We wanted to have the full creative freedom of a moving VR camera and ability to get inches away from our characters while crossing a narrow path with a thousand-foot drop right below us.

We wanted the flexibility of CG, with its freedom of camera movement, and the ability to art direct each of our environments. And yet, we also wanted our characters to be real and to see real emotion on their faces. This meant that we had to deal with all the limitations of filming in VR. We were in the crossroads between two different paths.

We had to entirely reinvent the VR pipeline. We developed a fully custom hybrid CGI/live-action pipeline and software for VR that for the first time ever solved all the major challenges that VR poses. We had taken VR to the next level and opened a new door to possibilities not only for Intel TrueVR, but also for filmmaking.