Montreal, CA, March 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Felix & Paul Studios, the EMMY® Award-winning creator of immersive entertainment experiences, announced today that their groundbreaking virtual reality series, Space Explorers, has been nominated for a 2019 Daytime EMMY Award for Outstanding Interactive Program. Space Explorers was produced in conjunction with Facebook’s Oculus with participation from NASA, Russian space agency Roscosmos, and leading private space transportation companies. Academy Award-winning actress Brie Larson narrated both Episodes 1 and 2 of Space Explorers.
Space Explorers: A New Dawn, the first episode in the series, allows viewers to witness firsthand the lives of both new and veteran NASA astronauts including Sunita Williams, Jeanette Epps, Victor Glover and Jessica Meir as they navigate the trials and sacrifices of their training and missions. The 20-minute virtual reality experience explores the dynamics of camaraderie among space programs around the world and the collaboration between public and private space agencies, and highlights the latest advancements and plans for deep space exploration. Space Explorers: A New Dawn was written and directed by pioneering VR creative directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. Headspace Studio, the leader in 3D positional audio processing, provided audio capture and end-to-end sound processing for the experience.
Episode 2, Space Explorers: Taking Flight, shines a light on how collaboration is vital to the present and future of space exploration. From traditional cooperation between international space programs to new partnerships between agencies like NASA and private corporations, Space Explorers: Taking Flight provides a unique perspective on the wide reaching ambition of mankind to explore our universe. The 21-minute virtual reality experience was also directed by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. To capture the sheer intensity of the moment, and to provide viewers with the best vantage point for multiple rocket launches, Felix & Paul Studios created a unique system to separate their physical proprietary VR cameras from the cameras’ data recording and battery systems. This allowed the physical cameras to be “sacrificed” to the heat and fire of a rocket launch while preserving the data to produce the highly intense and unique 3D 360-degree immersive virtual reality scenes in Space Explorers: Taking Flight. Headspace Studio provided audio capture and end-to-end sound processing for the Space Explorers: Taking Flight experience.
"It is a real honor for our studio to once again be nominated for a Daytime EMMY award and we thank the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for recognizing our work," said Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder and Creative Director of Felix & Paul Studios. "To be nominated alongside leading entertainment companies like Netflix and HBO highlights the fact that VR is being recognized as a powerful mainstream medium for storytelling and we are thrilled to be in such great company. "
Felix & Paul Studios was nominated for a Daytime EMMY Award in 2016 for Inside Impact: East Africa with President Clinton and Inside the Box of Kurios, a collaboration with Cirque du Soleil Media for which they won the EMMY for Outstanding Interactive Media.
The studio is currently producing the next episode in its Space Explorers series in collaboration with TIME and NASA, which is being filmed by astronauts on board the International Space Station. More information about the future of Space Explorers is available at time.com/space.