DocLab: Seamless Reality
Walden, a Game Tracy Fullerton
WORLD PREMIERE Walden is a first-person documentary game about the American philosopher, writer and natural scientist Henry David Thoreau and his experiments in self-reliant living at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He devoted two years to a life of “simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust,” as an alternative to a life of “quiet desperation.” The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau arrives at his cabin. You can follow in Thoreau’s footsteps, but you can also take time to look around and explore the woods and the cabin, accompanied by the sound of rustling leaves, buzzing mosquitoes and tranquil music. When night falls, you are given a lantern. If you’re going to survive in the woods, you’ll need to find food and fuel, maintain the cabin and make clothes. A letter arrives almost every day. At the end of each day you read Thoreau’s journal, a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul. For the duration of this tranquil game, you’re surrounded by the natural beauty of the forest, which holds the promise of a sublime life.
USA, 2015 cross-platform, color Director: Tracy Fullerton Production: Tracy Fullerton for USC Game Innovation Lab Screening Copy: USC Game Innovation Lab Website: www.waldengame.com
Tracy Fullerton: directing debut
www.tracyfullerton.com
Way to Go Vincent Morisset
A virtual walk in the woods: but with Vincent Morisset behind the project, you know it’s going to be more than 360 degrees of trees. With Way to Go, the maker of the first-ever interactive music video (for Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible) and “web-friendly director” of projects such as Bla Bla and Just a Reflektor (again with Arcade Fire) has made an alienating and meditative excursion into nature. Morisset’s nature is made up of a fantastically filmed and animated forest in which viewers can roam, run or fly around, alone or with other beings. The woods are endless, as are the variations on the trip. There is no points system, navigation or step counter. The trip might last six minutes, or it may go on forever. In everyday life we have to run, jump, fly, dive, fall and get back up again. What if we just take the time to look at what’s around us?
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France, Canada, 2015 cross-platform, color Director: Vincent Morisset Sound Design: Philippe Lambert Animation: Caroline Robert Web Development: Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit Production: Vincent Morisset for AATOAA Executive Production: Hugues Sweeney for National Film Board of Canada World Sales: National Film Board of Canada Screening Copy: National Film Board of Canada Website: www.a-way-to-go.com
Vincent Morisset:
be oNline B (2006) Miroir Noir (2008) Sprawl II (2011) INNI (2011) BLA BLA (2011) Just a Reflektor (2013) Way to Go (2015)
www.vincentmorisset.com