Marking his directorial debut, Tim Webber tells The Hollywood Reporter about his experimental sci-fi short, made using Framestore’s new VFX and virtual production pipeline.

Tim Webber, the Oscar-winning VFX supervisor of Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 space-set thriller Gravity, has unwrapped the trailer for his directional debut — an experimental sci-fi short titled Flite [shot by cinematographer James Medcraft] that the inventive filmmaker created while putting a new VFX and virtual production pipeline through its paces.

London-headquartered VFX facility Framestore (for which Webber serves as CCO) was the lead VFX vendor on Gravity, which made early use of techniques now considered a part of what is known as virtual production, which the VFX community is now quickly working to develop and adopt for all types of production. For Flite, Webber made use of Framestore’s latest iteration of its system, custom built around Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. “A lot of the things we did in [Flite] are taking what we did in Gravity and moving them on with modern technology and making them easier to do and more sophisticated,” Webber tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Dubbed FUSE, an acronym for Framestore Unreal Shot Engine, the company’s take on the process was designed to allow large numbers of artists to work simultaneously within the real-time engine, incorporating sophisticated previsualization, virtual production, asset management and review and approvals, in addition to VFX shot production and including the ability to work remotely.

Written by Webber, Flite is set in a semi-submerged London of 2053 and explores the nascent and underground practice of “memory visualization.” In the story, reigning world hoverboard champion Stevie is imprisoned in a luxury high-rise apartment by her controlling manager, and attempts an escape with the help of a courageous stranger, with much of the film told through the memory recall of the stranger with a “hyperreal quality for the look.”

Read more here on The Hollywood Reporter.