VR Immersive Music Video
Premiered at Cannes Film Festival 2024 - Cannes Next.

This project was sponsored by and made possible through the Tisch ProFunds Grant. Thank you to the Office of the Dean and the Tisch Undergraduate Student Council for their support.

PRINCESS OF THE HILLS is a VR music video directed by Senaida Ng & Ricky Kapoor that envisions an alternate future—a reclamation of what is primal and innately human. Through metaphysical landscapes, the work embodies a transformative journey toward freedom, rooted in the collective power of community. It transcends the constraints of binary realities, creating a boundless space where all identities coexist and thrive. The piece explores themes of passion, femininity and sexual energy embodied by the surreal landscapes that the protagonist ventures through. Both a music video and VR experience powered by Unreal Engine, this avant-garde project explores transhumanism, body autonomy, and female empowerment through a visually stunning and interactive journey with spatial audio. Audiences navigate animated scenes in VR, delving into the fusion of 21st-century underground nightlife and cutting-edge storytelling. The experience is about 4 minutes and 15 seconds long, and features an original soundtrack optimized for 50-speaker spatial audio.

Artists:
Senaida Ng (Clive Davis Institute, ‘24) - Creative Director, Co-Producer, Composer
Ricky Kapoor (Film & TV, ‘24) - Director, Co-Producer
Charlin Wu - UE Lead Designer
Vu Le - UE Environmental Artist
Krist Mai - UE Avatar Modeler
Jason Snell (Interactive Media Arts, ‘23) - Sound Mixer & Production Assistant

Special thank you to our project coordinator, Tom Beaver, for helping us to make this possible. Thank you to 370J Media Commons team for providing us with the space, and to the MARL Lab sound technicians: Erik Bell, Mina Lee, Kaiwen Ding, Parth Pawar, Kai Banda, Mahavarshini Madhan, and Mark Frick, for helping us set up this installation. A special shoutout to everybody who helped us set up and troubleshoot the VR demo including GUMBO NYC, Roman Sharf, Adolfo Almonte, Jay Suong, Oliver-Rose Truxillo, and Robi Abera. 

This is a beta-test version of the VR experience, which we are very excited to be bringing to Cannes Next at the Cannes Film Festival 2024. Thank you so much to Joshua Holtzman and Antonella Verdezoto at Fugitive Sisters for inviting us to present as part of their panel on Women in Virtual Production.

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