Tribeca Film Festival Premieres Virtual Reality Fare Thee Well Video
Last summer’s Fare Thee Well concerts celebrated 50 years of the Grateful Dead with the core four members of the band, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, along with Trey Anastasio, Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti, and now fans who weren’t able to land tickets to the shows can feel like they were right in the crowd with the new virtual reality experience that premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
As Rolling Stone reports, Grateful Dead: Truckin’ features concert footage of the band playing the classic Dead tune during one of their concerts at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. The video, which was shot with five cameras, takes the viewer from the stage to the crowd and back again, allowing for a completely immersive experience in which you can turn your head to look all around the stadium at the band and fans, including a point where the viewer is standing next to noted Deadhead Bill Walton.
“You’re not just looking at a screen,” says Cliff Plumer, president of Jaunt Studios, who produced video. “With VR, you can look anywhere. If you weren’t able to get a ticket or lived in a part of world where you can’t get access to these concerts, this is the next best thing.”
“There’s nothing like Deadheads and their fun and spirit, and that’s not something typically captured by traditional media.”
Jaunt recorded all of both Santa Clara concerts, but plans to make the rest of the footage available to fans are still in the works.