The makers of the Jaunt One camera have expanded their rental program. Abel Cine in New York is the latest company to offer the camera for rent. The camera can also be rented from Radiant Images in Los Angeles.
Margarita Mix, a FotoKem company, has expanded into the virtual reality arena with the addition of 360-degree sound rooms at their facilities in Santa Monica and Hollywood. Whether it’s creating sound design, mix and final print masters for VR video, or remixing current spots for a full-surround environment, Margarita Mix now offers producers and content owners high-quality sound solutions for the professional VR market. The new capabilities augment the full array of premium audio services for studios, networks and production companies offered at Margarita Mix.
There is a huge push for haptic advertising. Simply put, to add nuanced tactile effects to simulate a realistic feeling to 360 virtual reality content: the shaking of a martini glass in a Stoli ad; the power of the engine in a Peugeot ad and the flickering of lights in the American Poltergeist trailer. These are a few of the ways that haptic advertising has been utilized using Immersion’s Touchsense Design Cloud. Starting in 2014, Stoli was the first to break the ice, so to speak, with the first tactile ad. Now 554 mobile apps and 481 tablet apps on the Opera Mediaworks network have the capability to run haptic ads. These ads have the potential to reach 14.9 million total impressions, 4.2 million unique viewers
Futuresource Consulting recently hosted its latest New Content Horizons event, #Newcontent2016, in Hollywood. There, a group of entertainment industry executives explored business opportunities across the home entertainment and broadcast arena. The importance of content was discussed together with cutting edge services, platforms, hardware and technologies, with the goal of projecting a collective vision of the future digital entertainment landscape.
Christie will be providing all the projection for Spain’s first permanent dome to showcase 360° and other immersive environments including a second dome dedicated to virtual reality. Held in Madrid, the Immersive Festival Madrid 2016 is running from May 18-21 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and is free to attend.
VR content developer Rascali debuted trailers today for its first episodic VR projects, Raven and Storybox, on YouTube, Facebook/Oculus Video, Jaunt, Littlstar, Vrideo and Samsung MilkVR.
The filmmakers behind the Iron Sky saga are widening the spectrum of productions in their business, inviting fans to start producing professional-quality content in the Iron Sky’s universe. Titled Fanchise, the initiative is an open call to all Iron Sky fans, young filmmakers, game developers and innovators to pitch their concepts of maximum 10 minute experiences – games, short films, VR experiences, graphic novels – whatever inspires the most.
For the first time under its corporate banner CJ CGV will exhibit at CinemaCon 2016, which convenes next week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The company will be in Booth 2003A. In addition to the latest advances and developments with 4DX – the multisensory cinema technology with motion and environmental effects – and ScreenX – the world’s first 270-degree, multi-projection system used within a theatre setting, CJ CGV will be demonstrating its newest addition to the immersive cinema universe: 4DX VR.
I recently worked as a camera operator on a VR feature called The Spring. The first question of many questions that I had for Greg Passmore, owner of Passmore Labs, Austin, Texas was, “When you are shooting a 3D 360 degree VR movie in a cave where at times you are perilously close to the top of the caves due to the water level, where do you position the crew?” His reply threw me off guard. He said, “Anywhere I want.” It was then that he told me he was shooting with one Red Epic camera. The question then was, how?
Cinegy has been invited to join ImmersiaTV, an EU consortium of university technology incubators, research institutes, and commercial entities collaborating to research and develop the future of home entertainment, including virtual and augmented reality.
