Google honours French illusionist and filmmaker Georges Méliès through first Virtual Reality doodle

Google has put out its first virtual reality doodle and rather fittingly, it is in honour of pioneering French illusionist and filmmaker Georges Méliès who showed the way in special effects, and created some of the earliest films in the science fiction genre.

The doodle marks the the release date of what is considered to be one of his greatest movies: À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole) which released on 3 May, 1912. The doodle is a short animated film where the protagonist defeats the villain with some help from his lady love. It is a simple story but manages to showcase many of the filmmaking techniques Méliès pioneered which led to effects like parts of a human being disappearing, replicating the same person on screen multiple times. Méliès was a cartoonist, painter, caricaturist, magician, set designer, comedian, writer, actor, technician all rolled in one and is recognised as one of the greatest names in early cinematic history. His achievements include the 1902 movie A Trip to the Moon which was a groundbreaking visual experience with its scene of a space capsule crashing into the face of the moon becoming one of the iconic frames in cinema. Google needed outside expertise to finish the project, and the final product is the result of a collaboration between Google Spotlight Stories, Google Arts & Culture, and Cinémathèque Française teams. The visual is best experienced with a VR headset using Google’s VR app but a normal video version is available as well which involves dragging your mouse around to follow the action.