VERA'S NOT ALONE
In June 2023, Vera’s Not Alone became the first public realisation of Nested Cinema. Presented at the University of Salford’s MediaCity campus, the pilot explored a simple but ambitious question: what happens when the cinematic world is allowed to extend beyond the screen and into the physical space occupied by the audience?
Written and directed by Pavel Prokopic, the short post-apocalyptic fiction placed each visitor inside Vera’s world. Film unfolded across multiple screens while a physical set, 360° cinematic VR, dynamic lighting and an 11-channel spatial soundscape worked together as interconnected layers of the same fictional environment. The installation was designed so that the room itself became part of the story: the sofa on which the audience member sat was also Vera’s sofa, and entering VR revealed a virtual version of the same space, with Vera sitting beside them. The physical production design and automated dynamic lighting were conceived and technically realised by Jayne Sayer, with the wider project bringing together filmmaking, creative technology, sound and technical expertise.
More than 100 people experienced the pilot. Audience research included 81 survey responses and 41 qualitative interviews, revealing a strong sense of atmospheric immersion and, importantly, demonstrating how physical space, screen content, VR, lighting and spatial sound could operate as a unified cinematic language.
The pilot also exposed the practical challenges of this new form: reliance on off-the-shelf VR hardware, a highly bespoke technical system and an experience originally designed for one visitor at a time. Those discoveries became as important as the creative successes.
They now directly inform the next stage of Nested Cinema: developing a more flexible and deployable creative platform, working with independent filmmakers to explore how existing films can be spatialised for immersive exhibition, and moving the concept from a singular experimental installation towards a form that can operate within independent cinema and other exhibition spaces.