Escaped prisoners flee deep into the Icelandic countryside, but encounter strange forces that pull one of them into another world.

A stylised journey through nature, and Iceland's first narrative film for VR. Performed by circus artists during lockdown, recorded using full-body motion capture.

This short film for realtime VR is a spin-off project from Huldufugl and Hikapee's (equally ambitious) stage show, The Hidden People, after that project was delayed by a year due to the pandemic.

We've been collaborating with UK aerial circus company Hikapee since 2018 on a large-scale stage production - but when it became apparent that we were going to have to pause work on it for at least a year, we came up with the idea of producing an animated VR piece using the same performers, set in the same world, but with a brand new storyline.

We were extremely lucky to find a partner in Target3D, who sent an incredible crew to join our artists in isolation at 101 Outdoor Arts in Newbury for a week. Under Bryony from Hikapee's direction, they recorded an entire narrative of aerial circus-infused action.

It's a unique challenge to produce animated work for VR - where almost anything is possible in terms of angles, lighting, sound and set design. For our piece, we're taking a lot of cues from theatre over film in terms of set layout and the audience's relationship to the performers - but this still leaves us a huge possibility space to play with, which is extremely exciting!

We're also aiming for a unique art style that represents the Icelandic nature - acheived through procedural modelling in Houdini, taking the rough outlines of landscapes, and 'shredding' them into thousands of small, individually coloured polygons. This approach retains sharp edges in VR even up-close, without using textures, whilst also giving us fine control over colour, pre-baked static lighting, and vertex shader effects like wind movement in trees, water and moss.

Work in progress! The piece will be available on release for Oculus Quest and other major VR platforms.

Follow our progress at fallax.vr on Instagram!

Creative Team

• Director : Owen Hindley (Huldufugl)
• Producer : Nanna Gunnars (Huldufugl)
• Co-Production : GunHil
• Script : Owen Hindley, Nanna Gunnars, Bryony Livesey-Casey, Edd Livesey-Casey
• Co-director, Movement director : Bryony Livesey-Casey (Hikapee)
• Co-director, Performer : Edd Livesey-Casey (Hikapee)
• Aerial Performer : Jen Robinson
• Aerial Performer : Katie Hardwick
• 3D Designer, Art Director : Simone Tranchina
• Composer : Iris Thorarins
• Sound Designer : Almut Schwacke
• Music Editor : Þorsteinn Eyfjörð Þórarinsson
• Concept & Storyboard Artist : Liam Cobb
• Additional 3D Design : Svala Leaman
• Motion Capture : Target 3D
• Motion Capture Technician : Petros De Doncker
• Motion Capture Cleanup : Hannah Burfield
• Motion Capture Producer : Sarah Polak
• Character Artist : Sam Lawrence

We're very fortunate to have been supported in this project by the following :

Minningarsjóður Ingvars Lundberg

A live interactive social theatre experience about trust, communication and questioning your sources of information.

Nominated for Best Immersive Performance at Raindance Immersive 2022.

One day, you wake up and find yourself trapped in a transparent box in a hostile, barren landscape - but it appears you're not alone. There is the Caretaker, who says they just want to keep you safe inside this box, promising to show you wonders beyond imagining. There are the Others, individuals trapped in boxes just as you are - some of whom are acting strangely. And the Voice in your head - together all of them are talking, acting, behaving at odds with one another - so who will you believe?

Based on Huldufugl's international award-winning VR experience 'Kassinn / A Box In The Desert' (one of the world's first experiences of its kind), this show expands the narrative to allow five audience members to determine their own story against a barrage of conflicting voices.

The show takes place entirely in VR using the Oculus Quest headset.

Featuring a live performer, and an operator backstage calling cues that affect the world based on the conversation that takes place, each show - whilst having a consistent narrative and storyline - is unique based on the behaviour of the audience members in the room at that time.

Performances:

• Þjóðleikhúsið (The National Theatre of Iceland) - April 2022 (Sold out run)
• Raindance Immersive 2022 - November 2022 (Nominated for Best Immersive Performance)

Creative Team:

• Performers : Nanna Gunnars & Ástþór Ágústsson
• Director & Design : Owen Hindley
• Unity programmer & concept development : Torfi Ásgeirsson
• Writer & concept development : Steingerður Lóa Gunnars
• Composer : Íris Thorarins
• Supported by : The Icelandic Artist Fund / Listamannalaun

Looking across the pristine Icelandic landscape she is about to alter forever, Rósa wonders - is the landscape also looking back at her?

A collaboration between Hikapee Theatre and Huldufugl, a show for medium to large stages that combines circus arts, theatre, Icelandic folklore and creative technology.

In Iceland, stories exist of 'huldufólk' (hidden people) - beings of uncertain benevolence held responsible in for both sudden good fortune and disappearances, unexpected occurrences and madness. They can be seen as as anthropomorphisation, an embodiment of nature with all its gifts and dangers.

Hikapee approached us at Huldufugl to collaborate on this piece, and for us to join our skills with creative technology to their high-flying aerial storytelling abilities.

After having visited us here in Iceland, they wanted to tell a story involving these huldufólk in some way. Initially, we were reluctant - stories of huldufólk have a slightly cliché status within Iceland itself, but we then came round to seeing this as an opportunity and challenge - how can we use these embodiments of nature to tell a modern story, focused on humanity's impact on the natural world.

Together we narrowed in on a story featuring the building of a hydroelectric dam - a controversial topic within Iceland, providing clean power on one hand, but flooding vast areas of pristine countryside with the other.

During the research and development process, we experimented with different technologies to animate this world - and settled on large-scale projection mapping, using both the set and the performers themselves as a canvas.

With projected visuals for the entire duration of the show (90 minutes), we used Houdini and Unity to design and render the scenes. Playback was handled using a custom-made TouchDesigner app, receiving cues via OSC from Qlab, running realtime effects on top of the video, and handling the projection mapping.

In some scenes, we're even controlling the visuals with an Xbox gamepad live during shows, which just to keep things exciting!

Finally, after several years of rehearsals, covid-induced delays and fundraising, the world premiere took place at Worthing Pavilion Theatre in March 2022. The show plans to be touring worldwide from August 2022.

Creative Team

• Produced by Hikapee & Huldufugl
• Bryony Livesey-Casey – Co-Writer, Artistic Director
• Edd Livesey-Casey – Co-Writer, Performer
• Nanna Gunnars – Co-Writer, Performer
• Owen Hindley – Co-Writer, Visual Design
• Jenni Pystynen – Lighting Consultant
• Saz Moir – Set Design
• Tarn Aitken - Set Fabrication
• Sarah Juliet Dearing - Costume Design
• Rachel Sampley - Lighting Design
• Saul Valiunas - Lighting Design
• Íris Thorarins – Composer
• Roland Smith – Dramaturg
• Catriona Giles - Movement Consultant
• Gabbie Cook - Movement Consultant
• Laura Overton-Harvey - Company Manager
• Jacob Hirsch-Holland - Head Rigger
• Chrissie Ardill - Associate Rigger
• Sophie Northmore - Performer
• Jen Robinson – Performer
• Katie Hardwick – Performer
• Tilly Mae - Performer
• Lawrence Swaddle - Performer
• Charlotte Greenstock - Performer
• Mim Wheeler – R&D Performer
• Hamish Tjoeng – R&D Performer
• Saku Mäkelä – R&D Performer
• Riia Kivimäki – R&D Performer