A veteran horror director is using virtual reality (VR) for a new immersive experience inspired by ‘90s cult anthologies like Tales from the Crypt and Creepshow. The first episode of Campfire Creepers recently made its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, and two episodes are now available to watch with the Dark Corner app for Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR.
Director Alexandre Aja, best knows for films like The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D, had never worked with VR before, but quickly became enamored with the new medium. “As a director, I’m always looking for immersion,” he told Variety. “VR may be the tool we have been dreaming about for so long.”
The series is about a group of kids around a campfire telling stories, but each of the first two episodes is very different. The Skull of Sam is about a camp counselor who’s been captured by a psychopath, who’s played by none other than Robert Englund. Midnight March is about a bullied kid who transforms into a terrifying monster.
Aja has been a fan of Freddie Kruger for years and jumped at the chance to work with Englund, as he detailed in a blog post at Occulus. “He also brought this kind of mentorship, where he kind of blessed us with his presence. He brought that flavor of classic horror that we like so much,” said Aja. “Beyond the fact that he was perfect for the part, he really brought something else — like a post-modern feel to the piece.”
The project began in 2017 with the VR startup Future Lighthouse, and Dark Corner and Oculus soon came on board. Aja told Engadget that one of his inspirations was Katheryn Bigelow’s 1995 film Strange Days. “It’s the best use of VR … just the way it’s shot, the experience of running around in the beginning, and jumping from a window,” he said. “I’ve always been very interested in all kinds of immersive storytelling.”
The first two episodes of Campfire Creepers are free, but there’s been no word on how many will comprise the full series. “All storytelling started around the campfire,” said Aja.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?