Cutting Edge partnered with Hoodlum Entertainment and Chemical Media as their latest virtual reality short film, Inside Manus, wins ‘Best Interactive or Game Production of the Year,’ at the 17th Annual Screen Producers Australia (SPA) Awards.

“It was really great to see the team recognised at this year’s SPA Awards. This is an important project that took some serious planning to pull off,” explained Benjamin Richards, Cutting Edge’s Director of Creative Development & Innovation.

“Our role at Cutting Edge included guiding the creative and shaping it meet the technical needs of virtual reality storytelling. We were involved from very early on, working through the script to figure out how we could best execute the story. It was about bridging the gap between traditional filmmaking and VR storytelling,” Richards said.

Often the realities of detention centres are raw and foreign concepts to most people. For Australians, and the people detained on Manus Island, the truth behind one of the most controversial offshore immigration processing centres in Australia, has effectively been hidden behind a media blackout. Inside Manus, harnesses the immersive power of VR to go beyond the razor wire fences and inside Australia’s offshore processing detention camp on Manus Island.

To tell their stories, Inside Manus envelopes the audience with room-scale, hand-drawn animations, and gripping audio recordings. As you enter the detention camp, three detainees share their experiences in their own words.

Premiering at Melbourne’s International Film Festival, the VR experience is gathering strong momentum across the international film festival circuit, featuring at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival; New York’s, The Future of Storytelling & Utah’s, Sundance Film Festival.

To enquire about virtual reality content production contact:
Benjamin Richards
Director of Creative Development & Innovation
[email protected]