Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more... At least, feature-length virtual reality (VR) project Nuren: The New Renaissance is a world away from traditional musical films like The Wizard Of Oz.
Created by musicians and digital artists Jessie Seely and Jake Kaufman, Nuren is pitched as “the world’s first animated feature-length virtual reality music experience” on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, where the pair are hoping to raise $70,000 to finish the film.
Due to be released for computers running Windows, Mac or Linux complete with support for Facebook’s Oculus Rift VR headset, the film will string together animated music videos into a longer story based on a pair of android twins.
“Nuren combines influences from sources including Fantasia, Space Channel 5, TRON, Ghost in the Shell, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the Animatrix, and the technically and artistically brilliant PC demo scene. Dancing robot girls, synchronized light shows, vast panoramas, and starry skies await you.”
Kaufman isn’t new to Kickstarter, having created the award-winning soundtrack for Shovel Knight, a game that raised more than $311,000 on the website in 2013,and worked on more than a dozen other crowdfunded projects.
“It’s our hope that lovers of music, art, film, and VR technology will all come together and help us to fairly pay our amazing artists and programmers, and bring something into the world that has never existed before,” explains the Nuren pitch.
Kaufman and Seely are working with a group of “guest artists” on the project, with each responsible for designing a different segment of the film.
Nuren is the latest example of a virtual reality project focused on music. In 2014, Paul McCartney launched an app for Google’s Cardboard VR goggles, while The Who have also been the subject of a virtual reality app made for Oculus Rift.
Away from music Oculus itself is investing in animated VR films through its new Story Studio subsidiary, while Vice is one of the backers of VRSE, a company set up by filmmaker Chris Milk to explore VR storytelling and documentaries.
Milk had previously worked on Hello, Again, a feature-length concert film of a Beck gig filmed for online distribution, but which also had a version working on the Oculus Rift.
