The Cinco agency is always pushing for innovative branded experiences to capture attention and imagination. As the conversation around VR was beginning to grow they reached out with an opportunity around the new Ford Mustang GT. The film The Martian was getting buzz and set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and Ford wanted to give festival-goers an “out of this world” experience using the Oculus headset.

I produced the creative project from concept through execution and, if I remember right, we had about two weeks to make it happen. We began by creating a quick prototype in Unity using placeholder assets so that we could block out the environment and the scene. While our developers worked out the technical details of our 3D scene and linking the Oculus and Leap Motion to get positional hand data, our creative team worked on the interior car model and the surrounding garage, Mars, and suburban environments.

The Oculus was billed as “the future of filmmaking” so we structured a brief dream-like story where the user finds themself in the cockpit of the all new Ford Mustang GT and then the garage door opens to reveal that they are unknowingly stranded on the surface of Mars. Through blink transitions we progress them through the story, eventually rocketing off the alien planet and dropping them back where they started.

This project was exciting and very formative in the early days of VR storytelling. It laid some groundwork for all of the VR and AR projects that I have produced since then.

Studio: Bully! Entertainment

Chief Creative: Carlson Bull

Art Director: Mike Pinkin

Producer: Eric Daly