The Breakout Star of Sundance 2015: Technology
From a 'Wild' Oculus experience to technology that lets humans feel like birds.
— -- I sit down on what feels like a tree stump and start hearing footsteps as the film "Wild’s" protagonist Cheryl, played by Reese Witherspoon, approaches me. She settles exhaustively on a tree stump to my immediate left and drops a hiking bag that dwarfs us both on the ground. I start feeling heavy as she stares in my direction, her worn-out eyes filled with a seeming wistful psychosis.
My instincts nudge me to drop to the ground the Oculus Rift headgear I’m wearing in a combined act of solidarity and escape. I turn to my right instead. Laura Dern as the ghost of Cheryl’s deceased mom, Bobbi, appears, says a few words to Cheryl, then disappears. Cheryl puts her monstrous hiking bag back on and walks away. I’m left alone, feeling unsettled. Cheryl may have just seen her dead mother talk to her, but in this film (if you can call it that), I was the ghost.
Fox Searchlight’s “Wild, the Experience” -- featured among 11 other mind-bending virtual reality projects at Sundance’s New Frontier installation -- was just one way tech and entertainment overlapped at this year’s festival. The looming presence of Amazon and Netflix, the heavily attended screenings and events hosted by start-ups like Airbnb, and even the techie swag gifted to celebrities -- from wireless home security cameras at Kari Feinstein’s Style Lounge to Columbia’s new heat-tech outerwear -- collectively gave the festival a tech-tipping-point feel.
While the presence of tech at the festival isn’t new, the embrace of it by Hollywood is. Just five years go, for instance, when then-celebrated startup Gowalla partnered with the festival in a big way, I remember a woman behind me whispering at a screening, in earnest, “what’s Gowalla? Is that a fruit drink?” Laptops were usually an “outsider” badge; this year, I even spotted The Real Housewives reality star Gretchen Rossi hunched over a laptop writing for a blog, RumorFix, at celeb hangout TR Suites. In 2010, New Frontier’s projects weren’t featured front-and-center on Main Street, the festival’s convergence point, as they were this year, either; they were settled in a remote nosebleed area of the festival. Tech was the festival’s bastard child.
"[Virtual reality] experiments were showing up at New Frontier a few years ago,” said David Greenbaum, senior vice president of production at Fox Searchlight, “but they were incredibly fringe. They certainly weren't considered the go-to event. I believe the New Frontier section is going to be one of the most exciting places at Sundance this year."
He was right. At the festival’s most coveted events, from Nicole Kidman’s private premiere party to HBO’s documentary film dinner, I consistently heard senior film industry professionals and celebrities discuss Birdly -- another virtual reality installation at New Frontier -- as often and with the same level of enthusiasm as when referencing any film that premiered.
Birdly, created by Max Rheiner, simulates the experience of flying over the city of San Francisco using a full-body virtual reality device that allows one to experience the movements of a bird. Experiencing Birdly, I felt a stomach-drop feeling bred of being handed not only a literal birds-eye view, but a metaphorical one into what’s ahead as the two unlikely worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood merge.