LOROS Hospice has extended the deadline and added a new category to its ‘VR for Good’ film competition to help enthusiastic hobbyists to apply.
LOROS Hospice, which cares for over 2,500 terminally ill patients across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland each year, has been developing its use of virtual reality with its patients and their families.
Through the use of virtual reality (VR) glasses, patients are transported to a whole new environment, one where they can move around freely and chat and reminisce with friends and families.
The I Experience VR competition, which was launched last month, has a ‘Best of the Best’ top prize of £6,000, aims to attract a wide variety of immersive films, all designed to provide LOROS Hospice patients with a short therapeutic respite from their current reality. The prize money has been kindly provided by a generous private donor.
The LOROS VR project has been developed in partnership with CATS are not PEAS, a critically acclaimed VR production company.
The competition has excited the VR world but the organisers wanted to ensure that hobbyist filmmakers can also engage with the competition.
As well as categories such as indoor, outdoor, historical and musical, an additional category has been added, ‘anything goes’, designed to give amateur filmmakers the chance to show off their talents too. The deadline has also been extended to Friday 4th January 2019 to allow time over the Christmas holiday for students and hobbyists to make their films.
LOROS CEO John Knight: “Our competition has sparked a lot of interest but we’ve had feedback from budding filmmakers that they’d like to enter but are finding the criteria a bit restrictive. So we’re broadening it to make it as easy as possible for a wide range of people to get involved.
“VR has huge potential for our patients, carers and their families and we want as much great content as possible.”
Alex Rühl, director of CATS are not PEAS, said: “We’ve added this new category because we want to see the whole spectrum of amazing, immersive content people are creating. Whether it’s VR180, animation, one minute long or 20, and whether you’re a hobbyist filmmaker or a professional production studio - show us what you’ve got!”
The competition is open now and will run until midnight on Friday 4th January 2019. In addition to the five top prizes, all entries judged to be taken forwards for inclusion in the I Experience VR library will all receive a Laurel in recognition of the high quality of their film and its potential to benefit Hospice patients.
For full details on the competition categories, rules, guidelines and entry information, please visit loros.co.uk/vrcomp
