EDGE OF SPACE (World Premiere)
DIR. THOMAS WALLNER
CANADA | 11 Min | 360 VR Video
Directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Wallner, Edge of Space is a virtual reality documentary commissioned by ARTE about the launch of one of the largest stratospheric balloons. A collaboration between DEEP Inc., Koncept VR, The Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the French Space Agency (CNES), Edge of Space tells the unique story of this historical flight that reached an altitude of 40km and captured the first cinematic VR images of the earth shot in the upper stratosphere.
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ARTIST BIO
THOMAS WALLNER
Thomas Wallner is a producer, writer, and director working in film and interactive media. In addition to producing innovative cross-media properties for television, he has written and directed eight award-winning feature documentaries that have been broadcast in more than 30 countries. His last two features The Guantanamo Trap and Before the Final Curtain Falls both won the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs.
Thomas Wallner is a rare example of a creative filmmaker who is truly at home in the interactive media world. Over the past ten years Thomas has consistently applied his award winning vision as a storyteller to push the limits of interactive narrative. A leading figure in the creation of participatory narratives he brought the underground genre of Alternate Reality Gaming into the Television mainstream, culminating in the Emmy Award winning genre-benders Fallen and Regenesis. In 2007 Thomas Wallner pushed the boundaries of nonlinear story telling even further by developing the story concept for Late Fragment, Canada’s first interactive feature drama produced by the National Film Board and the Canadian Film Centre.
Currently Thomas and his team at DEEP are focussing on developing the language for cinematic storytelling in VR. To meet this exciting aesthetic and technical challenge, DEEP is developing LIQUID CINEMA, a software platform and toolset that allows filmmakers, producers and broadcasters to create and distribute story based 360 and VR content across the web, mobile and VR devices.
JOERGEN GEERDS
Joergen Geerds is forging and advancing the style and language of cinematic film productions as Director of Cinematography and CEO at Koncept VR, one of the leading cinematic VR production houses in the US. He is also the founder of Freedom360, where he has spent the last 4 years pioneering and tirelessly improving the tools for creating VR experiences. His work takes viewers to places far and near on planet Earth, and now to the Edge of Space.
Joergen Geerds has a unique background, dating back to film and art school, to interactive advertising and fine art panorama photography. He made the move from photography to cinematic VR long before HMDs became available, strongly following his believe that this decade is the true coming of Virtual Reality. His team was recently involved in the production of “School of Rock, You’re In The Band 360” as well as “Lion King, The Musical 360”, and is now working on a rocket launch VR experience for ULA.
Koncept VR and Freedom360 are deeply involved in the VR community for developers as well as creatives, sharing the experience with professional VR film makers around the globe.