The core of Robert Zemeckis' film "The Walk" was that a real man, Philippe Petit, was brave enough to step onto and walk across a tightrope suspended more than 1000 ft over the ground, with no safety equipment. The viewer is placed in a virtual recreation of this, on the rooftop of the World Trade Center in 1974. They have to step off the relative safety of the ledge onto a tightrope, walk on the wire for a short distance, turn around and come back to the ledge. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit narrates the experience, describing his emotions at the moment against the ambient sounds of New York City, with high winds and creaks of the wire immersing the viewer. The end result is that the viewer literally feels like they are there, and are confronted with all the fear and awe they would feel in real life.

We designed the experience for Sony Pictures and Robert Zemeckis' film The Walk to be highly emotional, executable exclusively using Sony hardware, and to give viewers an insight into the film that they couldn't get from any other medium.

The experience was built over 4 months using elements directly from the film, reconditioned for realtime PlayStation 4 playback through Unreal Engine. At the time of its release, there was no significant home usage of VR headsets and the best way to get content in public was through events and activations. The Walk had a special release in IMAX 3D, through this partnership the VR experience went to more than 17 flagship IMAX theaters around the world, from Dubai to Seoul. We set up a standee to contain it that allowed moviegoers to take photos in real life that mimicked the VR content, using forced perspective to show the height of standing on the rooftop. A monitor built into the standee displayed what the VR user was seeing, to draw a crowd to laugh and cheer at the extreme reactions. A wind machine and rubber wire on the floor give the users tactile feedback for what they virtually see and hear.

Duration had a major influence on the design- the difference between 2 minutes per experience and 5 minutes means 30 people an hour instead of 12. Initial concepts were much broader in scope and had to be streamlined, so we decided to focus on the essence of the film- the moment of decision to step out over the abyss. This gave several thousand people a meaningful one-on-one, captivating experience with the film.

To widen its reach for the home entertainment release, the experience was scaled down and ported to mobile platforms as a rendered 360° non-interactive video.