Deja Vu: An Endless Virtual Journey

Deja Vu is an interactive VR film that presents an endless story across three timelines of a single event, where past, present, and future intertwine to change a painful memory of past reality with a happy ending in present virtual reality, but, is it possible?
Officially selected for Laval Virtual 2022, it represents a new method of interactive storytelling for the virtual reality medium, introduced at the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS) 2023 in Kobe, Japan.

Creators Behind Deja Vu

Our diverse team blends storytelling, technology, and innovation to bring immersive VR experiences to life. Get to know the visionaries shaping Deja Vu and Assemble.

The Minds Behind Deja Vu

Pezhman Azizi

Actor

Samuel Chu

Mocap Supervisor

Todd R Flitton

Animation Artist

ErikMusic

Music

Tiggi McCarthy

Sound Design

Barnabas Olga

Sound Design

Dr Melanie Lee

Project Supervisor

Jon

Unreal Engine Packaging

Story

The story concentrates upon anArchitect. He is annoyed by a memory of rejection by the character Liz, aformer love. So, he decides to create a loop in time to change the events as hewishes. He redesigns the place where he met Liz to express his love again. He,the Architect, creates three different timelines of that fateful day, eachcentred in one of the parallel universes. In one, the young Architect, Tom, iswaiting for Liz in order to express his feelings and suffer the rejectionagain. In another, the Architect explains to Liz how she had previouslyrejected him, which in effect caused him to design this virtual reality. In thefinal universe, the Architect and Liz are a happy couple visiting the artgallery.Later, the Architect experiencesa Deja Vu and realises that there is a glitch in the matrix he has designed.The audience recognises that the intervention of the virtual system caused Lizto reject the proposal in the first instance. It reveals an interaction betweenthe current virtual reality system and real events from the past.

Research

Story-Without-End:
A Narrative Structure for Open-World Cinematic VR

ICIDS Conference,
Kobe, Japan.

Nov 2023

21 min

Story Without End:
Interactive Storytelling for Virtual reality Medium

Media & Performance Research Symposium, Staffordshire University, UK.

Jan 2022

13 min

The Generic Elements of Interactive Cinematic Virtual Reality (ICVR)

Beyond Conference,
Belfast, Northern Irland

Oct 2021

9 min