Abstract: To this day, Felix & Paul Studios remain one of the most influential and celebrated players in the field of virtual reality. We spoke with Félix Lajeunesse to document the studio's history and to get his perspective on the medium, the technical developments that have shaped it, and what the future has in store for those working in this sector. The discussion not only offers a practical counterpoint to many of the theories discussed in this volume, but it also touched on the three main topics of States of Immersion Across Media: bodies, techniques, practices.

Keywords: virtual reality, immersive media production, 360-degree video, technology, immersion

Felix & Paul Studios is one the best-known names in the virtual reality space. How did you come about working with this medium? What drew you to this format?

Félix Lajeunesse (FL): It started out approximately fifteen years ago. I was working in collaboration with Paul Raphaël (co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios). We were two directors, visual artists, and friends working together doing documentaries, fiction films, commercials, and music videos. We shared a lot of creative interests and we were both fascinated by “experiential cinema”—films that we defined at the time as being more focused on the cinematic experience itself rather than on the plot (the three-act structure storytelling with plot points, turning points, and so on); films in which the narrative appears to be designed as a support for the creation of a highly immersive and sensitive cinematic experience. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000), Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953), and all the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul are great examples of that specific approach to filmmaking. Those films all share a hypnotic, almost transcendent quality. They make you feel an inherent part of the cinematic experience, instead of making you feel like you are watching something. This experiential approach to cinema certainly inspired the way we envisioned the medium of VR initially.

At the time, we wanted to explore that approach to filmmaking through 3D stereoscopic cinema. Although 3D cinema came and went in waves of hype, and even though much of the general audience's interest in the 3D cinematic experience waned after Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), we felt that there was something more profound to unearth and explore with 3D cinema.