“Understanding technical tools for more nuanced artistic choices” – Patrick Muroni (RAVE)

At GIFF 2024, the International Immersive Experience Competition featured RAVE, an immersive work by Patrick Muroni that made its world premiere during the 30th edition of the Geneva International Film Festival.

RAVE captures the protagonist’s first rave: a journey of initiation centered on the power of remembrance. Drawing from personal memories, Patrick Muroni crafts a deeply intimate narrative that bursts with life and a sense of community. I couldn’t help but join in the dance during the finale… and even with a headset on, it felt incredibly liberating!

We spoke with the director about his journey into immersive production and the creation of this story, which, even if just for a moment, lets you set aside your worries and simply exist in a more serene dimension.

RAVE: from a childhood dream to cinematic VR

PATRICK MURONI – There are several reasons that led me to create RAVE in this particular format. First of all, when I was a kid I wanted to develop a video game. It was a bit of a dream for me, which always seemed too complicated to bring to life. So, cinema became my path instead. When the chance to develop RAVE arose, it felt a way to reconnect with this original desire that I had never forgotten.

RAVE, though, isn’t exactly a video game. I believe it actually resembles more of a movie. An interactive one, specifically. And this interactive aspect is exactly the second reason why I decided to work on this piece: I come from a cinema background. I made some films, and the first one after I finished school was Un Matin d’été. There was a memory that I longed to preserve forever, and it was the memory of a rave party: this short movie was about it and I presented it at the Locarno Film Festival in 2019. 

When the film was shown, it was incredible… the music, the rhythm, the crowd… I realized I wanted to create something even more immersive. That’s when I thought about virtual reality, even though I knew very little about it at the time. 

Luckily, I met Mélanie Courtinat, which I’ve known since school, and Arnaud Gomis. Melanie became the artistic director of the project, and Arnaud the developer, who worked on both the art and the code. 

The combination of these elements – the encounter with Mélanie and Arnaud, the memory of the rave, my cinematic experience, and the desire for immersion – came together to inspire this project, which I developed over the past two years, even though the idea had been with me much longer. This journey into the world of virtual reality, so new to me, has been absolutely wonderful!

Blending technique and art

P. M. – With Melanie and Arnaud I suddenly felt that everything was possible. At the same time, even though I wanted to do thousands of things and experiment, I also wanted to understand the technique. Not entirely, of course, since it’s a very complex field, but I needed to get closer to it, as in this project, art serves technique and technique serves art. Truly understanding the tools I was using allowed me to synchronize with them and make more nuanced creative choices.

I’ve never been an artist who insists on doing things in only one way. I believe that if you understand the technical side of a scene, you can also choose to develop it differently from an artistic perspective. VR opens up possibilities that cinema doesn’t offer, from this point of view, allowing for new creative visions and directorial perspectives to emerge. It lets you manipulate the art in new ways, which made me, in a sense, even freer and more artistic. 

Arnaud and Mélanie were essential through all of this: Arnaud developed a point cloud technique entirely on his own. To me, he’s both the mechanic and the magician of the project. Mélanie helped translate the technical aspect into the artistic one and vice versa. Without her, RAVE wouldn’t exist. She was the one who introduced me to this world, with an almost pedagogical approach. This is because, having a deep understanding of the tools, she also grasps the kind of thinking process that underpins my creative needs.

Balancing freedom and immersion: the challenge of recreating a rave in VR

P. M. – Recreating a rave party in VR is an intricate challenge: it requires striking a delicate balance between the freedom that embodies the spirit of a rave and the deeply immersive environment. This complexity is heightened by the inherent limitations of VR headsets, which, while offering a sense of virtual presence, can restrict physical movement and interaction, making it difficult to fully replicate the liberating, spontaneous atmosphere of a real rave. 

Midway through development, I realized the importance of rewarding users for movement. We decided to make the experience more ludic, more like a video game, by incorporating features like controller vibrations, interactive ghost hands that emitted smoke effects as you moved them, and other elements designed to encourage engagement and interaction. These additions were meant to enhance the feeling of reward. 

However, I soon realized that participants interact differently: some move actively while others are more contemplative, just as in a real rave where everyone engages on their own terms. Though I initially expected everyone to dance, and was a bit disappointed when they did not, I came to see this as a natural variation in how people experience art and events in general.

In a way, it reminded me of the cinema experience, which by nature is more contemplative. You have a story, and you need to understand it while watching the film. In RAVE, there are moments where you observe the scene while it happens, and others where you can interact with objects. These different dimensions make RAVE an interactive film, which resonates more with me, because it aligns with my cinematic thinking, where the narrative is always at the center.

So, ultimately, I embraced this blend of observation and interaction, letting the story unfold in ways unique to each participant.

A journey into a memory

P. M. – First there was the idea… then came the story. 

I thought back to my own memories of the first rave I attended. I can’t recall it, but it’s well known that you are often introduced to these parties by a friend of a friend or by an older sibling. It’s an initiatory experience, which leads you into a new group and a new world. 

That’s where I started from: I imagined a protagonist who has never been to a rave, someone young, around 17 years old, because that’s the age when you’re discovering life yet are still holding onto childhood. Her older sister takes her to her first rave and it all feels like an initiatory ceremony. The audience can experience all that through the protagonist’s eyes, almost intimately, which is an extraordinary opportunity that VR offers, especially compared to cinema.

There’s also a documentary quality to RAVE: all the people you see are real, and the environments are authentic, captured through motion capture. Even the people who dance at the end are real, in the sense that they’re not professional dancers: a rave is raw, spontaneous, natural. Our aim was to capture its true essence and offer it to our users. 

What I truly hope for this piece is for people to take home the memory of it, just as the memory of a rave is still so important to me. What I love about those memories is the freedom they give you to be alone in that comforting mental space. There you can see it: a rave is a place without cameras, just people dancing, and it feels like a cocoon, a space to forget everything and simply be. 

Our character tells us how her friends talked about this party as “Heaven,” but really, “it’s better than Heaven: it’s a rave!”. It’s something I strongly feel. While not always joyful, and despite some dark moments, raves are still places where people just want to dance, feel free, and do whatever they want. 

A journey that started from GIFF 2024

P. M. – There’s another reason why I’ve wanted to make this project my whole life. My mother always told me that rave parties were bad, that they weren’t right for me. In a way, RAVE is a small act of revenge (laughs) Because when I think of raves, I think of places that are incredibly inclusive, where everyone is equal. For me, they’re all about warmth and freedom.

I should also point out that RAVE is not about the giant city ones, like those portrayed in the incredible IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS, but it shows you the small countryside raves with maybe 50 people attending. Despite the size, they were and are loved by so many!

Now, in terms of distribution, we are in talks with a few platforms and will be at several festivals. 

For me and the team, it was extremely important to have the world premiere in Geneva, though, specifically at the GIFF. RAVE, in fact, is a Swiss project, developed with local funding, and it represents this place and its people. I was therefore thrilled and honored by the selection, and grateful for the opportunity to be part of the international competition section. It truly was a unique opportunity!