South by Southwest is a wonder of new films, music, and entertainment. The festival is filled with panels, premieres, concerts, and a seemingly endless selection of other events to attend. And then there is The Tent. This work is neither a concert nor a movie, but rather an immersive experience of storytelling that was part of this year’s SXSW XR Experience Competition.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are parts of the larger category of extended reality (XR). The program or system is intended to mimic, distort, enhance, and replace the viewer’s surroundings in order to create a unique experience. That is exactly what The Tent, directed and produced by Rory Mitchell, accomplishes with its unique method of storytelling.
The Tent, utilizing iPads, allows the audience to watch the 21-minute short film about a mysterious tent appearing on the front lawn of a woman’s house in Los Angeles. The story tackles concepts of activism, personal space, and human connection. What’s more, the whole of the film is completely three dimensional thanks to the augmented reality technology. 
The story takes place in and around a single house, but that house is presented on top of a table in the middle of the room. Members of the audience can move freely around the environment before them and are not limited to the single angle that one might expect from the typical movie experience. Even when scenes are cut and spliced together with various angles, the experience is limited to a single screen at a time. Using the iPad as the viewing screen, the viewer can walk around to any vantage point while watching the story unfold and see any aspect that they feel is important. Upon rewatch, the experience can be completely new with different focuses during different scenes. 
The actual story is a nice tale, but the star of this show is the technology and the possible experience that can be created using it. The ability to exist inside of a story as it unfolds is just the beginning. Stories like The Tent are just the beginning of this medium, and surely a new type of technology will help expand the possibilities even further. Blending the XR world with AI will eventually lead to truly interactive experiences that can exist in the real world. Imagine a murder mystery set in the viewer’s own house with clues and characters that can be interacted with. The possibilities are fascinating.
In the meantime, you have to go to Austin to take a look at The Tent to get an idea of where the movie going experience is headed. As always, SXSW has not disappointed.
We wanted to give a special thanks to our Entertainment Today Reporter: Nina Ameri for doing a fantastic job with covering The SXSW Film Festival and Special Events, for us in Austin, Texas!
There will be a lot more great news stories from Nina Ameri!
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