My unlikely path to Sundance 2018

I spent my late teens and early 20's pursuing a career in filmmaking and video production. I nearly went to film school, and literally flipped a coin to decide on going to the University of Washington instead. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival was a lofty aspiration of mine. So there's some irony that it was 3 years after I gave up my fledgling career as a filmmaker to pursue marketing that I was selected as a "Lead Artist" for the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. 

Here's the story of how it happened, and how the festival drove major publicity for HaptX on a shoestring startup budget.

Sundance & Virtual Reality

Sundance is best known a showcase for independent films, but it's also home to New Frontier - a section of the festival that showcases stories told with emerging technologies like AI, AR, and VR. An early Oculus Rift prototype made an appearance at Sundance in 2012, prceding It's an wave of VR started because of the Sundance Film Festival. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey interned with the Sundance Institute when he was in college, and the first Oculus Rift prototype made its debut at Sundance 2012 – 6 months before the Oculus Kickstarter, 1 year before the DK1 shipped, and 2 years before Facebook purchased Oculus for $2 Billion.

I got in touch with New Frontier, in mid-2017 and arranged a demo for their team at the Sundance Institute's Los Angeles office, which is across the street from the La Brea Tarpits. I showed them a prototype version of the HaptX Glove (there was just one hand version at this time), which had yet to be publicly announced. They were thrilled by the technology and were delighted by the demo we had created, which was still a work in progress at this point.

Developing "Farm Defense"

We called the experience, "Farm Defense." In the story, the user interacts with a small farm: waving their hand through a field of wheat, picking up a tractor and feeling the rumble of its engine, allowing a small fox to leap on their palm and trot around. Then UFOs invade and the user smashes them away to defend their farm and save their fox and tractor from abduction.

I developed the concept with Jake along with the software and hardware team. It was important to have the interactions highlight the capabilities of the gloves (and conceal any limitations of the prototype hardware). A large portion of the credit goes to Keenan Reimer, the game developer who sourced the 3D assets and developed the interactions. Keenan and I met regularly to cover creative direction and help it all feel cohesive. I sourced the Edvard Grieg soundtrack (which set the perfect atmosphere, but we'd come to hate it since we would here it thousands of times as we exhibited this demo repeatedly over the years).

While I'm proud of my contributions to the project and for my role in getting us in front of the Sundance Institute, the HaptX product and engineering team deserve the lions share of the credit for our admission into Sundance. We were there because of our innovations in haptics, not for the dramatic storytelling in Farm Defense.

Extracting as much marketing value as possible from Sundance

Once we got into Sundance, the next step was to make it as valuable as possible for our startup. I faced some skepticism internally about whether this was worthwhile -- our main lines of business were training, simulation, design, and manufacturing. How did a film festival fit in to our go-to-market plan? 

I was convinced that because of Sundance's VR connection, plus the media, investors, and influential individuals in attendance that it would be a big marketing win for our little startup. 

One challenge: Sundance didn't want our exhibit to come off as a booth at a trade show. They explicitly said they didn't want our logo on the walls. I created the poster series above, and made print-outs of each one to hand out to attendees. They showcased the whimsical interactions of the demo and gave visitors a sneak preview of what to expect. Our logo was subtle in the bottom, next to the Sundance laurels. 

I had posters printed, framed, and shipped to the festival. I hung them at our exhibit without permission, even though they broke the rules and featured HaptX's logo. Thankfully, the festival producer approved, calling them "Cute." 

Hundreds of people came through to experience the demo, including dozens of celebrities. Usher, Elijah Wood, Taika Waititi, Jason Isaacs, M.I.A., Darren Aronofsky, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Morgan Neville (Academy Award Winning documentary filmmaker), Jason Rubin (creator of Crash Bandicoot), and all of the Black Eyed Peas. Reggie Watts gave us a great Instagram shoutout. Robert Redford came through, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to meet him. 

One of my most memorable encounters was with John Perry Barlow, an early internet activist, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and all around fascinating person. He visited on the last day of the New Frontier exhibit and tried our thermal haptic demo. He asked in-depth technical questions about the system and its development. I did a double take when I saw his obituary in the New York Times less than two weeks later. 

In addition to Hollywood celebrities and Deadheads, we also met investors, VR industry leaders, and media. We got great writeups from CNET and The Verge, among others. 

The HaptX Glove marked both the public premiere of the haptic glove and the first hardware product to debut at The Sundance Film Festival since the Oculus Rift in 2012. It was a moment where our small startup punched above our weight, making a big impact on a shoestring budget.

It was an incredible experience to be a part of.