Recently, the 83rd Venice International Film Festival closed. Among the three awards presented by the Venice Immersive Competition, the VR work The Pigeon Ring, directed and written by Zhang Yuqi, a graduate of the inaugural cohort (Class of 2019) of the Film Photography and Production major (Virtual Imaging Production direction) at the School of Drama, Film and Television of Communication University of China, and supervised by Che Lin, Associate Professor at the School of Drama, Film and Television, won the Immersive Grand Prize.
The VR work The Pigeon Ring tells the story of a girl who returns home during the holidays and, unable to overcome her grandfather's stubbornness, accompanies him back to the old house that has been uninhabited for years to retrieve a forgotten pigeon ring. In the process of searching through the old rooms, past events, history, and pain surge forward, gradually revealing another side of her grandfather hidden in his memories...
On-set photo
Director's on-set work photo
The story is adapted from the director's personal experience. The director was born around the turn of the millennium. Her parents worked away from home year-round, and she grew up with her grandparents. Her grandfather was born in the 1930s and had no opportunity to receive a complete education in his youth. After the resumption of the college entrance examination, he always believed that only grades and rankings could prove a person's value. He hoped his children and grandchildren would get into university, and he also hoped his homing pigeons would fly to good rankings in competitions. For him, whether the pigeons could win awards and whether the children could become successful were the only important things in his life.
This work is produced by Film Hurricane and deeply cooperates with 4DV.ai, using the industry-leading 4D Gaussian Splatting technology for capture and production, reconstructing real characters' dynamic performances and old house spaces through live-action shooting, enabling audiences to move freely in 6DoF VR and view natural, authentic character performances and scenes from different angles. Through camera arrays capturing dynamic performances on site and combining radar scanning to complete static environment reconstruction, the work expands the boundaries of production and experience for live-action immersive content, opening up an innovative path for immersive narrative expression.
Renowned French producer, director, and curator of the Venice Film Festival Immersive Section Michel Reilhac commented: "This is a work of extraordinary significance, using the most cutting-edge Gaussian Splatting technology to tell an ordinary family story. The carefully designed technical means carry the narrative emotion, achieving an integrated expression of technology and art."
The Venice International Film Festival is one of the earliest film festivals in the world to focus on virtual reality. Its immersive-related section has been held for ten consecutive editions. In 2016, the festival established the VR Cinema for the first time, which attracted widespread attention among participants of the Venice Production Bridge. Since 2017, the Venice Biennale took the lead among A-category international film festivals in establishing a virtual reality works competition section. This section is regarded globally as an importantevent unique to immersive art, and has gradually developed into one of the most influential annual immersive art and media exhibition platforms in the world.
This article was translated with AI assistance.
Editor: Fang Yiran
