Google's first ever VR Doodle is a delightful tribute to a French film legend
Google has released its first VR Doodle, honouring legendary French film director and illusionist Georges Méliès.
The interactive, 360° Doodle, or more accurately, short film, can be viewed on mobile, desktop, or through VR headsets including Google's own Cardboard or Daydream, and it's available worldwide.
Created in collaboration with Google Spotlight Stories, Google Arts and Culture, and Cinémathèque Française, the Doodle coincides with the original release date of Méliès' iconic 1912 work À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole).
You can give it a whirl in VR by downloading the Google Spotlight Stories app on Google Play or in the App Store, or if you don't have a headset, you can watch it below in 360° via YouTube, or in your browser.
Paying tribute to Méliès' romantic adventure style, the silent film, dubbed Back to the Moon, follows a lovelorn illusionist, besotted with a bold queen of hearts, who is kidnapped by a evil dude, of course. There's a lovely tribute to Méliès' 1902 iconic adventure film Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) to end the film, and of course, it's referenced in the title.
Within the film, developers used direct references to Méliès' groundbreaking film experiments, the originals of which you can see on Google. Doodle producers Nexus Studios, with project art lead Hélène Leroux and co-director Fx Goby, wanted to pay homage to a handful of these tricks.
"Méliès brought magic to filmmaking through dozens of tricks and illusions," said Leroux in a statement. "What better way to pay homage to this then by using one of the most innovative and immersive tools we have for storytelling today: Virtual reality!"
"[We] wanted to highlight several tricks Méliès pioneered while also transporting the viewer into a magical world and story."
During Méliès’ time, filming in colour wasn't yet an option, so Leroux and her team purposely used a dominant colour in each scene.
The queen of hearts character is even a reference to actress Jehanne D’Alcy, who starred in some of Méliès’ films and would later become his wife.
Laurent Manonni, director of heritage at the Cinémathèque Française, a project partner, said in a statement for Google that Méliès' "revolutionary" work sparked the beginnings of the special effects used in film today.
"In a time when cinematography was nascent and almost exclusively documentary-style, Méliès single handedly opened the doors of the dream, the magic, and the fiction," he said.
If you're super keen, here's a look behind the scenes of the Doodle's making, with plenty of sketches, film clips and early development:
Topics Google Virtual Reality
Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.
