Film lecturer's Nested Cinema project up for national award

Nested Cinema, a ground-breaking concept from film lecturer Dr Pavel Prokopic, involves presenting a film through multiple distinctive layers of cinematic techniques to create an immersive experience for the viewer which blurs the boundaries between the physical and the virtual.

Its first project, Vera’s Not Alone, which combined film footage, cinematic virtual reality and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to tell an immersive narrative, premiered at our MediaCity campus in June 2023.

Now, the concept has been shortlisted for Best Screen-Based Practice Research (Short) at the 2024 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies’ (BAFTSS) Practice Research Awards.

Pavel said: “I am very proud to get the recognition and it feels like a reward for the hard work that we’ve put into this project.

“The project really stands out in the competition as I feel that as it’s not just a film, but something so much more and very different from the other shortlisted projects. This nomination will give us lots of encouragement to keep working on it and the work is only just beginning.

“We want to get it exhibited it elsewhere and hopefully this nomination will bring some more exposure to it.”

The 2024 BAFTSS Practice Research Awards will take place at the University of Sussex on Thursday 4 April.

The full list of contributors to the Nested Cinema concept are;

Pavel Prokopic - Writer, Director and Content Creator

Jayne Sayer - Co-producer & flexible production design and technology 

Roger McKinley - Creative technologies supervisor

Steve Wyatt - Cinematography

Aarif Laljee - Editor and colourist

Charlie Grimshaw - Visual effects and asset editor

Bernard Steer - Sound engineering

Mukilasri Radhakrishnan, John Joseph, Jake Orton - Creative technology support

Chencheng Wu - Research assistant

Tamsin Middleton - Project administrator