If you haven’t heard of Luxembourg-based studio Skill Lab yet, memorize it. In addition to the world premiere of their experiment OTO’S PLANET at the Annecy Festival in Competition, Gwenael François and Julien Becker participated in the production of MAMIE LOU (Isabelle Andreani, produced by Small Creative) and are currently developing TACHYCHRONIE – notably presented at the last GIFF 2023. You’d almost forget that ERRANCES is currently being shown at festivals and at La Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland (a museum dedicated to science-fiction), as part of the “Une autre vie ?” exhibition.
So Skill Lab is fully occupied in the spring of 2024, and rightly so. OTO’S PLANET is a terrific sci-fi short, full of derision and humor, and a real creative sandbox for the viewer. You can navigate through the experience at will, turning the little planet where the hero lives to follow the action, without losing a crumb of a story full of twists and turns. A real favorite, reminiscent of The Little Prince 20 years later, with a cleverly thought-out immersion.
Gwenael François, director, and Julien Becker, producer, discuss this surprising and uplifting adventure. OTO’S PLANET is a Skill Lab production, co-produced by Dpt. for Canada and Small Creative for France.
Skill Lab, who are you?
Gwenael François – Skill Lab has been in existence for 12 years. With Julien (Becker), we’re a producer-director duo dedicated above all to fiction. We’ve done a few commercials and corporate films, but now we’re focusing on fiction for cinema and XR, each with their own projects as authors. Personally, I’ve been interested in the field of new and immersive writing since the beginnings of VR ten years ago. Once we’d discovered it, and seen a lot of projects, we gave a lot of thought to VR films in real images. The quality was often disappointing, as the cameras weren’t able to really compete with cinema, and we didn’t take the plunge into filmmaking.
G. F. – It all started at the VR Pavilion at the Luxembourg City Film Festival in 2018, when we saw ARDEN’S WAKE. A stunningly beautiful animated film in 6DOF, with a truly romantic story: we set off in this direction to arrive today at OTO’S PLANET. There’s a truly Pixar-like dimension to what VR can offer animation, in 3D and from the first point of view. GLOOMY EYES is also an excellent reference for this cinematic dimension, in which we recognize ourselves. Eventually, of course, we’d like to be able to offer films with real images, volumetric capture… and approach a certain degree of realism in immersive experiences. But the headsets themselves must also evolve to achieve this.
G. F. – Our first project, ERRANCES, can be seen as a form of music video in VR. It’s a visual and sonic experience, with a real artistic approach. It was a kind of full-scale test of what we could offer at Skill Lab. While OTO’S PLANET was in development, I wanted to work on another, smaller project more quickly, with Samuel Reinard (stage name Ryvage), who liked my previous clips. I really liked his ’80s-style universe, and we worked together on the design of the universe, ideas for parallels to be established between image and sound, and even the design of the musical title, which had to fit in perfectly with the visual universe we were developing. The experiment was made possible thanks to a “carte blanche” grant from the Luxembourg Film Fund, and was released at the end of 2023 (from FIVARS 2023).
OTO’S PLANET, a three-country production model
G. F. – OTO’S PLANET a été initié entre le Luxembourg et la France (avec Small Creative), mais pour des raisons de financement nous nous sommes reportés sur le Canada. Nous avions rencontré Dpt. à l’Atelier Grand Nord XR, et la relation avec Nicolas S. Roy existait déjà. Quand la production a avancé, nous avons pu enregistrer la musique en France avec Chapelier Fou, et ainsi poursuivre notre travail avec Small Creative. Nous avons produit au Luxembourg le projet avec comme prestataire technique ZEILT Studios, dont nous sommes proches. Et c’est l’inverse pour MAMIE LOU, que nous co-produisons avec Small Creative, producteur principal, et réalisé par Isabelle Andréani en France. La fabrication a été en partie réalisée par nos partenaires luxembourgeois de ZEILT. Chez Dpt., au Québec, nous avons la chance d’avoir des talents incroyables qui travaillent sur la création de certains éléments des décors mais surtout sur l’intégration dans Unity, la conception des interactions et l’expérience utilisateur. C’est une immense chance de travailler avec Chapelier Fou qui a composé la bande originale du projet. C’était passionnant d’être au contact direct d’un artiste aussi créatif que lui et je lui suis très reconnaissant d’avoir accepté ce petit challenge.
OTO’S PLANET was initiated between Luxembourg and France (with Small Creative), but for funding reasons we decided to focus on Canada. We had met Dpt. at Atelier Grand Nord XR, and the relationship with Nicolas S. Roy already existed. As production progressed, we were able to record the music in France with Chapelier Fou, thus continuing our work with Small Creative. We produced the project in Luxembourg with ZEILT Studios as our technical service provider, with whom we are very close. And it’s the other way round for MAMIE LOU, which we are co-producing with Small Creative, the main producer, and which Isabelle Andréani is directing in France. Production was partly carried out by our Luxembourg partners at ZEILT. At Dpt. in Quebec, we’re fortunate to have some incredible talents working on the creation of certain set elements, but above all on Unity integration, interaction design and user experience. It was a great opportunity to work with Chapelier Fou, who composed the project’s soundtrack. It was exciting to be in direct contact with such a creative artist, and I’m very grateful to him for accepting this little challenge.
Julien Becker – It’s true that 6 years to produce what looks like an interactive short film may seem a long time. But we’d never set foot in the industry, and we had to get to grips with the ecosystem, meet partners, consider financing, get through a global pandemic, set up production pipelines between several countries… In the end, it’s quite logical that we took a little time. But the project does exist!
A planet, a hero, a crash
G. F. – We are delighted to present OTO’S PLANET for its world premiere at Annecy in the Official Selection. The original idea was to propose an easy-to-grasp environment; the hero’s planet very quickly came to mind. It’s a perfect context for weaving a self-contained interactive story – for a duration of 28 minutes. The main interest of the project is to be able to offer an interface to the viewer, who can move the story forward by interacting with Oto, and choose his angle of view by rotating the planet as he pleases…
J. B. – The first versions of the project emerged in 2019, with a more youthful tone. At Atelier Grand Nord XR, we realized that we needed to move towards something more adult, less Manichean. Gradually, we arrived at something more mature. And it’s richer! We’re broadening the diversity of XR projects, which are often very serious, by offering humor and lightness with our stories. The final result comes from Gwenaël’s ideas and his script.
G. F. – In the end, writing the project was fairly linear. The idea was to propose a summary document with as many intentions as possible for the teams, between Zeilt here (for 3D assets) and Dpt. in Canada (environment, code…). Only then did we arrive at a document annotated with interactions, which we call “UX-Flow” among ourselves, done in Miro, as part of the overall architecture of the experience.
G. F. – OTO’S PLANET is a very playful experience, initiated for VR, which also takes a look at our societies today. The question of walls to separate communities has become increasingly important in recent years, and it’s not one that calls for obvious answers. We’re having fun with it to shed light on the absurdity of these situations.
G. F. – I can’t name any direct references that inspired me for OTO’S PLANET. Besides, we wanted to avoid ending up with something too cartoonish. I wanted to offer an animated show that was really geared towards a more adult target, in the vein (all things considered) of current feature films like “Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse”, where you can have fun while enjoying real graphic and visual innovation.
Designing intuitive interactions
G. F. – In terms of interaction, we were interested in immersive experiences with a real narrative background – like THE LINE, for example, where the spectator intervenes at times but can be guided by the story. On OTO’S PLANET, the rotation of the stage (the planet) and the fact that it can be moved around the environment gives the audience the possibility of choosing their point of view, of being close to what’s going on or not.
J. B. – As we went along, we realized that we needed to “reframe” certain sequences so that the viewer didn’t miss a key detail. We offer a maximum of freedom, but with obligatory points of passage.
G. F. – In this sense, OTO’S PLANET is a main story that can be appreciated from a multitude of points of view. It’s not a branching story, but you can come back to it to appreciate certain details and so on. And that’s hard enough to code and produce in a conventional VR scheme. It’s a learning curve for us, sticking to simple interactions – and already getting them right. Our next objective is to produce a mixed-reality version, free of the global environment, which we’d like to be able to offer alongside VR. This is another technologically important step that will require a little more work, and we hope to be able to offer it in the coming months.
In the meantime, I hope the Annecy audience will enjoy this interactive fable, come away with a smile on their face, and have as much fun living the story as we had making it.
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