Jurassic World: Blue is a cinematic virtual reality experience following Blue, a highly intelligent Velociraptor, on her quest for survival on Isla Nublar. With some of the most advanced VR ever created, the experience uses cutting-edge technology to bring audiences closer than ever to the world of film’s most prominent franchises. In Jurassic World: Blue, groundbreaking filmmaking is harnessed to tell a new side of the JW story and breathe new life into the series, making it perfect for the Communication Lions' mission to celebrate innovative brand storytelling.

Jurassic World: Blue is a continuation of our collaboration with Universal Pictures which began in 2015 with Jurassic World: Apatosaurus. Apatosaurus was one of the most successful VR experiences of all time - even selected to be preloaded on Samsung VR headsets. That experience, released in conjunction with the first Jurassic World film, explored how VR "presence" could give audiences the feeling of being inches away from a dinosaur.

With Jurassic World: Blue, we set out to give fans an even more in-depth glimpse into the lives of the dinosaurs of the island. We had three objectives: to bring awareness to the franchise and new film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, to create a defining system-seller for our partner Oculus' new Oculus Go headset, and to craft an experience that stands alone as a highly entertaining and engaging VR film.

In Jurassic World: Blue, our studio set out to answer a question previously unanswered in the Jurassic World franchise: what happens to the dinosaurs when the humans have left the island? Jurassic World: Blue takes place between the feature films Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and stars the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar as the central characters.

Virtual reality offers a unique opportunity to let audiences see the world through a stranger's eyes, and in this experience the viewer experience life as the fan-favorite velociraptor Blue. A combination of advanced camera movement and visual effects gives the effect of being inside the consciousness of Blue, while spatial audio and stereoscopic imagery represent the enhanced senses of this incredible creature.

With more dinosaurs, epic action setpieces, and a longer runtime, we were determined to create an experience that fans could return to again and again. By filming in the highest resolution our VR cameras have ever achieved, we made sure the experience would push the Oculus hardware to its limits.

Collaboration between our studio and Universal Pictures at every step of the way made for a project that was true to the heart of the Jurassic World franchise, satisfying fans of the films with easter eggs (such as hiding a famous Jeep from the original Jurassic Park in the environment) while providing them with an altogether new and exciting experience.

Jurassic World: Blue was designed as a single eight-minute tracking shot, filmed in 3D 360-degree cinematic virtual reality on location in the Hawaiian jungle. In order to capture this shot, a complex cable cam system was designed and then completely erased in post-production. Most 360 videos can replace the zenith (top) and nadir (bottom) of the shot with still images. In Jurassic World: Blue the jungle foliage rendered this impossible, requiring the invention of special stereoscopic projection technology.

The visual effects were created by ILM, and required sessions of live actor motion capture to create the dinosaurs in the project. Finally, the dinosaurs were integrated into the 360 video environment using advanced compositing. The result is one of the most technologically advanced VR experiences ever created.

Jurassic World: Blue is one of the most downloaded VR experiences of all time. Even today it is on the Oculus Top 25 Most Downloads app chart, almost a year after its release, and more monthly active users than any of our other 30 experiences (including Jurassic World: Apatosaurus). It currently has 4 stars on the Oculus Store with over 3,000 reviews, showing that fans were satisfied with the experience. After viewing the final product, Oculus featured the experience on the Oculus Go packaging and it is now preloaded on every new Go headset.

Jurassic World Blue proved that we could push the limits of cinematic VR into blockbuster film territory. We are proud to have created an experience that, more than simply giving a different perspective of an existing film, has actually created an entirely new world inside one of film's most beloved franchises for fans to explore.