It is not lost on anyone that the best year for immersive film festivals came at the same time as the global pandemic. Locked inside and bubbling in boredom, VR users popped on their headsets and escaped their four walls into a new dimension of enjoyment and art. External factors pushed teams to double down with their digital offering.

The results? A stellar year for film festivals that included strands in immersive. Raindance Immersive, Venice Film Festival, and London Film Festival (for the first time this year) presented different and interesting perspectives on how to do a festival. All had great ideas, and all have lessons to teach others on future events.

The art itself was spectacular; Agence is a personal favourite, for example. But for the industry to develop, it must take a customer-focused approach to deliver its film festivals – or risk erecting harsh barriers for anyone new top hop in.

Let us start with VRChat. The platform had several major benefits that helped with the construction of film festivals. The first is the ease of deployment; creating a world in VRChat takes less time, making it easier to create fully realised worlds for people to wander around in. It also helps that worlds can be built via Unity, a platform with a large developer-base to tap into. The easier it is to deploy sophisticated and creative worlds, the better for time-restricted organisers.

The approach also means that it was easier to add little easter eggs; I chuckled when I found the hidden speakeasy in Raindance Immersive, for example. These hidden nooks and crannies add a new kind of life to festivals that should continue in future iterations. If festivals should seek to replicate real-life events, the hidden gems should be included as well.

Another is ease of access. Accessing the platform is seamless compared to its rivals, where people can access new worlds without the fiddle of alternative platforms originally built with other uses in mind. It also helps that VRChat already has a vibrant community that festivals can tap into.

Both teams at Venice Film Festival and Raindance Immersive used VRChat is creative and compelling ways. Wandering down the streets of London and taking selfies was a lot of fun, prowling the area with my custom avatar. The same goes for Venice Film Festival; entering the festival via gondola was novel, but great to set the mood for the event. When people cannot attend themselves, adding quirks give more life to the location.

By comparison, London Film Festival featured a platform built from the ground up for the event. Viewers wandered into the Thames to view the experiences via its platform, known as The Expanse, to view all the content. The strength of the approach is full and complete control of the development process, creating a world which can match the exact specifications of the team. The result is a great experience; I felt like I was roaming around a great hall of artistic experiences, like going to the lower levels of the Tate Modern.

Is there a ‘correct’ approach? No. Deciding between platforms is always a balance between pros and cons, regardless of the final product. But based on the performance this year, VRChat has significant benefits for future iterations.

2020 was a great year for increasing the prestige of immersive film festivals. Hideo Kojima, a decorated star of the video game industry, sat on the panel during Venice Film Festival to judge awards. London Film Festival, one of the biggest in the world, opened its XR strand for the first time this year with a long view to support it in the future. After several years of Raindance Immersive and Venice Film Festival leading the charge, others are following suit with a lot of support to back them up.

With the additional support comes new ways to access the festivals, via standalone or tethered VR headsets or via websites themselves (for 360-degree videos). While it opened options for people to step in, there is still a general confusion among people on how to access the experiences. Lack of knowledge and unclear directions meant that it was more difficult for people to access everything on offer. Leen Segers, CEO of LucidWeb, agrees: ‘The audience is required to… get on the right track to access the festival WebVR gallery. On mobile or desktop, it is simple; just click the URL and your default browser opens. But for VR headsets, there are several steps required to enjoy the VR festival in the most convenient way. It’s a complete new user journey, full of interesting UX/UI challenges we look forward to further investigate & resolve based on the feedback we have received from the audiences of both GIFF and EA.’

Because of these barriers, festivals should consider providing a step-by-step guide for brand-new people, making clear which experiences are available where.

On-site alternatives are critical for accessibility as well. Comfort is everything for VR and having on-hand staff to troubleshoot issues is a major benefit compared to at-home alternatives. While the global pandemic made this more difficult, London Film Festival provided a model for safety with COVID-secure protocols in place within the BFI. The first time someone tries VR is perhaps the most important, as it colours their view of the landscape. By making the first go as good as possible, the positive repercussions are immense; something that the team at London Film Festival fully understood. (If you wish to learn more about accessibility in this area, I highly recommend this report from the folks at East City Films).

Other alternatives include using VIVEPORT and Oculus TV to deliver festival content. HTC has been an ardent supporter of the immersive arts, supporting both Venice Film Festival and London Film Festival to get the experiences in people’s hands. Browsing VIVEPORT and Oculus TV was straightforward, and the platforms should consider taking further steps to support festivals via their distribution services.

Festivals saw some amazing strides in 2020. Raindance Immersive did their first virtual version and smashed it out of the park with an immersive and enjoyable world to roam around in, alongside its (as usual) quality range of selected experiences. The same goes for London Film Festival; running the XR strand for the first time this year, the festival presented quality XR experiences throughout October 2020.

While the pandemic forced may events to go virtual, others took it as an opportunity to try out new ways of presenting content. By and large it worked well, and the next steps are to iterate on the approach to make it as seamless and painless as possible.

In my view, the most important factor to any festival is the audience experience. Not the content, or the platform, or the prestige; it is the experience of first-time users who don a headset for the first time. The barriers to immersive tech are mostly linked to UX, and how easy it is for them to access what is out there. Designing immersive experiences for the audience is notoriously difficult, and it will take years of iterations and development to get it right. In 2020, the community made some immense strides.

With all that said, here are my thoughts on the key learnings for future festivals: