PAUL RAPHAËL
The Virtual Reality Pioneer
As the co-founder of the Emmy award-winning immersive entertainment studio Felix & Paul Studios, Paul Raphaël has created AR, VR, and MR originals like Space Explorers with NASA, Traveling While Black with Roger Ross Williams, and The Confessional with Judd Apatow. His studio calls both LA and Montréal home, which perfectly reflects its unique blend of creativity (hello, Hollywood) and technology (Montréal’s VFX, AI, blockchain, and VR scene). Paul met his co-founder, Felix Lajeunesse, while studying film at Montréal’s Concordia University. “We had a great synergy,” he told XRMust. “We were very inspired by the same movies. And we felt that any great film, any great story had an immersive quality.” The duo teamed up to produce the world’s first VR film, Strangers with musician Patrick Watson — and the rest, as they say, is VR history. For the past decade the duo have been trailblazers in the field, working on immersive cinema for franchises like Jurassic World and Wild, and collaborating with the likes of the Obamas, Eminem and Wes Anderson.
Projects
The studio’s focus for the past few years has been on the human space experience. An official NASA partner, the duo first worked on the virtual reality series Space Explorers. Now, brave guests with strong stomachs can climb aboard the International Space Station (ISS) via THE INFINITE, an immersive space experience in Houston. It’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. In 2019, Felix & Paul took us on an intimate ride through Eminem’s hometown in Detroit with Marshall and in 2017, they won an Emmy for Original Interactive Program for The People’s House: Inside the White House With Barack and Michelle Obama. Next up for the duo: a new augmented reality storybook based on Jim Henson’s 1987 The Seven Ravens.
