Google Goes Back to the Moon With First VR Doodle

If you've been on the Google homepage today, you might have noticed a new Doodle with a distinctly vintage feel, featuring a dapper moustachioed gent wielding an old-fashioned cine-camera. 

But although it takes its inspiration from the past - specifically, the fantastical work of trailblazing French illusionist and director Georges Méliès - the animated film embraces the technology of the future, as the first-ever virtual reality / 360° interactive Doodle.

Created in collaboration with Google Spotlight Stories, Google Arts & Culture, and Cinémathèque Française, the film pays tribute to the numerous technical and narrative film techniques pioneered by Méliès in the early days of cinema - from pyrotechnics and optical effects to horizontal and vertical dropouts, camera stops, crossfades and overprints. 

A beautiful and whimsical fairytale which swoops from under the sea to outer space and features living playing cards, a rocket to the moon, a courtly romance and a nefarious villain, Back to the Moon has already been selected for this year's Annecy International Animation Festival.

We caught up with the directors - Nexus Studios' Fx Goby and Doodle's Hélène Leroux - to find out more about how it was made.

How did the project come into being?

Hélène Leroux: We get to pitch ideas for Doodles every year that respect certain values, celebrating notable events and people who’ve had a positive impact on the world. I presented an idea for Méliès last summer and the team were so excited that they didn’t want to limit it to animation, we wondered how, for such an innovative filmmaker, we could innovate. The first VR Doodle seemed to be the perfect solution.   

At that point we got in touch with Google Spotlight Stories who were super excited and told us they’d been working with Nexus Studios who I’d worked with before. We also partnered with the Google Arts & Culture and Cinematheque France teams who helped us learn more about Melies to be truly authentic with the project.

Tell us about how you worked together to create the film. Had you worked together before? How long did each aspect of the process take (illustration/animation etc)?

FX Goby: Hélène has directed but works mostly as a designer and I mostly direct, but this was a total co-direction with no decision made separately.  Hélène led more on design and I was more in charge of staging and animations but we were both involved in all elements throughout.
HL: It was a very complementary skillset. We like each other’s graphic worlds.  Through all those failed attempts where we worked together on projects which never saw the light, we know we liked the same things and references.

We had a month for pre-production, then full steam into production for three months then around a two-month period for tech assessment to get everything working fine. Pre-production is involved as we’re actually creating tools, there’s a lot of experimentation in a new medium. We benefited in that Nexus have worked in VR storytelling so a lot of ground was covered.

The film is inspired by French filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès, and the title, Back to the Moon, refers to one of his most famous work, Le Voyage dans La Lune. What appealed to you about his work and life story?

FXG: He was the first victim of piracy. He created this new way of making films, inspired all the filmmakers of the time, influenced some small studios that became the biggest studios, created incredibly ambitious stories and once he started to show his films in Europe and in the US they got copied instantly. He created the foundation, yet tragically ended up not being able to make films but selling toys in a very humble toy shop in Paris. But his legacy is there. Without him cinema wouldn’t be cinema. 

HL: In art school my teacher told us about Méliès and his tragic experience working with the big studios and his subsequent decline. I remember they were almost crying, telling that story, and it’s been forever etched on me.  How can you be so pioneering and that happens? We wanted to bring Méliès back and [honour] his incredible contribution. From the glorious films he did to the toy shop he ended up in, his life’s work and his passion.

Which of his techniques have you referenced in the film?

HL: There’s the physical tricks like the first special effects he used, like placing a black cache right in front of the camera to give the illusion of elements disappearing, which he used in The Four Troublesome Heads; or appearing as two different characters at the same time, such as in The Living Playing Cards. We also wanted to have his most famous film in there, and his colour palette. We used all these elements to tell our own story. 

What are the main differences you have to bear in mind when creating a VR experience compared with a normal film?

FXG: It’s the absence of frame. Losing control of the frame and the timing is the thing, it means that we have to find tricks of our own to guide our audience through the story we want to tell. Even though they are free, it has to be a guided freedom or it becomes overwhelming.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the film?

FXG: There is obviously the tech challenge of storytelling in a new medium and all that entails.  I feel like in the beginning, there was a temptation for all of us to tell a story on every single corner of the image.  I think figuring out where and how the main action would take place and using VR to tell that story without overwhelming and losing the audience is what we’re doing here; how to create an epic experience with a considered approach. 

Find out more about the production process in a behind-the-scenes film, below.