How Eloise Singer and Daisy Ridley brought the astonishing story of Bertha Benz to life.
Trailblazer is a groundbreaking VR experience starring Daisy Ridley as motoring pioneer Bertha Benz. We chatted to director Eloise Singer about this inspiring project, which is being developed into a graphic novel and movie.
Emmy-nominated director Eloise Singer's latest project began in the most mundane of ways—going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. The entry she stumbled upon seemed almost too extraordinary to be true. "I read about Bertha Benz and thought: Is this a joke? Is this actually true?" she recalls, laughing.
The story that captivated Eloise—an innovative director, producer and screenwriter specialising in immersive storytelling—was that of a 19th-century German woman who secretly 'borrowed' her husband's invention (the world's first automobile) and embarked on what would become history's first long-distance car journey, forever changing the course of transport history.
"It blows my mind, the tenacity and courage she had," Eloise explains. "It was a bit like going on the world's first spaceship because this machine was so noisy and loud, in a way no one had ever heard or seen before; people thought it was the work of the devil."
