PRELOADED is excited to announce that BBC Earth: Life in VR – California Coast, will receive its World Premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest in June.

From 7-12 June, more than 32,000 film fans are expected to visit the world-renowned annual festival this year, featuring around 180 screenings, with over 3,500 delegates from more than 60 countries.

BBC Earth: Life in VR will be part of Alternate Realities, a strand of the six-day programme celebrating the digital evolution of storytelling and shining a light on the world’s most innovative projects and creators.

Our collaboration with BBC Studios will be part of The World Unknown to You, an exhibition of multi-disciplinary installations at Trafalgar Warehouse. It has also been named as a VR Award Nominee at the festival.

An evolutionary step in natural history storytelling.

“BBC Earth: Life in VR is a first of it kind” said Phil Stuart, PRELOADED Creative Director, who led the project to create the real-time, meticulously-crafted underwater adventure.

“To have it selected for one of the world’s leading documentary festivals is a huge thrill. We look forward to seeing how the public and our peers respond to coming closer than ever to the natural world through our boundary-pushing use of real-time VR.”

Designed for audiences new to VR, BBC Earth: Life in VR invites the audience to experience life in the ocean, from the microscopic to the truly gigantic, and encounter the unexpected in an underwater world bursting with life.

The format captures the essence of the BBC’s much-loved natural history content, including the dramatic soundtracks enjoyed by viewers of the hugely popular series Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II.

The Alternate Realities programme is a leading forum for interactive, augmented reality and virtual reality projects. This year’s programme will include an interactive exhibition, a Virtual Reality Arcade and an Alternate Realities Market.