StudioFest virtually held this year’s film festival. No, not in Zoom: within the fantastic world of virtual reality headsets.
To end the virtual festival, each of the guests, including the ten competing filmmakers, the StudioFest team, and industry professionals Evan Glodell and Patricia Vidal Delgado, were sent new Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets. to experience all the events of the weekend, including watching movies in a virtual theater and mingling with other attendees through their avatars. You can take a look at the look of the festival from the inside through the video above.
“We wanted to make sure we could organize an event regardless of the state of the world, and that’s why we took the event to RV this year. It was so great and we want to keep at least some virtual reality component in the coming years.” said StudioFest co-founder Jess Jacklin.
On the occasion of the third year of the festival, the 2021 event, which took place from 17 to 19 September, was a great departure from previous years. The opening year of the festival took place in person in Phenicia, New York, and the following year’s event took place in Ojai, California. Both included evenings, readings and screenings in which finalists were able to meet and interact with guests from the industry. Last year’s festival was postponed due to the pandemic, so these presentations were included in this year’s virtual festival, giving the finalists the next best experience of being there in person.
Also read: Impeachment: American Crime Story Showrunner on Introducing Younger Generations to Linda Tripp
“When it’s hard to bring people to film festivals, we thought, why not bring the film festival to filmmakers? We couldn’t be happier with how the weekend went. The RV experience absolutely rivaled our past face-to-face events, ”said co-founder Charles Beale. “I thought you were in the room with everyone.”
The ten finalists from the United States, Canada and Thailand, and the top prize was awarded to Courtney Hope Thérond. Your prize? Make a movie with StudioFest.
The first StudioFest winners, Anna Mikami and Matthew Sorvillo, made the film Memories, which was acquired by A + E Networks. Jessica Liu and Lowam Eyasu are scheduled to go into production on a feature film later this year.
For those interested in learning more about StudioFest, MovieMaker is partnering with them in a documentary series called Demystified, which narrates the journey of each StudioFest feature film from concept to distribution.
Main image: a view inside StudioFest’s VR Experience 2021, courtesy of StudioFest.