Watch Tye Sheridan Show Off “Turnstyle” Technology of Quibi’s Wireless

Wireless is a new series on Quibi starring Tye Sheridan but the mobile adventure is different from any other form of story telling before it. “Turnstyle” technology allows the viewers to control their viewing experience in a brand new way. As Sheridan’s character finds himself trapped on the side of a snowy mountain, his only connection to the outside world is his phone. It just so happens, the phone in the viewer’s hand is also a special connection to the story. Holding the phone horizontally provides a standard cinematic viewing style but when the phone is held vertically, Quibi’s technology prompts Wireless to show the viewer the screen on Sheridan’s character’s phone.

Sheridan was eager to show off the technology while joining Talking Shop, ComicBook.com’s live Instagram series. The entire interview can be found on @ComicBook’s IGTV tab and the highlights, including the demonstration of “Turnstyle” tech for Wireless, can be seen in the video above.

“I think the idea, the original idea was from Zach Wechter and Jack Seidman and the screenwriters,” Sheridan explained. “H’ow do we tell a contemporary survival stories where the only tool that’s character has is that of his iPhone?’ So it’s a survival thriller for the millennial generation.”

This, of course, called for additional layers of production to provide the various viewing options which sometimes call for Sheridan to be visible from two different camera angles simultaneously. “With FaceTime calls, you saw a few seconds of a FaceTime call just there with, with Andy, he’s calling his best friend Jake,” Sheridan explained. “So with the FaceTime calls, we were actually recording, Lucas Gage who plays Jake was in a separate location. He’s on a phone and I’m driving on the road on another phone. And I actually FaceTime and we’re screen recording on both of our films. And so we’re actually having a real time conversation. So we’re able to perform live with each other and we just screen record what’s on the phone.”

FaceTime sequences were not the only part of Wireless which called for additional shoots for the Turnstyle format.

“There’s also sections of Wireless where you see on the vertical feed through Andy’s phone, you see his front facing camera, like when he put his phone down in his lap and he took a sip of water,” Sheridan recalls. “Those moments, sometimes we had to shoot separately and we were shooting with this rig. It’s called the tri-fold rig, which is basically like, there’s one phone that you interact with. and then there’s another phone on the back of it. It has a forward facing camera and then another phone on the back of it. It has a rear facing camera that’s capturing the whole time. And so a lot of times, you see if you were to see that in the cinema camera, it’s gonna look like a big brick, so we had to shoot a lot of times it was like shooting the film twice.”

Wireless is available now on Quibi!