LOS ANGELES — Startup company ARwall and immersive entertainment studio Clever Fox invite Park City audiences to help create What We Leave Behind, an augmented reality collaborative storytelling experience at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.

The experience places participants in breathtaking environments while concealing their identities with facial replacement technology. Participants can then record personal, anonymous, stories of anxiety and hope in the digital age. These stories will be archived online at www.whatweleavebehind.life for a larger audience to connect with.

Presented with immersive visuals by Dekker Dreyer and a score from Cyr3n, the technology for What WeLeave Behind comes from both ARwall and Clever Fox. ARwall has created an AR display that requires no headset, no goggles, no smart device. Their first product is an alternative to green screen workflow used in VFX for film and TV. Their second product, AR3D, allows users to interact with VR and AR experiences on any screen. They envision a future that bridges the worlds of AR and VFX, where you can peer through a “window illusion” and interact seamlessly with the virtual world. Clever Fox developed an in-house facial replacement system that works in real-time via a DSLR camera system for the project

“ARwall is thrilled to participate in this groundbreaking project at Slamdance,” says ARwall CMO, Eric Navarrette. “We are always looking for new collaborations that blur the lines between filmmaking, VFX, and augmented reality. What We Leave Behind will show festival goers firsthand how AR can be used by filmmakers to create visually stunning content in ways that have never before been attempted. We truly believe AR will play a strong part in the future of filmmaking and we’re immensely proud that Slamdance attendees will be among the first group of people to see our pioneering new technology.”

The experience and visuals were conceived by artist Dreyer, who MovieMaker Magazine recently called a VR Pioneer. His directing work in immersive media includes the first two 360-degree documentaries from Participant Media (producers of Spotlight, The Help and An Inconvenient Truth) in 2015 and extends to more recent experiences like Warp Chase, which was licensed exclusively to Digital Domain; and the retro horror augmented reality event The Summoning, which debuted to a weekend crowd of over 15,000 at the Los Angeles Convention center this past August. As a producer, his work includes the VR experience for Disturbed’s smash hit The Sound of Silence. The score is composed by his long-time collaborator Cyr3n (Julia Howe).

“This is such an important project to me,” says Dreyer. “We feel so isolated sometimes. We’re afraid to express ourselves because of what the comments will say or what we imagine our colleagues or friends will think of us. Creating this alternate reality/identity where we can tell our stories in a visually powerful environment is liberating. I’m humbled to be able to help bring this experience to the Slamdance Film Festival. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a project being created during a festival with the participation of both audiences and filmmakers. Slamdance is an incredible creative community and I can’t wait to see how they bring this project to life.”

What We Leave Behind will be featured daily at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival from Jan. 19-21 in the Treasure Mountain Inn.

Source: Clever Fox

Tom McLean has been writing for years about animation from a secret base in Los Angeles.