The Tribeca Film Festival® is set to run April 13th April 24th 2016 and news about the festival is starting to appear. The first round of speakers have been announced. Tina Fey and Tom Hanks are grabbing the headlines for their part in; Tribeca Talks: Storytellers platform, and I do love storytelling but this year’s festival is also taking a look at technology and innovation :
On April 19, it’ll be home to Imagination Day, powered by the Hatchery. The industry’s top minds will convene for an all-day summit focused on, “What happens when our wildest dreams become reality, and what will that reality be in our not-so-distant future?” The first round of confirmed speakers is no joke: entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, and business leader and product innovator Regina Dugan, of Google ATAP. The Hub will also host the following esteemed VR creatives and tech entrepreneurs: Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale, VR directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël of Felix & Paul Studios, and STRIVR founder and CEO Derek Belch.
Imagination day sounds like quite an interesting day, although there aren’t many firm details just yet.
Technology, innovation and immersion are not new to the Tribeca Film Festival, interactive storytelling exhibits, games and such like have been part of the festival for quite a few years now and this explains why so many days of the festival will have VR and immersive storytelling on display :
Over at the Hub, 10 of TFF 2016’s 12 days will be dedicated to immersive storytelling experiences, musical performances, panel discussions, and special guests, including the world premiere of Invasion!, the first interactive and animated virtual reality film from Baobab Studios, co-founded by Eric Darnell (co-director of Antz and Madagascar) and Maureen Fan (former VP of Games for Zynga). Invasion! promises sci-fi zaniness akin to Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, following two fluffy white bunnies as they defend Earth against a legion of alien intruders hell-bent on taking over the planet by any means necessary.
When people think of VR, they often think of virtual worlds, games, deep immersion, but storytelling is a medium that most definitely does lend itself to virtual reality and it’s good to see a festival as illustrious at The Tribeca Film Festival taking it on board. Hopefully as the festival gets closer, we’ll get more details regarding what Imagination Day will entail.
However we shouldn’t forget that people inside Second Life and beyond in OpenSim have been testing, piloting and developing immersive storytelling techniques for quite a while now and hopefully one day, there will be a festival that recognises that too.