What can you learn about human nature from animation? That is what Eric Darnell wants to know.
Eric is one of the pioneers of computer-generated movies, he was the director of blockbuster animations like ANTZ, the Madagascar movies, Penguins.
He's now decided the future of filmmaking is this: he has passed up the big bucks of Hollywood to run his very own Virtual Reality studio start-up Baobab.
He's realised that in order to make the ultimate Virtual Reality film, you need to understand people.
"You know, in my career after 20 years of doing five feature films I started to feel like I was repeating myself a little bit," he says.
"Even though I'm proud of everything I did, this has just been a whole new thing."
Source: The Feed
His last film - Penguins - dropped last year and made a staggering $373M at the international box-office, but it led to the director to start looking for something more.
"Penguins came out in fall of 2015 and I started wondering what my next project would be," he says.
"The immersion you feel when you put these headsets on, the fact that you really feel like you're somewhere.
"For a storyteller, to be able to take the audience out of that theatre seat where all you can do is look through a rectangle at a world that you can never be a part of and characters that never knew you existed.
"You can take them out of that seat and put them through that rectangle into that world and have a character turn and look at you and be like 'hi, welcome to my world'.
"Nobody knew what they were doing, but everyone was really enthusiastic"
"And you feel like you're actually there."
One of the things that he says has attracted him to the medium are the levels of enthusiasm and excitement among those trying to create this new form of storytelling.
"VR reminded me of the beginning days of computer animation, when nobody knew what they were doing, but everyone's excited about, nobody knows where it's going.
"Nobody knew what they were doing, but everyone was really enthusiastic. Like, how are we gonna do this? I don't know, let's figure it out.
