Murrysville artist's augmented-reality app earns top prize at L.A. film festival

Murrysville artist Christopher Ruane enjoyed the chance to show his augmented-reality app and videos to family and friends.

But it’s one thing to show it off at a community festival. It’s quite another to see it take the grand prize at a Los Angeles film festival where the judges are from media giants like Marvel, HBO, Rolling Stone and the BBC.

“Welcome to Export,” which makes use of Ruane’s TrueAR app, made its L.A. premiere at the 15th annual New Media Film Festival, held June 5-6. Ruane and business partner Aydaen Lynch scanned an historic photo of a train at Export’s former train station — which is on display in Export’s downtown — and used XR reality to bring it to life on app users’ phones. “XR reality” combines aspects of augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality to create a unique viewing experience.

At the 2023 Export Ethnic Food & Music Festival, attendees could download the app, point their cell phone cameras at the large photo on display downtown, and watch it spring to life.

“I’m pretty tired but I’m very happy,” said Ruane, who was fresh off his win at the New Media festival as well as exhibiting at the Three Rivers Arts Festival last week. “I didn’t originally look at my work as film, but a few years ago people started looking at interactive experiences as part of that industry.”

In addition to the festival’s grand prize, Ruane won Best Augmented Reality by using hours of data collected from observation of the Orion and Messier 43 nebulae and using it to design an immersive experience in the “ARt” app that he also created.

“I didn’t expect the Export submission to win, because it was such a small-town project,” Ruane said. “But they were impressed by the way it comes out for the viewer.”

Ruane said the recognition on a larger stage is exactly what he’s been waiting for.

“At the Export festival, we were able to show it to friends, family and community members,” he said. “But getting it in front of people from Marvel, HBO and groups where we can let them know the tech is here and we can push the boundaries? That’s fantastic.”

The grand prize package is also something Ruane is looking forward to leveraging.

“The prize is the type of services that are supplied to a world-class director — studio time in California, post-processing with Mongo Media, casting help, things like that,” Ruane said. “We’re going to take full advantage of everything we can and explore those opportunities.”