Projects
Fear City Paradise
Fear City Paradise
Fear City Paradise is a new location-based experience (LBE) that uses multiplayer VR to take audiences on a journey into one intoxicating night in the New York City of 1978, where they will discover the roots of the Disco music revolution.
This is the story of the real Disco scene, a dance music revolution born from the Queer, Black and Latino communities of New York, who at the beginning of the 1970s created their own nightlife in order to be seen, and dance together in safety. Through that desire a new musical culture would be born, where DJs, parties, and dancing would create its own musical genre called Disco, and would break out of the underground and take over the world. This experience celebrates that movement, and takes audiences back to the underground, authentic scene to discover where the music came from: in the loft parties and the all-night sweaty dance clubs where a sense of community and acceptance were more important than velvet ropes and being photographed with a celebrity.
From the Stonewall Riots to Studio 54, this immersive and interactive documentary experience celebrates how a diverse, yet marginalised community’s obsession with freedom, dancing, and celebrating life, created musical innovations and artistry in the bleakest of decades. A movement that would influence popular dance music forever more.
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£50,000
Aims of the Project
We are making Fear City Paradise for multigenerational audiences who are seeking out new music experiences that capture their imagination and allow them access to new technology.
Whether for a family, a group of friends or even individuals searching for magical moments of connection and serendipity, we want FCP to be a new benchmark in transportive and emotional immersive experiences.
How did they do that?
We are developing this as a multisensory, multiplayer virtual reality experience that uses 3DoF/ 6DoF VR, 360º/180º/16:9 video, spatial sound, immersive set design, haptics, wind, lighting, protection and sound.
Meet the artists
Darren Emerson
Lead artist
Darren Emerson is a multi-award winning immersive artist and the co-founder of production company East City Films. Over the last 10 years his pioneering storytelling work in VR has been recognised for its originality, technical excellence and ability to reach delighted audiences.
His dedication can be seen in the development of his work: from early 360 films Witness 360: 7/7 (2015) and Indefinite (2016), onto the multi-award winning room-scale documentaries Common Ground (2019), In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats (2022), and Letters from Drancy (2023).
His work is noted for its hybrid approach to the medium of VR, utilising a wide range of techniques and styles to create experiences that fuse technical prowess with a transcendent storytelling that is profoundly humanistic.
Ash Cowan
Ashley is an Executive Producer, Producer, and Co-Founder of London production company East City Films. Ashley expertise is in managing large production teams, complex budgets, and contracts with multiple partners.
Dan Tucker
Dan is an award winning digital producer and curator with over 25 years of experience of working with broadcasters, digital agencies, startups and international artists. Passionate about interaction and story, Dan works in the intersection between multiple screen industries, from television documentary to virtual reality.
Rebecca Mills
Rebecca Mills is an award winning producer whose experience ranges across documentary, drama, podcasts, music videos, commercials and art films in both a creative, line producer and head of production capacity.
After the release of her first short fiction film, Creative UK, Screen Skills and the BFI selected Rebecca as one of four “emerging producers’, sending her to the Cannes and Rotterdam Film Festival Producer Labs. She holds a Masters with Distinction in Documentary filmmaking.
Micaela Blitz
Micaela Blitz is a versatile producer, writer, and journalist with extensive experience across factual television projects and documentaries for major networks. Micaela excels in project development, research, and casting.
