The Campaign

VR is a deeply engaging, highly immersive film experience for one, where you don’t just watch the action, you are the action. So on opening night, of the Melbourne International Film Festival the audience wasn’t invited to watch a film, they were invited to be someone else inside one. We developed VR Digital Puppetry – a virtual reality world paired with live 3D Projection mapping to create a performance embodying the festival’s spirit.

The Brief

• 15K total Production budget • No paid Media budget

Creative Execution

First, we wrote a film script, only the performances of the character’s faces were filmed – such as a baby, a crazed methodical killer and a promiscuous house wife. These facial performances we’re projected onto custom-built masks using 3D projection mapping. The face mask was attached to virtual reality headsets worn by audience members, who would play the characters in our short film. To match the movement of our digital puppets to the action in script, we digitally directed them in real time via a virtual construct of the stage powered by a gaming engine. Each layer of technology further detached them from the real world, sinking them deeper into their on-screen personality.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

• 36M+ Social Media Impressions • Over 115K+ Social Followers • Trending Topic on Twitter • 1.2% engagement rate (Highest ever for Opening Night) • And for the first-year VR sessions were sold out.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

VR Digital Puppetry was a live brand activation that gave Melbourne International Film Festival audiences a totally unique live VR experience that immersed them inside film characters.

Digital Puppetry engaged the Film Festivals opening night audience – true appreciators of film who live and breathe cinema. And those who would not only participate in a live immersive film performance, but who would also share that experience socially. In recent years, VR Film Sessions had been included in the festival program. However, audiences were yet to embrace this more immersive film medium.