ARnold: A Mixed Reality Short Film

ARnold is the first film that takes place in the world around you.

Ever since you adopted your pet dog, ARnold, he has been trying to escape your house. But what happens when ARnold finally gets what he wanted all along?

ARnold combines augmented reality technology, literary- and film-style storytelling to create a new narrative form. Unlike other stories, this tail… oops, we mean TALE is a little different for everyone who experiences it, since it changes based on your surroundings. 

ARnold is the story of a dog, Arnold, as he grows up and tries to escape the confines of your living space. Taking advantage of ARKit's spatial mapping technology, Arnold will sit on your couch, scratch on your door, and bark out your window. It is immersive and personalized, and the storyline will change based on your environment.

You can find Greg's write-up on developing stories for Apple ARKit versus the Microsoft HoloLens.

Our mission is to experiment with the craft of storytelling by pulling inspiration from traditional cinematic storytelling and adapting it with new techniques to the new medium of mixed reality. By placing the story in the user's 3D environment, we wanted to see how we could elicit emotion differently with this new immersive form.

ARnold was originally created as a thesis project at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies in their MxR Lab -- the same lab where Palmer Luckey invented the first Oculus Rift. It was originally a HoloLens product before being ported to ARKit. Made by Greg Feingold, Chinmay Chinara, Aakash Shanbhag, Kacey Weiniger, Suraya Shivji and Jamie Haberman. With animation by Yimin Zhang and sound design by Stephen Jensen.