In March 2018, Start Beyond launched the Australian VR Artist Residency Program, which invites two leading practitioners from traditional screen media and creative industries to collaborate on new, interactive cinematic VR projects.
The Australian VR Artist Residency Program is an innovative program which provides creative artists and leading practitioners of media production the chance to develop a functional virtual reality project. Successful applicants will be invited to work with Start Beyond’s team of industry leading producers, developers, artists, creative and interaction specialists.
At the end of the six-month program, residents will have created a production-ready virtual reality prototype and supporting documentation.
The program will actively build residents’ skills, competencies and experience. It will culminate in a production-ready VR property for which Start Beyond will seek production funding and distribution opportunities.
Writer, director and producer Ryan Griffen is inspired by 1950s cinema, genre films of the 1980s, and a passion for fusing modern Australian storytelling with classic genre themes. Ryan’s work spans short film, feature film and television.
Ryan is the creator of sci-fi hit television series Cleverman, the acclaimed, high concept genre series that follows two estranged Indigenous brothers struggling to co-exist with non-human creatures living among them.
Ryan’s project is currently in stealth mode. Stay tuned for announcements in the near future.
Start Beyond is an award-winning full-service production studio specialising in a new era of highly immersive and interactive cinematic entertainment.
The studio brings vast expertise in entertainment and technology to fuse feature film-quality visuals with interactive content, creating original and branded, best of class immersive narrative experiences.
There is a travel allowance allocated for the successful applicant. For those who live interstate we will look at having you based in Sydney for some of the time during your residency and the cost for flights and accommodation for this period will be covered and will work around the Resident’s availability.
Start Beyond agree to treat all pitches submitted to us with the utmost confidentiality and we will have no right in your project unless we formally contract you and enter into an Agreement.
No. We encourage people from all creative disciplines to apply and VR experience will not be considered a pre-requisite. We do expect applicants to be recognised in their particular field of expertise and have a minimum of two published, publicly performed or recognised credits that reflect this.
The Residency can be flexible but you must be available to travel to Sydney for at least one week during the period. And you must be available to email, video conference and have phone meetings in order to keep the development moving forward between January and June 2019. The more time and energy you are able to give the project, the better the outcomes will be for all.
No. The application will take approximately 15 minutes to finish and will need to be completed in one seating. Before you start, please have a 200 word description of your project idea to hand. If you want to come back to the application we would suggest that you make notes of the questions in a word document and then submit the application when you are ready.
Yes. The successful resident will receive a fee of $20,000 over the course of their residency. This fee is to cover the time that the resident will spend working with start beyond to develop their VR idea. The successful applicant would be expected to enter a contract Agreement with Start Beyond which will outline the minimum amount of contact time would be expected for this fee and the payment of the fee will be dependent on particular milestones that are met throughout the Residency.
The residency is open to creatives, aged 18 years and over, who are Australian citizens and have had a least two published, publicly performed or recognised credits for their work.
Registrations for the second intake of the Australian VR Residency Program will open between 31 August 2018 and midnight 10 October 2018 AEDT. Please read the FAQs below for more information.
The Australian VR Artist Residency Program is funded with assistance from the Screen Australia Enterprise Ideas Program.
Start Beyond is looking to find an artist who wants to combine their art form with the new immersive medium of VR to create something amazing, compelling and marketable.
