"It's a chicken and an egg thing. You can make all the great headsets you can but if there's not great content ... what's the point?"

Darnell said he was attracted to VR after becoming "a little bit stale" making regular animation.

"When I put a VR headset on, it just blew me away and it reminded me of the first time I saw computer animation back in the early 80s ... [That] launched a whole career for me and so when I put that headset on it reminded me of what I felt like back then."

In Crow, based on a native American legend, the viewer wears a VR helmet and hand-controllers to join the bird on its adventure, using the hands to send waves of virtual energy to help it on its way.

"I think the way we are really going to get there is by putting the viewer inside the story," Darnell said. Not just playing a story for them, putting them inside the story so that other characters recognize that the viewer is there and that it means something to them, that you are in their world."

The Venice Film Festival runs from August 29 to Sept 8.

Reuters