In Production

Mandala, A brief moment in time

Collaborative free-roaming experience

 

 

SYNOPSIS

By entering an ancient Buddhist temple, the spectators are offered the opportunity to create altogether a shape of light, a bright and colorful mandala. Depending on their movements, choices and collaboration, each drawing will be unique.

The energy instilled in their mandala will awake fantastic creatures, heroes from a Chinese folktale: WuKong the monkey king and Erlang Shen, the heaven’s soldier. They will guide the audience into the mandala, putting them to test and pushing them to reflect on their own life in the process.

The fantastic characters are played by an actor in live motion-capture, delivering a unique, taylor-made and extremely immersive experience, using the Buddhist mythology as a background.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

Mandala, A Brief Moment In Time is a self-exploration experience. Spectators are first offered the opportunity to fill an empty place by creating, a unique drawing, by interacting with each other. Then, adding to the creative pleasure of this “collaborative tilt brush”, the experience turns into an immersive theater experience. With its physical set design and a live motion-capture actor, the experience aims to an absolute immersion.

The creative act will be the root of spectator’s emotional involvement. They will have to protect their creation, accept to let it grow and then learn to let it go. Confronted with humor to a moral dilemma, the experience gives them the opportunity to discover a little more about themselves.

 

Atmosphere and Theme

Mandala, A Brief Moment In Time takes inspiration from a traditional Chinese story : Journey to the West, and from the Mandala techniques used by Buddhist Monks. On the opposite of the most of VR experiences which seek strong emotions, Mandala, A Brief Moment In Time develops a quiet and introspective atmosphere. The experience deals with people’s relationship with the physical world based on the Buddhist philosophical concept of impermanence, which considers that all phenomenon and objects of the physical word are in a state of perpetual change.

 

CREDITS

30 minutes free roaming VR creative adventure with live actor for 3 to 6 users

Directed by Thomas Villepoux, written by Thomas Villepoux and Yang Huang.

Played at 79th Venice Biennale de Cinema by Elliot Delage and Thomas Alden

Technical coordination : Anastasiia Ternova

Coproduced by Sandman Studio and Digital Rise, in association with Sandbox Immersive Film Festival,

With the support from Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), Pictanovo, 104 Factory.