Streaming through VRChat, the screenings will take place in a custom-built virtual IMAX cinema. The virtual cinema, which will feature the films shortlisted for Discover.film’s Best Content Award, has been designed  to look like a real-life cinema but with some extras thrown in, such as a built-in voting system for audiences to select their favourite films.

“Ive always believed VR offers limitless opportunities for both sponsors and advertisers,” said Jaine Green, Head of Content at Discover.film. “Given VR and AR’s massive growth over recent years, we started planning this event and creating the cinema well before lockdown, as an exciting addition to our existing short film festival, The Discover.film Awards. Now, of course, were delighted to be in the position of having a wonderful and completely safe screening space to welcome a global audience to celebrate the hard work of talented filmmakers from around the world.”

The Discover.film Virtual Reality Festival will take place on Friday 14 August at 8pm (BST) for EU audiences, and again on Saturday 15 August at 1am (BST) for US audiences. It can be accessed via a VR headset in VRChat, or via PC by following the steps here.

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The AR experience enables viewers to take a selfie with Scooby as a puppy and share this image on social and messaging apps. It is accessible to people who have updated to the latest version of the YouTube app, where users should see a ‘launch camera’ button on screen while watching the video.

“Trailers continue to play a critical role in the movie industry, but today’s digitally savvy audiences want new ways to connect with the trailer-viewing experience,” says Andrew Hotz, executive vice president of worldwide digital marketing and chief data strategist at Warner Bros. “In partnering with YouTube to create the first augmented reality movie trailer for Scoob!, viewers around the world now can become part of the trailer experience, enabling all generations of fans to take pictures with Scooby-Doo and heighten their connection to the iconic character.”

Scoob! begins with somewhat of an origin story, sharing how Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined Fred, Velma, and Daphne to form Mystery Inc, before presenting the gang in their adult form – as we know them best – while they embark on one of their most challenging mysteries.  

The film is voiced by the likes of Frank Welker, Will Forte, Zac Efron, Gina Rodriguez, Amanda Seyfried, Jason Isaacs, Ken Jeong, Tracy Morgan, Mark Walberg, and Kiersey Clemons. It’s set for a 15 May 2020 release.

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Starting today, Facebook is launching two new ad solutions that revolve around getting more people to the movies. Film studios will now be able to purchase movie reminder ads and movie showtime ads, which will aim to increase ticket sales and spread the word about upcoming movies to uninformed Facebook members.

“Moviegoers often discover a film months before its release, but they need reminders when a film they care about is about to hit theaters. With movie reminder ads, when people see an ad for a film in their News Feed, they can now tap an Interested button to receive a reminder in their Facebook notifications when the movie hits theaters,” said Facebook’s blog post.

Once the reminder is received, the notification will take people to the movie’s Facebook page, where anyone can look up local showtimes and purchase tickets. Facebook will also be launching movie showtime ads, which will allow users to click on a Get Showtimes button right when they scroll past a movie ad. The Get Showtimes button will redirect users to the film’s Facebook page, where people can found out.

“Advertisers testing these solutions are already seeing strong results driving showtime lookups and ticket sales. Universal Pictures used Facebook showtime ads to promote its recent holiday film, “The Grinch,” and saw a significant increase in showtime lookups and ticket purchases,” said Facebook.

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Using Snapchat’s ‘Marker Tracking’ lens, cinemagoers across Europe will be able to bring X-Men: Dark Phoenix posters and large format standees to life in Odeon cinema foyers. By pointing the camera within Snapchat at the posters and standees, people will see witness Sophie Turner appear as the Dark Phoenix before she spins around multiple times, throwing up debris and smoke, the disappears.

“We have loved working with Snap on this initiative,” said Anya Morris, EMEA digital marketing manager at 20^th Century Fox. “We always look for cutting edge, original initiatives and Snap’s ever-evolving lens tech – as well as their enthusiasm and collaboration – make them a perfect partner for this.”

The campaign has launched at several Odeon, UCI, UCI Kinowelt, and Cinesa locations across the UK, Italy, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Ireland. Snapchat has also produced a lens which transforms Snapchatters into the Dark Phoenix, while enabling them to book cinema tickets.

“Odeon Cinemas Group are thrilled to be partnering with our key strategic partner 20th Century Fox and Snapchat on this fantastic piece of in-cinema innovation,” said Tanya Easterman, group head of partnerships at Odeon Cinemas. “Our guests are huge fans of the X-Men franchise and we look forward to seeing them interact with this exclusive content in our cinemas across Europe.”

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The ‘Buy Tickets’ button has been added to Fandango’s profile on the Facebook-owned photo and video sharing social app – providing users with quicker access to the ticket buying section of Fandango’s mobile webpage. This button joins the ‘Shop’ button which gives people access to movie merchandise and ticketing offers.

Fandango’s ticketing option will also roll out on movie-specific Instagram pages in the coming weeks.

“As millions of movie fans have gravitated to social media platforms to discover, share and engage with their favourite movie content, Fandango has been essential to that experience, offering ticketing capabilities and access to the most comprehensive network of US theatres,” said Paul Yanover, president at Fandango. “We’re very excited to integrate ticketing into our Fandango Instagram, and look forward to working with our studio partners to help transform consumer passion into advance ticket purchases.”

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Speaking during a presentation at the Entertainment Finance Forum in Hollywood, California, the app’s CEO Mitch Lowe told the audience that “we know all about you”, according to Media Play News.

“We get an enormous amount of information,” he said. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.”

The controversial comments from Lowe are interesting seeing as the app’s privacy policy only states that the user’s location is checked to “develop, improve, and personalise the service”. And nothing about tracking people while they’re at home or at another location would seem to help any of that.

The collection of this data, according to Lowe, is about achieving the company’s vision “to build a night at the movies”, which would include suggesting places that subscribers could have food before or after a cinema trip among other things.

“We are exploring utilising location-based marketing as a way to help enhance the overall experience by creating more opportunities for our subscribers to enjoy all the various elements of a good movie night,” said a MoviePass spokesperson. “We will not be selling the data that we gather. Rather, we will use it to better inform how to market potential customer benefits including discounts on transportation, coupons for nearby restaurants, and other similar opportunities.”

In addition to his interesting comments, Lowe also said that MoviePass now has over 2m subscribers and accounts for six per cent of ticket purchases in the US. The company expects to reach 5m paid subscribers by the end of the year, accounting for 20 per cent of ticket purchases.

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Studios including 20^th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures will all be joining the Disney’s Movies Anywhere, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. Movies Anywhere enables consumers to buy movies and store them in a digital locker to access on any of their devices.

Viacom’s Paramount Pictures is reported to be the only of the six major Hollywood studios not joining the service, after failing to agree over financial terms. Smaller Lions Gate Entertainment has also chosen not to be part of the project, but both companies are said to be supportive of the service and may still join at a later time.

Previously, major studios – except for Disney – had supported a format called UltraViolet for the buying and cross-device consumption of their movies. It is not yet clear whether the studios will continue to support that service as well.  

Join us at the 2017 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony, taking place in London on Thursday 16 November, to mix with the industrys best and brightest, and raise a glass to the years best campaigns and solutions. To find out more, and to book your place, click here.

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Oath and MEC worked together to co-produce content that could be seeded out globally, while Paramount teamed up with graffiti artist INSA – who creates GIF graffiti (GIF-iti) animations – to use AR technology to create the experience.

The interactive movie poster, which is at the rail station until 7pm today (6 September) and features the film’s lead actor Jennifer Lawrence, has been designed by James Jean and produced by Create. It features Lawrence in a white dress in a garden surrounded by fairytale-like flowers, holding her own heart.

To bring the image to life, people have to use INSA’s app – either by downloading it to their phones or by using one the iPads available at the installation. To encourage social sharing, the hashtag #mothermovie has been printed around the activation.

For those that can’t make it to Kings Cross, the animation and a highlights video of the activation are being hosted on a specially-created Tumblr page. In addition, behind-the-scenes footage and live activation content will be shared on Oath, Paramount and INSA’s social channels, as well as being promoted across Yahoo’s editorial channels and social pages in the UK, Australia, Germany, France and Spain.

“By teaming with INSA we’ve been able to create beautiful content that will engage consumers with the film,” said Nigel Clarkson, UK managing director at Oath. “Moreover, by utilising our own content brands and distribution channels, we are connecting with those passing through Kings Cross today and movie fans across the globe.”

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The movie is planned to hit theatres on 20 September 2019 to coincide with the 10^th anniversary of the original Angry Birds game.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 will be directed by Adventure Time’s Thurop Van Orman with co-direction from Rick and Morty’s John Rice. Production will be handled by Despicable Me’s John Cohen and Ice Age’s Peter Ackerman will pen the movie.

“We are thrilled to be teaming up again with Sony Pictures after the fantastic cooperation in the first movie and I cant wait to experience the new journey in the upcoming film,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio Entertainment. “Rovio is continuing to focus on creating exciting new stories and experiences around our games and we’re eager to take fans back into the vibrant Angry Birds world on the big screen.”

The first Angry Birds movie was released worldwide last year, grossing around $350m. Despite the success of the movie, and the 3.7bn times its Angry Birds game has been downloaded, the entertainment studio has faced several problems over the last few years and was forced to cut 10 per cent of its workforce in February this year, 18 months after reducing staff by a third.

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In that spirit, our Innovation Lab feature takes a step beyond the world of apps, ads and handsets with slightly bigger screens, in order to share some of the tech worlds innovative ideas. They might be interesting, disruptive or just outright strange, but these are the stories that have caught our eye over the past week.

Man Lives for 555 Days on Heart in a Backpack

Stan Larkin, a 25-year-old from Michigan, is celebrating a successful full heart transplant, an event that would be notable enough, but is made all the more incredible by the fact that his original heart was removed over a year and a half ago.

Stan and his brother Dominique were both diagnosed with familial cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart condition that can cause heart failure with no warning. After years on the donor waiting list, both siblings had their hearts removed and were fitted with an artificial heart device called a Syncardia.

“They were both very, very ill when we first met them in our intensive care units,” said Dr Jonathan Haft, associate professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center. “We wanted to get them heart transplants, but we didnt think we had enough time. Theres just something about their unique anatomic situation where other technology wasnt going to work.”

While Dominique only needed to use the technology for a few weeks before receiving a full transplant, Stan spent more than a year on the waiting list. So he could leave the hospital and maintain a normal life, he was equipped with a 6kg portable device that connected to his vascular system to keep oxygenated blood pumping around his body, which he wore in a backpack.

Sony Pictures and Madame Tussauds Team Up for Ghostbusters VR Experience
Ahead of the release of the new Ghostbusters film, Sony Pictures has partnered with Madame Tussauds New York, Ghost Corps productions and virtual reality tech specialists The Void to produce a multi-sensory VR experience.

Scheduled to open to the public on 1 July, the VR experience will launch as part of the Ghostbusters Experience at Madame Tussauds New York. Visitors will be able to see authentic props, costumes, gadgets and even the iconic ECTO-1 car, before taking part in a ghost hunt of their own, saving New York from a paranormal villain.

Visitors will track and trap their supernatural foe in an environment modelled on a New York apartment that combines physical props and sets, real-time interactive effects and virtual reality technology to enable them to interact with characters from the upcoming film.

“Ghostbusters has an incredible, passionate fan following, and now VR technology allows the fans to become a Ghostbuster themselves within Madame Tussauds New York,” said Ghostbusters creator Ivan Reitman. “The technology is breathtaking, the experience is thrilling, and what better way is there to use VR than to let audiences inhabit the stories they love.”

Mobile-based AI Writes Sci-fi Screenplay

10 years ago, artificial intelligence seemed like an idea limited to science fiction films. Now, it turns out that AI are attempting to write those very same films, or at least thats the task a researcher at New York University set one up to do.

The AI, called Benjamin, is based on similar technology to that found in smartphone keyboards that suggest the next word you are likely to type. Ross Goodwin, who created the AI, trained it by feeding in screenplays from dozens of science fiction films, mostly from the 80s and 90s.

The screenplay the AI created, called “Sunspring” was then filmed as part of a 48-Hour Film Challenge at the Sci-Fi London festival, starring Thomas Middleditch, best known for tech industry satire Silicon Valley. Benjamin has already moved on to its next project, producing short film synopses, which it posts on its Facebook page.

China Plans Lab 10,000 Feet Underwater
Chinese developers have already constructed several artificial islands on reefs in the South China Sea, for use as military barracks, lookout towers, runways and even a lighthouse, but the next big project planned for sea isnt on top of the waves, but beneath them.

According to Bloomberg, China is accelerating plans to design and build a manned deep-sea platform that would primarily help hunt for minerals as far as 3km beneath the ocean, but may also serve a military purpose in what have often been disputed waters.

In Chinas five-year economic plan, released in March, the oceanic space station was ranked second in its top 100 science and technology priorities. Authorities have recently examined the project and decided to speed up efforts to help it exploit the natural resources that exist on the seabed, as well as strengthen its claim over the widely-used shipping channels that run through the area.

This Machine Will Fold, Steam and Perfume Your Laundry for Only $800

Household appliances like washing machines and fridges are getting smarter and more connected all the time, but there are still a few chores that technology has yet to find an automated solution to. We can cross one of those off the list, though, thanks to the FoldiMate.

The three-foot-high machine, which will retail for $700 to $850 (£485 to £590), can fold one item of clothing in 10 seconds, and also steams, perfumes and sanitizes them. Users simply have to clip their items into the machine, which has a capacity of 15-20 articles of clothing, and let it go to work.

There are some disclaimers, however. The FoldiMate cant deal with large items like linens, or small items including socks, and the manufacturers warn that there is a chance (albeit less than one per cent) that the machine could do “something other than fold your clothes”, which is a more polite way of saying it could irreparably mangle them.

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