Film is one of the most powerfully immersive storytelling mediums. It allows the audience members to live vicariously through characters in completely different worlds to their own. The Melbourne International Film Festival has always prided itself on offering a deeply immersive and emotional experience.

On opening night, the audience wasn’t invited to watch a film. They were invited to play a character inside a film. Digital Puppetry, was a live immersive VR experience where audience members could escape into the characters of a film.

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.

From one event:

• 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.