Experiencing Interruptions?

Downloaded

Two friends build a makeshift scanner to digitize people. To their surprise, it works and now YOU are trapped inside a computer, trying to work out how to escape.

The classic Sci-Fi film TRON shares with the recent Netflix series Altered Carbon, the notion of digitizing a human mind such that the illusion of consciousness can be simulated by an algorithm. Downloaded is a light-hearted interactive virtual reality narrative that relies on the same premise. The viewer finds themselves disembodied and trapped inside a computer, looking out through the screen, while their accomplice, Lisa, works frantically from the outside to try and free them. But the participant holds the keys to their own escape. The experience is responsive to different levels of engagement, allowing (but not necessarily requiring) the viewer to actively participate in solving the puzzles necessary to restore them to their body.

  • Ollie Rankin
    Director
  • Ollie Rankin
    Writer
  • Ollie Rankin
    Producer
  • Rachelle Chartrand
    Producer
  • Ivan Hayden
    Producer
  • Nancy Basi
    Producer
  • Oliver Rankin
    Key Cast
    "Lisa Berger"
    Riverdale, Once Upon a Time
  • Genres:
    Sci-Fi, Comedy
  • Runtime:
    8 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    August 2, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    40,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Venice VR Competition
    Venice
    Italy
    August 28, 2019
    World Premiere
    Official Selection
  • VIFF Immersed
    Vancouver
    Canada
    September 28, 2019
    North American Premiere
    BC Immersed Selection
  • Busan International Film Festival
    Busan
    Korea, Republic of
    October 4, 2019
    Asian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • VRE Festival
    Rome
    Italy
    November 5, 2019
    Experience
  • VR Days
    Amsterdam
    Netherlands
    November 14, 2019
    Netherlands Premiere
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Ollie Rankin

Ollie Rankin is a NZ-born virtual reality pioneer who spent two decades working at the forefront of the global visual effects industry, from the Lord of the Rings to Alice Through the Looking Glass. He combines this history of creative achievement with a background in programming and AI to pioneer new narrative conventions in immersive, interactive media. He is founder and CEO of the Vancouver-based immersive content production company, Pansensory Interactive.

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Director Statement

It's taken us 120 years to get as good as we are at telling stories on a flat, rectangular screen. Virtual reality film-makers are deprived of many of the storytelling tools that film and television directors have iteratively perfected over this time and are instead required to devise a whole new language of immersive cinema, almost from scratch.

With Downloaded, we're not just telling a light-hearted sci-fi story in which the viewer becomes a narrative-driving participant. We are also demonstrating a number of novel techniques for virtual reality visualization, storytelling and branching narrative, to create a seamless, immersive experience—and advancing the medium while we're at it.