LIVE Filmzine #275 September 2019

RANDAL KLEISER
GREASE DIRECTOR TALKS ABOUT HIS VR
DRAMA PROJECT DEFROST
Best known as the director of the
classic musical Grease (1978), Randal
Kleiser has made quite a departure for
his latest project – the virtual reality
drama series Defrost, which consists
of 11 five-minute episodes.
In a screening held in Beijing on April
27, Chinese technology writers and
others watched three episodes of
the series. Afterwards, the audience
had the chance to chat with Kleiser
through Skype.
All 11 episodes of Defrost were released
worldwide on April 25 on Veer,
a Beijing-based platform for VR content
set up by three young Chinese
entrepreneurs in 2016.
Kleiser tells the Post in a phone interview
that he used over US$300,000 of his own
money to make the film, the script of which
he finished even before he made Grease.
“My brother is a visual effects supervisor. He
has done many movies. He began his career
with Tron, the Disney picture. He always
shows me new things like digital make-up
and the Oculus Rift,” he says.
“I first tried Oculus four years ago. It was walking
through a villa in Italy in 3D. I was able to
walk around, go up the steps, look out and see
it all as if I was really there. It blew me away. I
wanted to figure out how to do a drama with it.
I thought of the script that I had written a long
time ago and I adapted it to VR.”