Felix and Paul Studios

Felix and Paul Studios
Information
Type	Private company
Industry	Virtual reality, Immersive entertainment, Film production
Founded	2013
Founder	Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël, Stéphane Rituit
Headquarters	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Notable Personnel	Félix Lajeunesse (Co-founder, Chief Creative Officer), Paul Raphaël (Co-founder, Chief Innovation Officer), Stéphane Rituit (Co-founder, CEO)
Products	Strangers with Patrick Watson, Miyubi, Nomads, Traveling While Black, Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, Interstellar Arc
Website	https://www.felixandpaul.com

Felix & Paul Studios is a Canadian immersive entertainment and Virtual Reality production studio based in Montreal, Quebec. It was founded in 2013 by directors Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël together with producer Stéphane Rituit, and it produces cinematic 3D 360-degree and immersive experiences using camera systems the studio designs and builds itself.

The studio has won three Emmy Awards. It took a 2016 Daytime Emmy for the Cirque du Soleil collaboration Inside the Box of Kurios, a 2017 Primetime Emmy for the White House tour The People's House, and a 2021 Primetime Emmy for Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, a multi-part documentary series filmed aboard the International Space Station.

History

Lajeunesse and Raphaël both studied film at Concordia University in Montreal and began working together after their studies, co-directing a low-budget animated music video for the Montreal musician Akido that was released around 2004. Before turning to virtual reality the pair directed music videos and commercials for brands such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Volkswagen, and worked on large-scale immersive installations, including content for the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai with Cirque du Soleil.

Their move into VR began in 2013, when Raphaël showed Lajeunesse an Oculus Rift development kit from the headset's Kickstarter campaign. The studio was incorporated in Montreal in 2013, with Rituit, a producer who had begun his career on Inuit community films and documentaries, joining as the third co-founder and chief executive. Felix & Paul Studios debuted its first cinematic VR work, Strangers with Patrick Watson, a stereoscopic 360-degree film of the Canadian musician performing, at South by Southwest in 2014; Oculus then added the piece to its official exhibit.

An early piece, an "Introduction to VR" experience, was bundled with the Samsung Gear VR when it launched, alongside Strangers. In July 2015 the studio signed a multi-project content deal with Oculus, whose parent Facebook (now Meta) distributed its experiences through the Gear VR and later headsets; it was reported at the time as one of the largest live-action VR production deals to date. Over the following years it built a catalogue spanning fiction, documentary, music, and brand collaborations, and expanded from headset-delivered VR into large-scale location-based installations.

Technology

Felix & Paul Studios designs and builds its own 3D 360-degree camera systems rather than using off-the-shelf hardware, and iterates the design across multiple generations to suit the needs of each production. The cameras capture stereoscopic (3D) imagery across a full 360-degree field so that a viewer in a headset can look in any direction while the scene plays out around them. In 2017 the studio agreed to integrate Fraunhofer's upHear spatial audio technology into its next-generation camera system.

For filming in orbit the studio developed a hardened "Outer Space Camera", a customized Z-Cam V1 Pro with nine 4K sensors that records a 3D, 360-degree image at 8K resolution. The unit used custom lenses rated for an operating range of roughly -250 to +250 degrees Fahrenheit and could store about 15 hours of footage. Nanoracks hardened the equipment against vacuum, radiation, and micrometeoroids, and the camera was mounted on the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to shoot scenes outside the International Space Station.

Notable productions

Felix & Paul Studios works across fiction, documentary, and brand-driven experiences. Miyubi (2017) is a roughly 40-minute comedy, with Jeff Goldblum among its cast, told from the point of view of a 1980s toy robot. The People's House: Inside the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama (2017) is a guided VR tour of the White House produced with Oculus. The Nomads documentary series follows nomadic communities, and Traveling While Black (2019), directed by Roger Ross Williams, is a documentary set largely at Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C. that addresses the history of Black travel in the United States. The studio has also produced experiences tied to entertainment properties, including Cirque du Soleil shows and Universal's Jurassic World franchise (Jurassic World: Apatosaurus, 2015, and Jurassic World: Blue).

Year	Title	Notes
2014	Strangers with Patrick Watson	Early cinematic stereoscopic 360-degree VR film; debuted at South by Southwest
2015	Jurassic World: Apatosaurus	VR experience produced with Universal Pictures
2016	Inside the Box of Kurios	Cirque du Soleil collaboration; won a Daytime Emmy
2017	Miyubi	About 40-minute VR comedy featuring Jeff Goldblum
2017	The People's House	White House tour with Barack and Michelle Obama; won a Primetime Emmy
2017	Nomads	Documentary series following nomadic communities
2019	Traveling While Black	Documentary directed by Roger Ross Williams
2020	Space Explorers: The ISS Experience	Multi-part series filmed aboard the ISS with TIME Studios; won a Primetime Emmy
2021	Space Explorers: THE INFINITE	Touring location-based VR installation
2025	Interstellar Arc	Location-based VR attraction at AREA15, Las Vegas

Space Explorers: The ISS Experience

Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is a four-part immersive documentary series produced by Felix & Paul Studios in association with TIME Studios and filmed aboard the International Space Station. Planning began around 2015, and footage was captured over roughly two years with access to the station crew. The series follows eight astronauts, including David Saint-Jacques, Christina Koch, Jessica Meir, Anne McClain, and Victor Glover, and its later episodes used the Outer Space Camera to record the first 3D, 360-degree scenes shot outside the station. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Program at the 73rd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2021, the studio's third Emmy. A reworked Ultimate Edition, with optimized 8K visuals, mixed-reality interactions, and a new "Mission to the Moon" chapter on NASA's Artemis program, was released on November 3, 2025 for Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S.

Awards

The studio's three Emmy wins span both the Daytime and Primetime branches. Inside the Box of Kurios, made with Cirque du Soleil Media, won a 2016 Daytime Emmy in the Outstanding Interactive Media category. The People's House won the 2017 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Program at the 69th Emmy Awards. Space Explorers: The ISS Experience won the 2021 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Program. The series has also been recognised elsewhere: its first episode won a 2021 Webby Award in the science and education category, along with a People's Voice Award for best VR video.

Current status

As of 2026 Felix & Paul Studios continues to operate from Montreal and has shifted much of its focus toward large-scale, location-based immersive attractions alongside headset-based releases. Its touring installation Space Explorers: THE INFINITE, co-produced with Montreal's PHI Studio, presented the ISS footage as a walkable group experience. The studio's largest project to date, Interstellar Arc, opened at the AREA15 entertainment complex in Las Vegas on October 22, 2025. The location-based experience runs about 60 minutes inside a custom-built venue of roughly 20,000 square feet, casting guests as travellers who wake from cryogenic sleep 262 years into a voyage toward the fictional exoplanet Arcadia.