Award-Winning Virtual Reality Director
Eliza McNitt: Biography at a Glance
- From astronauts to astrophysicists, Eliza McNitt works alongside scientists to tell stories about the human connection to the cosmos.
- She is the creator of Fistful of Stars, a VR experience following the journey of The Hubble Telescope through the cosmos, which was the world’s largest communal virtual reality experience to date when it premiered to an audience of over 6,000 people.
- Her VR series Spheres made history at the Sundance Film Festival as the world's first ever acquisition of a VR experience.
- Her films and VR experiences have appeared at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Hot Docs, Cannes NEXT, AFI Fest, and Tribeca.
- She’s a two time Intel Science Fair winner, OneFifty creator, Alfred P. Sloan grant recipient, and winner of a 2018 Gold Screen Young Director's Award at Cannes Lions.
Media
Official Site: Eliza McNittWired: "A VR Movie Set in Space Just Landed a 7-Figure Deal at Sundance"The New Yorker: "Outer Space, via Virtual Reality, in Prospect Park"Gizmodo: "This Real World 'Space Opera' Lets You Become the Hubble Telescope"Fast Company: "At This VR Concert, The Audience Drifts Through Space Together"
Videos
Biography
McNitt is a writer and director. She is a 2018 Emmy® Awards Finalist and the recipient of the VR Grand Prize at The Venice Film Festival. She explores the cosmic collision of science and art. From astronauts to astrophysicists, McNitt works alongside scientists to tell stories about the human connection to the cosmos. Her films and VR experiences have appeared at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, AFI Fest, Cannes NEXT, Tribeca, Telluride, and The Venice Film Festival. She’s a two time Intel Science Fair winner, Alfred P. Sloan grant recipient, and winner of the 2018 Gold Screen Young Director's Award at Cannes Lions.
Eliza found filmmaking through science. A top winner of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her research on Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder, Eliza's first film was inspired by a desire to communicate the devastating impact of vanishing honeybees. Her honeybee research received the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering’s Gerber Medal–the state’s highest award for student science research–as well as special awards from The Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory, MIT-Lincoln Lab, the Audubon Society, CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, Pfizer, the United States Armed Forces, the United States Air Force, and Connecticut Governor Jody Rell.
Her Virtual Reality experience Fistful of Stars following the journey of The Hubble Telescope through the cosmos drew an audience of over 6,000 people at BRIC! Celebrate Brooklyn and was the world’s largest communal virtual reality experience to date. The New Yorker profiled the experience writing “it astounded me, this feeling of floating above Earth, and tears began to emerge from my cardboard goggles.”
McNitt is the creator of SPHERES an immersive Virtual Reality journey through the hidden songs of the Universe. Executive Produced by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel, SPHERES stars three generations of women as the voices of the cosmos including Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life, Interstellar), and Patti Smith. SPHERES made history as the world's first acquisition of a VR experience out of the Sundance Film Festival.
