Unity Technologies brings Academy Award and BAFTA winners to the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to celebrate the future of film production.

As an official sponsor of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Unity welcomes Academy Award-winner Ben Grossmann of Magnopus, BAFTA Winner Habib Zargarpour and Wes Potter of Digital Monarch Media, John Halstead of Pixar, and Academy Award-nominee Chris Harvey of OATS Studios to share their latest innovations during its “Real-Time Film Production Takes Center Stage” event, taking place in Park City, Utah on January 23. Unity’s industry leaders will also be featured at several events throughout the festival including events hosted by Chase, Dell, Variety, and Vimeo. For a full list of events, please visit the Unity 2018 Sundance Film Festival hub.

According to Unity Technologies, Unity is the world’s most popular real-time development platform; games and experiences made with Unity have reached more than 3 billion devices worldwide this year and were installed more than 20 billion times in the last 12 months. The Unity 2017 real-time development platform is the preferred choice for the boldest storytellers at the cutting edge of new media, and Unity currently powers more than 60% of all VR/AR experiences including the recently released “Coco VR” and “Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab.” 70% of the interactive selections in the 2018 Sundance New Frontier showcase were made with Unity including “Battlescar,” starring Rosario Dawson, and “Chorus”, an interactive VR experience created in collaboration with Chris Milk and set to the music of Justice.

“Sundance has a special place in our hearts because like Unity, it invests deeply in the storytellers of tomorrow,” said Clive Downie, CMO, Unity Technologies. “Many of these pioneers are using Unity’s innovative real-time development platform to bring their filmmaking dreams to life. The secret sauce of real-time is that it gives the director a new level of interactivity and agency. They are making changes and edits on the fly without waiting — seeing all of their creative decisions come to life in an instant. This opens up possibilities that weren’t there before. The future of film is real-time — it’s instant, it’s interactive, it’s immersive, and we’re bringing it with us to Sundance 2018.”

Stories filmed/created in real-time are a reality now and the possibility opens new perspectives for the future of real-time film. One invite-only event, “Real-Time Film Production Takes Center Stage”, will bring together filmmakers, storytellers, and innovators from the world of film. The event will be held at ClaimJumper (573 Main Street) on January 23.

The event will allow participants to learn from the experience of the pioneers. Unity’s real-time rendering lets artists and designers “shoot” the story as if on set, with a live responsiveness that allows room to experiment and make creative decisions throughout the process. The panel Stories in Real-Time will be the place to listen to how Chris Harvey (VFX Supervisor, “Chappie,” “Zero Dark Thirty”) and director Neill Blomkamp, and their team at OATS Studios, used Unity to achieve breathtaking visuals and rapid production times for their work in the ‘ADAM’ franchise.

Unity gives directors the power to pre-visualize, stage, shoot, iterate and do post-production work in one complete workspace, saving time by allowing for rapid exploration of cameras, lighting and set design. The virtual production allowed means it is time to reimagine the whole production process. Digital Monarch Media’s (DMM) Habib Zargarpour and Wes Potter used Unity to pioneer this technique on Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049,” Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” and the upcoming film “Ready Player One,” directed by Steven Spielberg. They will demonstrate how they used Unity to create a new workflow that speeds up production, solves hard technical challenges and improves creativity, all while saving money.

Unity Technologies says that the world’s top creators choose Unity to power their VR experiences because it gives them the confidence to realize their creative vision. Magnopus, a renowned creation house comprised of award-winning artists and creatives, used Unity to create “Coco VR,” a social adventure in VR that gives an immersive look into the rich world created by Disney Pixar. Magnopus CEO, Academy Award-winner Ben Grossmann (“Hugo,” “Star Trek Into Darkness”), and John Halstead, Technical Director at Pixar (“Coco,” “Finding Nemo,” “Up”) will show how their studios collaborated to bring “Coco VR” to life.

Unity’s industry leaders will also be featured at several events throughout the Unity brings pioneers of real-time filmmaking to 2018 Sundance Film Festival including events hosted by Chase, Dell, Variety, and Vimeo. For a full list of events, visit the Unity 2018 Sundance Film Festival hub.