Legendary animator Glen Keane was in the middle of welcoming Jennifer Hudson and Daisy Ridley to the premiere of Baobab Studios’ new VR film “Baba Yaga” on Tuesday morning when he suddenly lost his hand.

Not to worry: Keane didn’t suffer any serious injuries. The director of Netflix’s recent hit movie “Over the Moon” had just momentarily displaced his Oculus Quest controller, leading to the hand awkwardly floating in thin air while everyone was busy finding their space on stage. The premiere for “Baba Yaga” was hosted in Microsoft’s social VR world AltSpace, with Keane, Hudson and Ridley as well as key Baobab executives represented as VR avatars.

Baobab chose AltSpace as a virtual venue for its film premiere because of COVID, “Baba Yaga” director and Baobab Chief Creative Officer Eric Darnell explained on the sidelines of the film premiere. The VR animation studio usually schedules its premieres around film festivals like Tribeca or Sundance to attract industry attention, but with the pandemic still raging and festivals shifting to digital formats, Baobab decided to premiere the VR film in VR instead, Darnell told me.

The pandemic has forced entertainment companies to come up with all kinds of workarounds to make virtual events feel like more than just stale livestreams. For the premiere of “Baba Yaga,” Baobab pulled no punches:

• The studio hired some of the people who were responsible for last year’s virtual Burning Man festival to create their premiere event in AltSpace — a process that took around three months.
• The event featured a movie theater foyer, complete with a red carpet, leading to a wondrous forest landscape that looked like it was part of the world of “Baba Yaga,” including a mysterious hollow tree, a massive magical cauldron and mushrooms as chairs propped up in front of a giant theater screen.
• The space also included statues of some of the film’s main characters that attendees could take selfies with, and a gallery of “Baba Yaga” artwork.
• Following ample time to mingle and gawk at the scenery, attending journalists got to see Keane interview Ridley, who voices one of the film’s main characters, and Hudson, who joined the project as executive director and voice actor, as well as Darnell and Baobab Studios CEO Maureen Fan.

A few minor mishaps aside, the premiere felt like a real Hollywood event, with some VR magic added as a bonus. “I was really pleased with how it turned out,” said Tribeca Immersive Programming VP Loren Hammonds, whose organization co-hosted the event.

This was the first time Tribeca ever hosted a premiere in VR, but Hammonds suggested that we may see more of these types of VR events in the future, even after the pandemic subsides.

One reason: Tribeca usually sees 4,000 people flock to its interactive showcase. When the festival had to be canceled last April, it showed off a number of VR films on Oculus TV instead, where they attracted 43,000 views. “You grow the audience exponentially,” Hammonds said. “It’s truly global.”

Speaking of which: “Baba Yaga” went live to VR audiences around the world on the Oculus Store on Thursday.