Film transports audience with a leap of imagination

"This is the first time that I designed a story with different endings, and I hope the audience can have different experiences," says Su, who thinks that when people seek friendship or love, proactively pursuing it, rather than passively waiting, might lead to a surprising conclusion.

Su used to be an animation screenwriter, who wrote the story for the animation film White Snake and joined Pinta Studios in 2017 to explore more storytelling possibilities. Ello Echo is the third VR film by the company.

Founded in June 2016, it gathered scriptwriters, artists and engineers to produce VR or augmented reality films. The name of the studio comes from one of the fastest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus when he discovered the New World in 1492. The observer on the ship is credited as the one who first saw what we now know as the Americas.

In 2017, the studio's first VR animated film, The Dream of Collector, was completed and won the VR competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

Their second VR work, Shennong: Taste of Illusion, was completed and nominated for best VR animation at the Raindance Independent Film Festival, held in London in 2018.

Ello Echo was made in 2018, the first VR/AR animation film of the studio. Lei Zhengmeng, the film's producer, also the studio's co-founder and CEO, says that, unlike the previous two products, this film's production process encountered many technical problems.

"We hope that people can watch Ello Echo on different platforms including on their phone, so that more people can enjoy our story," says Lei.

According to Lei, more interactions were added to the film which makes the audience feel more immersed in the story.

"In the original version, Ello is woken up by pushing the button on the hand shank, but when we watched the film by ourselves, we realized that we wanted to shout to wake him up, so we changed this into an audio interaction," says Lei.

"The previous two animations were made to look more realistic, while this film is a more freehand style," Lei adds.

In April, Ello Echo showed at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Su says the film attracted many children as well as adults and she observed the audience reaction when they were watching with VR glasses.

"I was so touched that the audience really got into the story and felt bad for Ello when he was alone," says Su.