Montclair Film Festival Partnership
This year the Montclair Film Festival partnered with the Brand Experience Lab to use location-based augmented reality (AR) to bring their message of Embrace Your Curiosity to life! This partnership brings emerging storytelling tools to the festival, both during the event and throughout the year. Alexandra and David started working with the MFF team a few weeks before the actual filming began, planning out who would be presented in AR and mapping out locations throughout Montclair. We wanted to create an experience that would entertain visitors not only during the festival but all year round so we focused on the people who make the festival possible and represent the heart of Montclair like Tom Hall, Evie and Stephen Colbert, and more!
All guests can view the content in AR on the Membit app, each location around town hosts a different experience. Our first video was with Tom Hall, Co-Head, Artistic Director of the Montclair Film Festival, where he welcomed people into the festival headquarters and invited them to view the festival artwork as a 3D landscape. Our second shoot was with festival co-founder, Evie Colbert, and her husband, Stephen Colbert at the Clairidge. No strangers to the camera, we had a lot of fun playing around with the concept that AR allows you to appear seemingly from mid-air! Next time you're at The Clairidge, look for Evie and Stephen welcoming you from behind the concession stand!
Other video guests included Beth Gottung, the Co-Head and Executive Director of the festival, who welcomes movie-goers to the festival and informs guests about the Clairidge Chair campaign to help finish renovations through donations. Jason Gleason, head of the Montclair BID welcomes people to Montclair and Tracey Diamond, the artist behind the artwork for the festival, talks about what inspired her and her design.
We had fun bringing the documentary, Patrick and the Whale, to life by putting a giant sperm whale into the Wellmont Arts Plaza and even sharing some educational information about whales, voiced by Sydney Polinchock, an animal behavior major at Bucknell! Lastly, we interviewed Kristine-Ellis Petrik and Jodie Dawson, the founders of Java Love about their passion for coffee and delivering a great experience!
We're now working with the Film Festival staff on some new ideas, including a fun AR Walk of Fame along the streets of Montclair. If you're in Montclair, you can go to Montclair Festival HQ at 505 Bloomfield Avenue to find the map of the AR experiences. You can also visit the Brand Experience Lab in Jersey City to experience location-specific AR throughout our space. Lastly, you can see some of the videos of the work we did below.
We're very excited about what AR can do and how people can engage with the world around them through this tech. Learn more about AR and the metaverse here, and visit our space to see how we can help you harness the power of AR for the work you're doing. Thanks to our partners on this project, Jay Van Buren and his team at Membit for all of their support to make it happen. One of the major components to making this project come to life was their ability to bring ideas to life pretty much on the fly and the ease with which it can be implemented!