perspective on immersive storytelling has evolved in the 5 short years since producing that inaugural VR piece from our studio.”
GYMNASIAâ�‹ is a dark dream—unsettling and weirdly wonderful. It is the first stop motion VR experience to induce the elusive anxiety that occurs when the lines between “real” and “unreal” are blurred beyond belief. In â�‹GYMNASIAâ�‹ , viewers step into the stillness of an abandoned school and enter a place where the ghostly ephemera of a lost childhood await them. The immersive experience recalls the sights and sounds of a child’s world through the echoes of ball games, school lessons and choir recitals.
“Pâ�‹artnering to create new and innovative experiences is part of NFB’s DNâ�‹A. Working with Clyde Henry and Felix & Paul Studios on this technical feat and genre pushing experience has been hard work but also a pure joy,” said Dana Dansereau, Producer for the NFB’s Digital Studio. “Stop motion animation in VR is in its early days and it took the extreme talents of these three groups to pull off such a successful project. We are proud and excited to launch GYMNASIA at Tribeca Immersive 2019.”
The GYMNASIA installation in Tribeca’s Virtual Arcade is a theatrical event that will distort your perception of scale and tickle your memories by integrating life size puppets into an environment with a cinematic VR experience. The installation was produced and installed by Phi Centre, a Montreal-based multidisciplinary arts and culture organization, and is also being supported byâ�‹ the Adam Mickiewicz Institute â�‹as part of the Niepodległa programme run by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Polandâ�‹.
When viewers walk into the installation space, they are immediately immersed in the world of GYMNASIA with the eerie room tone of children humming in a gymnasium that creates a sense of space larger than the one the viewers are in. On the walls are animated projections of running puppet children and, in the corner, a full-scale puppet of a “teacher” places acetate musical sheets on an overhead projector. Viewers are then directed by “scientists” in lab coats toward a row of plastic child sized chairs, the type found in every grade school cafeteria. In the last chair, a puppet sits waiting patiently for the viewer to put on their VR headset to begin viewing the GYMNASIA experience.
“For us, creating VR has always been as much about the neuroscience of this fresh medium as it is about art theory. Indeed, in no other art form are aesthetics and science so aligned,” said Chris Lavis, co-director of GYMNASIA. “The GYMNASIA installation at Tribeca will be an engaging and surreal experience for festival-goers and our hope is that this unique installation will completely upend their sense of scale and reality.”
About Felix & Paul Studios
Felix & Paul Studios is an EMMY® Award-winning immersive entertainment studio, creating virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality experiences of the highest quality. The studio combines technological innovation with a unique, pioneering and in-depth approach to the new art of XR storytelling.
Felix & Paul Studios is the world’s only full spectrum immersive entertainment studio, showcasing end-to-end creative capabilities, technological know-how and proprietary tools all within one company. The studio’s platform includes best-in-class spherical 3D camera systems, production/post-production software and processes, as well as spatial audio capture, design and processing through its Headspace Studio division.
Headquartered in Montreal, Canada with offices in Los Angeles, CA, Felix & Paul Studios has a highly experienced team of over 60 immersive media specialists and is backed by leading venture capital funds and institutional investors.
About the NFB
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is one of the world’s leading digital content hubs, creating groundbreaking interactive documentaries and animation, mobile content, installations and participatory experiences. NFB interactive productions and digital platforms have won 100 awards, including 17 Webbys. To access acclaimed NFB content, visit NFB.ca or download its apps for mobile devices.
Nadine Viau NFB Contact Canada - French 514 458-9745 n.viau@nfb.ca Katja De Bock NFB Contact Canada - English 778 628-4890 k.debock@nfb.ca Nicole Kerr Jessie Cohen PR & Consulting nkerr@jessieiscohen.com
