Unity Technologies Brings Academy Award and BAFTA Winners to the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to Celebrate the Future of Film Production

70% of interactive content in New Frontier powered by Unity’s real-time development platform

SAN FRANCISCO, December 14, 2017 -- Unity Technologies (https://unity3d.com/), creator of the world’s leading real-time development platform, announced today that it is bringing together pioneers from the world of real-time filmmaking at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. As an official sponsor of the Festival, Unity welcomes Academy Award-winner Ben Grossmann of Magnopus, BAFTA Winner Habib Zargarpour and Wes Potter of Digital Monarch Media, John Halstead of Pixar, and Academy Award-nominee Chris Harvey of OATS Studios to share their latest innovations during its “Real-Time Film Production Takes Center Stage” event, taking place in Park City, Utah on January 23. Unity’s industry leaders will also be featured at several events throughout the festival including events hosted by Chase, Dell, Variety, and Vimeo. For a full list of events, please visit the Unity 2018 Sundance Film Festival hub.

Unity is the world’s most popular real-time development platform; games and experiences made with Unity have reached more than 3 billion devices worldwide this year and were installed more than 20 billion times in the last 12 months. The Unity 2017 real-time development platform is the preferred choice for the boldest storytellers at the cutting edge of new media, and Unity currently powers more than 60% of all VR/AR experiences including the recently released “Coco VR” and “Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab.” 70% of the interactive selections in the 2018 Sundance New Frontier showcase were made with Unity including “Battlescar,” starring Rosario Dawson, and “Chorus”, an interactive VR experience created in collaboration with Chris Milk and set to the music of Justice.

“Sundance has a special place in our hearts because like Unity, it invests deeply in the storytellers of tomorrow,” said Clive Downie, CMO, Unity Technologies. “Many of these pioneers are using Unity’s innovative real-time development platform to bring their filmmaking dreams to life. The secret sauce of real-time is that it gives the director a new level of interactivity and agency. They are making changes and edits on the fly without waiting -- seeing all of their creative decisions come to life in an instant. This opens up possibilities that weren’t there before. The future of film is real-time -- it’s instant, it’s interactive, it’s immersive, and we’re bringing it with us to Sundance 2018.”

Stories in Real-Time: The Future of Real-Time Film

“Real-Time Film Production Takes Center Stage” is an invite-only event that will bring together filmmakers, storytellers, and innovators from the world of film. The event will be held at ClaimJumper (573 Main Street) on January 23.

• Stories in Real-Time: Unity’s real-time rendering lets artists and designers “shoot” the story as if on set, with a live responsiveness that allows room to experiment and make creative decisions throughout the process. Chris Harvey (VFX Supervisor, “Chappie,” “Zero Dark Thirty”) will be talking about how he, director Neill Blomkamp, and their team at OATS Studios, used Unity to achieve breathtaking visuals and rapid production times for their work in the ‘ADAM’ franchise.
• Virtual Production Reimagines the Production Process: Unity gives directors the power to pre-visualize, stage, shoot, iterate and do post-production work in one complete workspace, saving time by allowing for rapid exploration of cameras, lighting and set design. Digital Monarch Media’s (DMM) Habib Zargarpour and Wes Potter used Unity to pioneer this technique on Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049,” Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” and the upcoming film “Ready Player One,” directed by Steven Spielberg. They will demonstrate how they used Unity to create a new workflow that speeds up production, solves hard technical challenges and improves creativity, all while saving money.
• Unity the Platform of Choice for New Media: The world’s top creators choose Unity to power their VR experiences because it gives them the confidence to realize their creative vision. Magnopus, a renowned creation house comprised of award-winning artists and creatives, used Unity to create “Coco VR,” a social adventure in VR that gives an immersive look into the rich world created by Disney Pixar. Magnopus CEO, Academy Award-winner Ben Grossmann (“Hugo,” “Star Trek Into Darkness”), and John Halstead, Technical Director at Pixar (“Coco,” “Finding Nemo,” “Up”) will show how their studios collaborated to bring “Coco VR” to life.

About Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. Unity exists to democratize development, solve hard problems and enable success -- three core values that are the driving forces of Unity’s adoption by millions of creators. Unity’s powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems. Unity also offers solutions and services for creating games, boosting productivity, and connecting with audiences including Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Asset Store, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Collaborate, Unity Connect and Unity Certification. Unity Technologies serves millions of registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists around the globe.

Contacts
Unity Technologies
Amanda Taggart, 310-980-9587
Unity Communications
amandat@unity3d.com
or
Charlie Sinhaseni, 909-657-8394
charliesin@unity3d.com