French immersive production company Atlas V bought last year the creative studio Fauns (in Lyon), renamed since Albyon. With a strong desire to expand, it is also no surprise that they launched their own XR distribution service for online content and installations.
We met with Danielle Giroux, Head of Distribution and Publishing – during the Virtuality Experience trade show where she presented Atlas V’s upcoming projects and distribution strategy.
Setting up a distribution service
Danielle Giroux – We have a really exciting challenge ahead of us. Of course this has been a very particular year we’ve been through, but we are glad to work with creators and festivals – to find new ways to share their art. We pivoted a bit in our strategy to embrace online distribution alongside LBE and the festivals network. It is all about understanding how people connect and communicate as they start to have headsets at home. It’s a real opportunity here!
D. G. – We are now a team of three, including an intern, to work on distribution and installation – and to handle social media as well. One point is to be able to organize our release with every co-producer. XR is still a small community after all, we want to maximize this great energy. Of course we want to get back to physical events, but things happen online for now, and it’s great to see how the industry is going through this all situation.
What’s up, Atlas V?
D. G. – Of course we have online releases and installations (LBE). Even this year some festivals found a way to showcase immersive projects with a physical set-up. We have hope for the next months to see what’s going on, and be part of it. We’re waiting on Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW as everyone to see what 2021 will be made of. You can discover GLOOMY EYES, SPHERES, MISSING PICTURES and BATTLESCAR at BIFAN Beyond Reality now. For now we are focused on our streaming releases for the first quarter of 2021, trying to find new strategies here. It’s really exciting to work directly with all of these platforms, to pave the way for a new system of distribution between cinema and videogames. BATTLESCAR, no secret, will be online early 2021. It’s a lot of work to get it published, especially with international versions! I’m currently supervising the japanese version, i.e. And SPHERES just got a Quest update, which is a great next step for this project which had a real success in festivals.
D. G. – Of course, working with platforms, especially Oculus, you need to take care of a lot of technical things before publishing. It’s a long process but a necessary one to reach our audience. We are glad to work with people and platforms that want to push forward narrative works. And outside the big platforms – Oculus, Viveport, Steam – some indies are coming forward to open new doors, such as Sidequest. We are working to be available for everyone, and trying to get our projects on other hardware such as Pico. We need to consider all options in this XR distribution landscape!
D. G. – We see a network of festivals working together to support creators, and that’s great! 2020 has seen many of them putting ressources to find new audiences, and I think of Venice VR Expanded (their satellite events) or the London Film Festival. It’s important to support physical presentation of our works, as many of them are produced for a location-based installation. We have hope to be more visible in 2021 in the physical world to meet with the public. Festivals are not going anywhere, for sure! We are optimistic.
Fortune! will be presented at Sundance New Frontier 2021
