YDA Panel in Cannes Will Educate Directors on VR

It'll be the acroymn on everyone's lips at Cannes this year. No, not FOMO, but VR. Virtual reality and the promise of what it can deliver has been with us for some time now, but how can VR and its applications be fully utilised by directors and what are the best practices and potential pitfalls?

These questions, and others, will be asked and answered at a special panel session hosted by the Young Director Awards this year.

Taking place at 4pm at the JW Marriott hotel along the Croisette, immediately before the YDA ceremony, the panel will be chaired by shots editor Danny Edwards, who will be joined on stage by Jessica Brillhart, principle VR filmmaker for Google; Simon Gosling, creative evangelist at Happy Finish; Luke Ritchie, head of interactive at Nexus, and Solab Pictures' Romain Chassaing, the director of the 360 Naive New Beaters video, below. 

The discussion is titled Making the Virtual a Reality: How VR Will Help Directors Widen Their Creative Scope, and will examine this new way of approaching filmmaking, the viability of VR as a medium, how clients can benefit from the technology and how directors need to approach filming in VR and the technical challenges it throws up. We will also be looking at how VR might impact on social change campaigns, in line with the new YDA category, Changing the World Frame by Frame

All audience members will be given a Google Cardboard headset, so they can experience VR in the comfort of their own wi-fi enabled Cannes hotel bedrooms later in the day, and to attend the event please click on this link and sign up. Entry is free but space is limited so get in there early.

And a reason to arrive at the venue early is that companies including Nexus, Happy Finish and Nightshift will have VR experiences set up at the venue for people to take part in beforehand.

For more information about the YDA please visit their website.