Afterlife is a narrative-focused look into one family’s grief after a tragedy as they struggle to deal with their new reality. Challenged to find meaning a mother in denial, a daughter in search of herself and an absent father try to deal with their grief.

A family struggles with the loss of their familial anchor and attempts to mend their frayed bonds. Experience each storyline through a child’s eyes. Using a cutting-edge VR filming technique, Afterlife takes the audience through branching narrative that seamlessly reveals a story that shifts based on the characters that the player chooses to follow and the objects activated within the environment.

Afterlife uses a new VR technique dubbed Seamless Interactive Cinematic VR which does away with loading screens. Inspired by choose-your-own-adventure games and multi-linear stories, Seamless Interactive Cinematic VR allows treating live-action footage as dynamic content by enabling the experience to adapt organically to the behavior of the audience. The technique combines gaze-control to identify areas of user's appeal and timing, the design and mapping of branches, and a careful continuity and transition treatment on set. Players would be able to entirely lose themselves in the narrative story without breaking their immersion with distracting scene breaks or deliberate decision making.

To bring the story to life with motion cameras, the studio created a 3 axis suspended crane system adapted to VR cameras, specially design for indoor on-set use. By leveraging on the current VR sensors and position retrieval from controls, the crane provided the production team to draw in the space and automate camera desire movement sequences and replicate them at will.

Key Features

• Seamless Interactive Cinematic VR allows players to intuitively affect the story - no loading screens means players are fully immersed without interruptions from start to finish.
• Seamlessly navigate and interact in a rich live-action narrative where no playthroughs are alike - Thousands of unique, story-driven choices means that no two endings will be the same.
• The first installment of the three-part arc is free to experience.
• Experience Afterlife through the eyes of a child — Live-action footage helps retain immersion and strongly connects players with their surroundings.
• + More to be announced as we lead up to launch.

Afterlife is set to release in Q1 of 2019 on Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, and GearVR, with additional platforms being announced closer to launch. The first installment of Afterlife will be free to allow players to test this newly developed technology for themselves.