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Making a VR film from ideation to promotion

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ALARM CLOCK RINGS followed by the sound of children racing through the school hallway

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🏆 Awards & Honors

2020

Best 360 Film – XR-Must Awards

Cannes XR – VeeR Future Awards

Tribeca Film Festival – Official Selection

Oculus Start Program

2019

LaunchPad Fellowship

2018

Creator’s Lab 3.0 – Filmmaker Program

🌍 Major Festival Screenings — Upstander (VR/360 Film)

2021

Zlín Film Festival

Febio Film Festival

VRE Film Festival

Games for Change Festival

XR-Must Festival

2020

Tribeca International Film Festival

Cannes International Film Festival (Cannes XR)

BIFAN International Film Festival

Nashville International Film Festival

Chaniartoonfest Film Festival

Verse International Film Festival

360 Film Festival

International Children’s Rights Film Festival

Palm Springs International Animation Festival

Real World XR Awards

African International Film Festival

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🎮 Beat Bully – An Interactive VR Experience

Beat Bully is an interactive VR experience that uses embodiment, psychology, and shifts in perspective to defy reality—striving to make the player feel, think, and take action. Inspired by the 360° VR film Upstander, this project advances the narrative through interactivity, teaching players adaptive behaviors to prevent or respond to bullying.

The story unfolds across a child’s school day, where backpacks represent students.

Gameplay includes actions such as picking up a phone to call for help or punching out cyberbullying, fostering coping strategies and bystander intervention behaviors that can be applied beyond VR.

By blending technology, storytelling, psychology, and education, Beat Bully seeks to create a transformative social impact—helping players build empathy, confidence, and agency in confronting bullying in the real world.

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🎓 Upstander in Research & Next Steps

Research Use: Upstander has been integrated into international studies on bullying, empathy, and behavior change-demonstrating VR's potential as a tool for education and social impact.

Next Project - Beat Bully: Building on this foundation, Van is developing Beat Bully, an interactive VR experience designed to train bystander intervention. Participants practice adopting behaviors proven to reduce bullying, shifting from passive observers to active upstanders.

Together, these projects explore how immersive storytelling and interactivity can move beyond awareness to create measurable change in attitudes and actions.
Upstander work used for bullying research
Create Beat Bully, an interactive VR experience designed to train bystanders in intervention skills and promote behaviors that reduce bullying.

The vertical slice submitted represents three levels of a seven-level experience.

Once we get funding, the Vertical Slice prototype will be created for the Oculus Rift S and made for all platforms and VR headsets. Please feel free to contact me and request the Beat Bully Prototype HERE.

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🎓 Upstander in Research & Next Steps Research Use: Upstander has been integrated into international studies on bullying, empathy, a...

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Upstander is an animated virtual reality story that explores the trauma of social, verbal, physical, and cyberbullying—and asks a critical question: How can we be part of the solution, not the problem?

The narrative follows a child’s school day where backpacks represent children. Subtle isolation in the gym escalates into classroom taunts, a phone theft in the hallway, and the devastating experience of being locked inside a locker—where the POV shifts to immerse the participant in the relentless nature of cyberbullying. The story circles back to the gym, where the bystander must choose: stand by, or stand up.

Through shifts in POV, scale, space, and perspective, Upstander defies reality to heighten empathy and pioneer new language for immersive storytelling.

This was the first fully animated VR film developed in partnership with Oculus VR for Good and The Diana Award. Its themes remain urgent in a post-COVID world, where bullying and racial tensions have escalated. Future proceeds from Upstander will be donated to anti-bullying charities.

Van is currently developing new VR projects and welcomes collaborations that use immersive storytelling as a force for empathy, awareness, and change.

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Upstander Development process using Real-time rendering and Animation to enhance VR

DigiFest

Best XR 360 video 2020

Cannes XR VeeR Future Award

An award-winning filmmaker, animator, and educator, Phan has a unique perspective

One animated standout in the lineup is Upstander

Animation Wizard Van Phan on his Anti-bullying VR Film

Upstander Development process using Animation to enhance VR

Tribeca TalkssAtHome Upstander interview Cinema360 Pure Imagination

Q and A Van Phan Director of Tribeca VR Premiere Upstander

Animated contenders include the buzzworthy anti-bullying piece Upstander

Tribeca 360 cinema 2020

Upstander, meanwhile, is an intriguing animated experience about bullying.

Animation Alumnus Q and A premiere at Tribeca 2020

Tribeca immersive Voices of VR podcast

You are challenged to think and take action

Tribeca revives its VR Festival: Smaller, virtual, FREE

VR for Good: Introducing Our Creators Lab 3.0

Two Bay Area directors premiere VR films at Tribeca Film Festival

Upstander hits us with charm right from the beginning

Upstander is a short, sweet message of sticking up for people.

It only takes one person- you to save someone's life and make it worth living.  Immersive

VR for good four new projects now available on Oculus TV

Upstander at BIFAN film festival

Tribeca Immerse VR 2020

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Best XR 360 video 2020

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Upstander will be utilized in a bullying research project involving two international colleges.

Upstander VR has attracted international research interest as a tool for addressing bullying and cyberbullying.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) — Prof. Dr. Martijn Van Heel has proposed using Upstander in collaboration with the Hanoi National University of Education to study how students’ attitudes toward aggression, bullying behavior, and empathy shift before and after the VR immersion.

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Watch Upstander