(NFTS Games Design & Development MA students with Radeon Pro WX7100 graphic card)
Beaconsfield, 25th May 2017: The National Film and Television School (NFTS) is to strengthen its partnership with leading graphics processor manufacturer, AMD, through the launch of a scholarship to support a student through their two-year MA.
The NFTS is already working with AMD to deliver a series of Virtual Reality projects as part of the School’s Bridges to Industry scheme including an interactive and immersive VR experience using real-time rendered 3D computer graphics and an entertaining and inspiring 360˚ video project. The students and recent alumni are among the first in the UK to access AMD’s latest Radeon™ Pro WX7100 graphic cards, which are capable of developing and driving VR experiences at a high fidelity level.
The projects, which made their debut at FMX in Stuttgart and will be showcased at events around the world include:
Burning Daylight 360 Video Project* (developed by NFTS graduates, Christopher Cornwell, Helene Sifre and Marie-Elena Dyche, Luciana Riso, Ian Crossland, Luke Hardisty, Mdhamiri Nkemi and Tom Jenkins.)
Burning Daylight centres on three firefighters, trapped in a burning building, who send down a recon drone to scout the area ahead. Its camera can see in both regular and infrared spectrums. To the naked eye, the area seems safe... but the drone's thermal camera captures something moving in the dark. Something mysterious. Malevolent. Inhuman. And getting closer.
Writer-Director, Chris Cornwell: "The possibilities that 360 filming give you are incredible. You get a real sense of immersion, a type of visceral presence that you just don't get in other film making mediums. AMD challenged us to tell a story- and we got to tell it in a way that we couldn't with any other format."
3 Minutes to MidnightVR Project (developed by NFTS Games Design MA graduates, Jameela Khan, Manos Agianniotakis and Laura Dodds.)
3 Minutes to Midnight is a twisted comedy horror experience inspired by the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Ealing Studios comedies and the macabre. The players are put into the shoes of Mrs Claire Clippings, a "defenceless" old lady and former baker renowned for her legendary pork pies.
The experience begins when Mrs Clippings wakes up in the middle of the night and realises that two robbers are breaking into her house. Through interactions with her immediate environment the elderly lady tries to defend herself and trap the criminals from the confines of her bed. During the experience the players slowly realise that Mrs Clippings may not be as helpless as they originally assumed and that the secret ingredient of her meat pies may be darker than Soy Sauce...
Manos Agianniotakis said: “We would like to thank AMD and NFTS for the opportunity to create our VR game, 3 Minutes to Midnight. The brief was to put storytelling at the heart of the VR experience so with this in mind we chose the comedy horror genre and an atypical character - a bed ridden old lady - who is not as harmless as she first appears. Our experience of designing and developing games at NFTS and through collaborating with talented alumni from other filmmaking courses gave us a good grounding for developing our VR game.”
3 Minutes to Midnight has been selected for the Reversed Festival in Vienna.
"Immersive technologies are having an enormous impact on entertainment and media, said Roy Taylor, CVP at AMD and Chairman, BAFTA VR Advisory Group. Whilst VR and AR offer exiting possibilities they also pose challenges to the platform and the art form. At AMD, we have found inspiration from the energy and imagination working with NFTS. This is because the students and faculty are incredibly innovative and unafraid to break the norms of content creation. The VR work produced by NFTS students is an excellent example. Using complex software and hardware tools powered by AMD, NFTS students took on the challenge of a steep learning curve that they have obviously mastered - as the results speak for themselves”
(NFTS Digital Effects & Games Design courses at FMX)
Says Nik Powell, NFTS Director: “It is fantastic news that AMD is strengthening their exciting partnership with the School with a scholarship. Our students and recent graduates have fully embraced the challenge set by AMD to explore the worlds of VR and 360 video in new ways and we have some very innovative projects in development as a result. Blending the art of storytelling with the latest technologies is at the heart of the School’s philosophy with students on MA courses such as Games Design and Development working closely with other film and television making disciplines. The AMD scholarship is testament to this approach and we look forward to working together to harness even more creative potential in this area.”
AMD also supported NFTS graduates to create a ‘Making Of’ promo about the VR and 360° Video projects the graduates undertook.
Applications are open now until the 6th of July for the NFTS MA in Games Design & Development and the MA in Digital Effects. For more information on how to apply, please visit www.nfts.co.uk
Contact for further information:
Vicky Hewlett, Head of PR and Communications, NFTS: VHewlett@nfts.co.uk
Editor’s Notes
*The Burning Daylight - 360° filmmakers are also developing a feature film that inspired the 360° video. The feature version of Burning Daylight will follow four fire-fighters, torn apart by a recent tragedy and racked with guilt, who are called in to investigate an automatic fire alarm in a disused underground factory. They find no sign of fire, until the floor begins to crack and a thin whisper of hot smoke spills out, pushing them further down into a world without daylight.
They soon realise that there's something in there with them, something that’s pushing them further and further down into a place of terror and fire. A place that may be hell itself...
Blending horror and disaster movies, Burning Daylight will be shot with a visceral and unique style through the firefighter's GoPro helmet cameras.
More info at: Facebook / www.burningdaylightfilm.com
About AMD
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