Take the job of producer: a person at the service of an artist, who ensures that his ideas come to fruition and are produced, by seeking financing and surrounding him with an artistic and technical team. Now consider virtual reality (VR), a digital simulation of an environment that can be interacted with. Combine the two, you get Antoine Cayrol, producer of VR films, where the viewer is at the center of the story and can interact with his environment (an activity he carries out through three companies: Atlas V studio, specialized in development, production and the distribution of works in virtual, augmented and mixed reality; Astrea, a distribution company for virtual reality experiences and Abylon, a production company specializing in immersive and interactive experiences; His postulate: virtual reality, which he readily calls spatial entertainment (a term which refers to immersive experiences) allows cinema to be propelled beyond the frame. Among these largest projects are Gloomy Eyes with Colin Farrell (award-winning at South by Southwest in 2019), Spheres with Jessica Chastain or Vestige.
Virtual reality, a logical continuation of entertainment practices towards ever more immersion
Virtual reality headsets are taking their place on the market. Meta Quest 3, HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, Sony PlayStation VR2, Pico 4 VR, Apple Vision Pro… A plethora of models available, most of which are on the French market. Antoine Cayrol already experienced virtual reality in 2012, when there were only prototypes. However, he saw the possibilities offered by this type of device and decided to found Atlas V in 2017, motivated by a market that is being built step by step and what he perceives as a logical evolution of practices, legitimized by a phenomenon of bringing the screens closer together. He thus retraces a century of audiovisual with cinema, television, computers, smartphones and tablets, and points out that each innovation has contributed to reducing a little more the distance which separates the spectator (or user) from the ‘screen. “ There was only one more step to take to abolish the frame and enter ‘into’ the screen», justifies the virtual reality entrepreneur, who believes in the audience’s desire to immerse themselves ever more in the image, to be an integral part of the story and in their desire for immersion.
VR, narrative formats different from any other form of storytelling
What is the impact of new technologies on the way we tell stories? For the founder of Atlas V, there is a link between technical innovations in the audiovisual sector, and the emergence of new voices of artistic creation in this field. “ Special effects (VFX) for example , made it possible to adapt Star Wars and to make films in an original way. Other inventions have opened up new narrative avenues, such as the steadycam (or steadicam, portable camera stabilization system allowing fluid and stable shots, even in motion, editor’s note), used in Marathon Man (1976) to follow Dustin Hoffman in a way never seen before. 3D also, with Pixar, opened up new possibilities for making films… “. A multitude of tools for telling stories differently, in which virtual reality fits like a new string to the bow of producers and artists who would like to take advantage of it.
What possibilities does virtual reality offer in the audiovisual sector in terms of storytelling, which other technologies or other forms of art do not allow? According to the person concerned, the added value of this medium lies in the fact of recreating physical sensations that are impossible or almost impossible to feel otherwise, which can range from a feeling of dizziness to butterflies in the stomach before a meeting. . a potential that Antoine Cayrol makes available to filmmakers in the realization of suitable projects, to bring stories to life beyond simply telling them. This is how Spheres : Song of Spacetime(2018), virtual reality film series that explores cosmic concepts such as black holes or planet formation (directed by Eliza McNitt, produced by Darren Aronofsky and Atlas V, and awarded the Grand Prix at the 2018 Venice Film Festival Prize for best immersive work in the Venice VR section) was born, or the film in virtual reality Evolver(2022), co-produced by Terrence Malick, which puts the viewer in the place of a molecule to explore the human body from the inside, and presented at the first Immersive Competition of the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. Some directors use VR because cinema would not allow them to convey what they want to tell », Relates the entrepreneur.
The VR market awaits a new standard
Despite VR content as diverse as there are supports to make it work and technologies that evolve very quickly (for example the passage ofmotion capturemotion capture,volumetric capturethe recording of a three-dimensional space as a place, object or performance so that it can be viewed from different angles), Antoine Cayrol seems convinced: the next step for VR professionals will be to bring out the type of content specific to virtual reality, the standard format of this still recent narrative form on the audiovisual market. According to him, in the same way that cinema “created” or in any case favored the film, and television the series, it will be preferable for players in the VR market to be associated with a type of format that is easily identifiable, while continuing to collaborate with varied talents from broad universes, both from the fields of cinema for narration, video games for design (game designers, emotion designers, etc.) and even live performance for the use of space and movement.
A whole range of know-how, a whole dynamic to continue to grow this market in addition to what already exists in the audiovisual field. “Virtual reality is not going to make other forms of creation disappear, on the contrary. It’s a fabulous medium, and one more possibility for telling stories», concludes the producer.
