Participant Media Expands VR Footprint with Series on Climate Change

Participant Media is expanding its virtual reality experience Melting Ice, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, into a four-part series titled This Is Climate Change.

The project, from San Francisco-based production company Condition One and directors Danfung Dennis and Eric Strauss, offers three more ten-minute, immersive experiences through which climate change is felt across the globe. Participant Media teamed up with WITHIN to distribute the series, which will launch later this year on the WITHIN app, available on iOS, Android and all major VR headsets. Participant’s expansion of Melting Ice into a fully-fledged series furthers the company’s VR strategy and its mission to tell compelling and impactful stories across all platforms.

David Linde, Participant’s CEO, stated, “By utilizing this innovative medium to demonstrate the catastrophic effects of global warming, Participant continues to invest in new ways to engage our audience in driving global change. Melting Ice was a great first step for us into VR, and we look forward to furthering our relationship with Danfung and WITHIN to offer up three new experiences that will bring attention to the urgent topic of climate change. I’ve known Chris and have been a fan of his for years now, and I know we both agree—it’s about time!”

“We’re thrilled to continue the partnership with Participant to urgently convey the warning signs of climate change and its devastating effects,” said Dennis. “We brought our cameras to some of the most remote and beautiful parts of the world to create a unique and immersive series. By harnessing the power of VR, we can now translate the abstraction of climate change into a viscerally felt experience.”

WITHIN’s founder, Chris Milk, added, “We are incredibly excited to work with Participant to help bring This Is Climate Change to the world. Climate change is a crisis which affects us all. We hope to use our platform to reach a global audience and to use this powerful VR series to educate and encourage our viewers to take the necessary action to help save our planet.”