For Alejandro Davila, a film studies diploma at South Seas Film School in Auckland led to a career in art director and animation roles in New Zealand’s film and TV industry for the next decade.

His big goal was to direct his own movie but, to achieve that, he decided to take a different path: making a movie using virtual reality (VR) technology.

“One thing I’ve learnt in my journey is not to get stuck on the medium,” he says. “My goal was to be a film director, to tell stories, and what I found out was that I could tell stories with VR.”

VR pioneer

The thing was, no-one in New Zealand had ever made a VR movie. So, in 2016, Alejandro enrolled in a Master of Creative Technology at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). His thesis question? “How can I tell stories using VR?”

As a pioneer in the space, Alejandro received support from the NZ government and film industry, and even travelled to the US to meet other VR researchers. By the end of his master’s, he had produced the country’s first VR movie, The Green Fairy, a short children’s film about a fairy that lights up traffic lights.

The movie was a success and got lots of attention in the New Zealand press for being so innovative. Alejandro has since turned The Green Fairy into a children’s book that uses augmented reality (AR) tech and a TV series. 

His achievement also caught the attention of the corporate world: he was soon contacted by tech and appliances chain Noel Leeming about using his VR skills to create more immersive training material. This led to the creation of Alejandro’s company, CONICAL.

CONICAL provided VR and AR services to businesses, but that’s now on pause. Alejandro was recently contacted by Epic Games to turn The Green Fairy into a video game – an exciting project that has enabled CONICAL to grow as a business and is taking all of Alejandro’s attention right now.

Whether it’s creating books, games or movies, Alejandro stresses that “technology is secondary to creativity”. Instead, tech provides the tools to explore innovative ways to tell stories. 

Alejandro Davila’s STEM study and career path

• Film & Television studies, South Seas Film School
• Art Director, NZ television
• Animator, NZ television/commercials
• Master of Creative Technology, Auckland University of Technology
• Founder, CONICAL

This profile was originally published in Careers with STEM: Technology.