Unity Powers Two-Thirds of Real-Time Content at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier

Unity celebrates creators and filmmakers with its second consecutive Sundance Film Festival sponsorship; powers more content than any other real-time 3D platform

SAN FRANCISCO, January 16, 2019 -- Unity Technologies (https://unity3d.com/), creator of the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform, announced today that it has been chosen by two-thirds of Sundance Film Festival New Frontier real-time content creators as the tool of choice for immersive storytelling. Unity is a proud sponsor of the Sundance Film Festival for the second consecutive year, showcasing new possibilities for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 360 video, real-time filmmaking, and virtual cinematography creators, using Unity’s real-time 3D development platform.

“Unity doesn’t exist to create games or other commercial content. We exist to provide creators with the best real-time platform to achieve their artistic vision,” said Isabelle Riva, Head of Made with Unity, Unity Technologies. “Just last year, ‘SPHERES,’ a project created using Unity, was acquired at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival for seven figures - a critical moment for immersive films and validation that Unity is enabling unprecedented success for creators pushing the boundaries of what is possible in entertainment.”

Unity at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier

The New Frontier section at the Sundance Film Festival provides the highest level of curation in emerging technologies, incorporating fiction, non-fiction, and hybrid projects to showcase innovative storytelling, multi-media installations, performances, and films. Unity powers more content in New Frontier than any other real-time 3D platform this year, including the following:

• “A Jester’s Tale” - A psychologically taxing children’s fable merging the physicality of the world as the viewer comes home cold and tired just in time for a bedtime story. In this interactive augmented reality narrative, the characters are hollow meshes and the viewer is left wondering if they are too. The project is created by RYOT and 1RIC, and directed by Asad J. Malik, creator of Terminal 3, an augmented reality documentary that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2018.
• “Embody” - Created in partnership with lululemon Whitespace and MAP Design Lab, “Embody” is piloted by movement, whole body engagement, and dialogue. The experience, which takes viewers on a shared journey of trading and transforming avatars, aims to leave players with a deep feeling of physical embodiment and surprise at their bodies’ forgotten potential. The team is led by Melissa Painter, Thomas Wester, and Siân Slawson.
• “Gloomy Eyes” - Produced by RYOT and Atlas V, supported by ARTE and CNC, and created by Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado, “Gloomy Eyes” is a coming of age VR experience following a young zombie, Gloomy, who is hiding in the forest from bounty hunters. While bitterness plagues the city, Gloomy strives to find a balance in his mysterious dual nature.
• “Sweet Dreams” - A location-based experience (LBE) that leverages AI to create a multi-sensory world out of a dream. Sweet Dreams draws on mythological archetypes, redefining dining, turning it into a playful exploration of the destructive nature of our appetite and our debt to pleasure. Sweet Dreams was created by Marshmallow Laser Feast.

Powering the Next Generation of Real-Time Filmmaking

Unity is at the forefront of real-time filmmaking, enabling the creation of recent projects like the Baymax Dreams shorts in Disney Television Animation’s “Big Hero 6 The Series,” Neill Blomkamp’s ADAM: Episode 2, and Crow: The Legend from Baobab Studios. With its recent acquisition of Digital Monarch Media, Unity is putting the control and immediacy of the virtual cinematography tools used by Steven Spielberg (“Ready Player One”) and Denis Villeneuve (“Blade Runner 2049”) into the hands of more directors. For production and animation studios looking for more efficiency and flexibility, Unity is the most extensible platform for centralizing all departments into a simultaneous, collaborative, and creative pipeline.

The Undisputed Leader in AR/VR

At the center of the AR/VR ecosystem, Unity is powering 60% of all AR/VR content. Unity is a preferred choice for the bold storytellers, powering experiences including “Terminal 3,” from creator Asad J. Malik, “SPHERES,” from creator Eliza McNitt, narrated by Jessica Chastain, and produced by Darren Aronofsky, “Battlescar,” starring Rosario Dawson, and “Chorus”, created in collaboration with Chris Milk’s studio WITHIN and Annapurna Pictures, set to the music of Justice. At the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, more than 60% of the content in Tribeca Immersive was Made with Unity, including, “My Africa: Elephant Keeper,” an interactive VR experience with a companion film narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and “The Day the World Changed,” from creators Gabo Arora and Saschka Unseld. Unity is ushering in the next phase of AR/VR storytelling, providing creators with the tools to tell stories within these new mediums.

For more information about Unity at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, please see here.

About Unity Technologies

Unity is the creator of the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform, giving developers around the world the tools to create rich, interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. The company’s 1000 person development team keeps Unity at the bleeding-edge of technology by working alongside partners such as Google, Facebook, Oculus and Microsoft to ensure optimized support for the latest releases and platforms. Games and experiences made with Unity have reached ~3 billion devices worldwide and were installed more than 28 billion times in the last 12 months. Unity’s renowned flexibility gives developers the power to target and optimize their creations for 25+ platforms including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Gameroom (Facebook), SteamVR (PC & Mac), Oculus, PSVR, Gear VR, HoloLens, ARKit (Apple), ARCore (Google) and more. Unity also offers solutions and services for connecting with audiences including Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Asset Store, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Collaborate, Unity Connect and Unity Certification.

For more information, visit www.unity3d.com and to see the latest games and experiences created in Unity, go to https://unity.com/madewith.

Contacts
Alivia Rasmussen
Unity PR
alivia@unity3d.com
650.218.1185
or
Charlie Sinhaseni
charliesin@unity3d.com
909.657.8394