I interviewed Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang director Melissa Joyner and co-directors Julie Cavaliere & Michaela Ternasky-Holland remotely after the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So continuing on my series of looking at different immersive stories from South by Southwest 2024, today's episode is with a piece called Reimagined Volume 3 Young Thing, which is the third in the trilogy of the Reimagined series by Julie Cavalier and Michaela Tarnasky-Holland. And in this case, Melissa Joyner is the primary director and Julie and Michaela are the co-directors. So this is continuing on with this Quill series, which is like a really amazing series that has been reimagining these different mythic stories and fairy tales with a gender inclusive lens. And so really focusing on these female led stories and I've covered previously at Venice 2022 with the first episode, which was Nisa back in episode 1136, and then with Mahal, which was showing at Tribeca 2023, which I covered back in episode 1249. They collaborated with Melissa Joyner on Young Thing, which she is taking this Nigerian folktale called The Woman with Two Skins, where she flips in between being a spider and a human being. It's exploring these themes of exile and what's it mean to be connected to a community. And again, just using the affordances of Quill and the VR medium to be able to play with both scale, but also to tell these different types of mythic stories. With each of these different episodes, they're continuing to both develop some of the grammar and storytelling language of immersive virtual reality, but also playing with things like color theory and pacing and just a real mastery of how to craft the stories that they're telling. So, that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So, this interview with Melissa, Julie, and Mikayla happened on Monday, March 18th, 2024. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:04.039] Melissa Joyner: Hello, my name is Melissa Joyner. I am writer, director, producer of Reimagined, Volume 3, Young Thing. I am also joined with co-directors Julie and Mikayla. What I do in the world of VR is I am a huge fan and new to kind of leading, putting amazing content out there. So I am a novice who is so happy to have been welcomed into the VR community.
[00:02:37.130] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: My name is Mikayla Ternasky-Holland, and I've been working in virtual reality since 2016. And I'm sure like anyone in this field can tell you, I've worn many, many hats as a director, associate producer, as a lead producer, as an impact producer, but really my main focus is social impact storytelling, nonfiction storytelling. The Reimagined series is actually my first foray into narrative experiences, but still for me, from a social impact lens, because the Reimagined series is a fully female led, directed, produced, written series. And we're trying to retell fairy tales and mythologies and folklore using the medium of VR, but also from a more modern gender inclusive lens. And so for me, the Reimagined series is almost like parallel to the work I've done and am doing in the social impact space and the nonfiction documentary space in the virtual reality industry. So really excited to be here and talk to you more, Kent.
[00:03:32.693] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah. Hey, Kent. Nice to see you again. My name is Julie Cavalier. I am a writer, director, producer, actor. The Reimagined series is actually my first foray into VR ever. Volume one was the first time I ever wrote and directed in VR or worked in VR at all. My background is in film, TV and theater and coming from more of a narrative point of view. So talking about finding more specific stories to highlight and working in a scripted format. So I'm really excited to be here again. Thanks for having us.
[00:04:08.453] Kent Bye: Uh, for sure. And, uh, maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:04:14.656] Melissa Joyner: Totally. I'm actually an actor first. So I got my master's from the actor studio. I went to undergrad for communications. I'm a huge fan of all things, film and theater. And so when presented the opportunity to work in the VR medium, I was, of course, incredibly overwhelmed and delighted, but really kind of equated it to my knowledge of theater in the round and said, Oh, I know what this is. I know what it is to do like live theater and found spaces. I know what it is to do theater in the round. I know what it is, the study of Theatre in the Round with Shakespeare and acknowledging that theatre's core actually came from a space where it was and everyone sits down and they're very quiet and polite and they all focus on exactly what the director told them to. It actually began in chaos and noise and everyone just having an amazing time and just kind of leaning into the fact that if we know what the story is, then we can explore and then audience can have the freedom to really be immersed in the space. And so that was my introduction into VR. And my hope is that it was executed well in the film.
[00:05:34.585] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: I feel like I've said this story many a time on your podcast, Kent, but I always appreciate this question, because it makes me think about that journey constantly. For me, I was a professional dancer on Disney Cruise Line, when I dropped out of college to go and dance and perform, I really sort of went out of the normal way that my parents wanted me to show up in the world. They wanted me to go get a four-year college degree. And I wanted to pursue my art career as a performer. And so while working on Disney Cruise Line and then working again at Disneyland, SeaWorld and Legoland, I decided to really explore this immersive interactive storytelling nature. I saw a real change in people when they were given agency, when they were spoken to as if they were real humans, when they were given the sense to kind of make choices depending on how they were feeling in that moment. And so being able to see that firsthand in those types of high-level environments really paved the way, I think, for me to want to tell stories using more immersive interactive mediums, like virtual reality, like augmented reality, and even now with the use of AI. You know, I really actually need to accredit a lot of what I do in this field also to Noni de la Peña. Seeing, you know, a fellow woman and a fellow woman of color in this space when I first got into this space, especially with a focus in documentary work, was huge for me. And then being able to see that there had been this ground laid out in front of me that I could follow or this path laid out in front of me that I could follow really allowed me to be able to find my way to Time Magazine and work for Time Magazine doing a lot of their VR, AR work, and then of course now going freelance and really trying to champion the types of people and the types of voices that don't always get access to this type of technology. and really champion the kinds of stories that don't always get told with this type of technology or stories that just don't even get told in the more mainstream environments is really what makes this world really fulfilling for me.
[00:07:35.665] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah. And for me, I started out in film and TV production. I cut my teeth at Scott Rudin in the development department there, which was sort of a baptism by fire, but extremely educational and From there, I sort of really learned what it was to craft a story and as well as the importance of cinema history and theater history. And then from there, I pivoted and I was accepted into the Actor's Studio, where I was lucky enough to study there for three years under these theatrical and cinematic greats. And then I dove into the world of improv, where I was performing at Upright Citizens Brigade and writing for them on the main stage. And then after that was accepted into Columbia University's writing intensive program. But in between all of that, I was also working as an actor and working in development freelance for this small boutique production company. And so I was at Tribeca one year and in between screenings, I stumbled into the immersive section. And I was completely blown away. It really reminded me of theater in the round, you know, just applying what I knew to it. And I saw so much potential for storytelling there. And I saw so much potential for bringing a sense of cinematography to it. It reminded me also of sort of like it had so much potential to bring like even old school cinema and cinema techniques into this medium because you just can't cut the same way you can in modern film. And so I asked around, was introduced by a fellow professional colleague to Michaela. We went to get a coffee just to sort of chat about this kernel of an idea I have. And then that blossomed into a full-blown partnership and then later became the Reimagined series.
[00:09:28.736] Kent Bye: I know Julie and Michaela, we've had a chance to talk a couple other times of your two previous episodes. And so maybe you could set a little bit of a context for how this specific story of Young Thing came about and how you got connected with Melissa and then talk a bit about the process of developing this third episode.
[00:09:46.242] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah, sure. So Melissa and I go way back. I know Melissa from the Actor's Studio. We, as I mentioned, also I work as an actor. So Melissa and I actually went to the Actor's Studio together and we collaborated frequently there and sort of went through, you know, sort of that boot camp in both storytelling and acting.
[00:10:11.019] Melissa Joyner: She's giggling because it's wonderful and painful. as grad school is, if anyone. Yeah, we're soldiers in arms.
[00:10:20.314] Julie Cavaliere: We went through it. We went through it together. And so one of the things that I've always appreciated about Melissa is that she did study under Maya Angelou. She's always too modest to mention that. So I've come to mention that for her. And so has this beautiful poetry, the sensibility that is quite poetic, as well as a strong visual sense. And as I've mentioned in interviews past and included in my intro this time, that the Reimagined series was my first foray into VR. So when we were developing this series to be an anthology series and we were looking at other stories in preparation to bring this to meta, one of the stories we were working with, it wasn't coming together the way we wanted it to. And so Michaela and I sort of sought out to bring in another collaborator. And I said to Michaela, there's someone in my mind, she's never done VR, but I think she could bring a really interesting perspective that we might not be thinking about. And so the way we left it is we reached out to a couple of people. I reached out to Melissa. I said, you know, what do you think? You have a day, because we're pitching, we're sort of assembling this.
[00:11:35.920] Melissa Joyner: Did you hear that, Kent? Did you hear that part?
[00:11:39.202] Kent Bye: Yeah, I did. I did, yeah. You had a day. You had a day to figure it out, essentially.
[00:11:43.265] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah, Melissa being the person that she is, said, okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow. and then came back with the rough idea of Young Thing and a soundscape and all of these kind of visual references and knew from the beginning that she wanted to pull from the Black American tradition of collage and quilting and all of that. So that was very early on. The structure of the story had been created very early on. And I told her, you know, Michaela and I are going to meet, and best story wins. And Michaela and I did meet, and It was the most robust story we were presented with. So we went with it and ran and have been running ever since. Nice.
[00:12:24.325] Kent Bye: And Michaela, I don't know if you have anything else you wanted to add before I turn it back over to Melissa.
[00:12:31.431] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, thank you, Ken. I think there's sort of this sense with Reimagined that we don't just want to empower female voices, but we also want to empower first-time VR anything voices, whether that's within our audience or within behind the scenes of our creative team. And I think what was really beautiful about the collaboration for both Julie and I is that we both come from totally different backgrounds, but have the same heart and soul around storytelling and have the same heart and soul around creating really quality, robust cinematic experiences. And so I think when we were thinking about our third volume, it was a really unique proposition because it had to be somebody that we had to really find that sweet balance with of who is this person going to be? They're not just going to be somebody who's coming in as like a traditional contractor to like execute like artwork or execute concept art. This is going to be somebody we're going to be deeply, deeply collaborating with as a fellow creative on this series. This is also going to be somebody who has to be able to carry the heart and soul of this volume three, just in a similar way that Julie and I individually carried the heart and soul of volume one and volume two. And you know, I think what we found was we really wanted to bring somebody into the fold who might not have ever used VR as also a way of being able to say like this medium, especially the medium of Quill, can be used by somebody who doesn't have a technical background. It can be a really successful platform. And I think, you know, this collaboration with Melissa has been everything that we hoped it to be. And I think the team of people that we brought behind Melissa to really bring Melissa into the world of VR as well, like Zoe and Tyler and some of the amazing Quill artists, really creates the fully 360 immersive experience that we wanted Volume 3 to have, both on what the audience sees, but I think behind the scenes as well as to how the whole team collaborated.
[00:14:26.977] Kent Bye: Awesome. So yeah, Melissa, you get this phone call out of the blue. You have an opportunity to pitch. Maybe you could talk through what your process was. Did you go watch some VR or did you think about based upon the context that you were provided, like how you wanted to tell the story? Yeah. Just talk about having a day to figure it all out and what your process was.
[00:14:48.175] Melissa Joyner: Well, having a day to figure it all out, I think. maybe some of my attitude and approaching it did come from my actor's background, that improv saying yes and, you just say yes and, and you keep moving. So when asked to be a part of something, honestly, you know, when someone comes to you and says, Hey, and you know, this is a friend, right? And says, Hey, I have a dream. It's about to happen. Want to help? Who doesn't say yes? And then they say, and that dream is about gender inclusive storytelling, partnering with another creative who is a leader in VR. It's female driven. It's even just me being able to be a part of it is opening it up to women, girls of color, kind of really breaking that sort of girls don't like science and math and, you know, and things like that, like just working to kind of uncouple a lot of that just by saying yes was enough. you know, just wow, I'm really excited to be a part of this project. And honestly, when it came to now I've got to put something in this blank word document, Lord help me, I started to dig and research. I mean, I love research. I'm kind of a student first and started to dig and really look for stories that touched me. And unfortunately, when looking for what would be an African American fairy tale or an African American kind of folk tale, I was hit a lot with the wall. Because the roots of them being African American are difficult to pinpoint. And when I started to really look for fairy tales, it led me into Africa itself. And of course, right, so then I had to say to myself, okay, How do I make this authentic, right? Like, I know that this connection is possible. I feel connected to this piece. From what I know, I'm not Southern Nigerian. You know, I don't know. I haven't taken one of those great tests, or perhaps I am, but I wanted to be sure that I wasn't taking on something that wasn't mine, just assuming that it was mine to use. And so it then became really important to me once I kind of stepped into that realm that the bits of it that I could control would feel Southern, would feel specifically African American. And when I was looking for stories, I came across The Woman with Two Skins. And boom, I mean, The Woman with Two Skins or something about that title that makes you stop immediately. And when I read it, it, it's dark, and there are all these fantastic lessons learned. But initially, I was just aggressively attracted to the concept that in a woman with two skins, she was told to use the skin to hide her beauty, because the world wasn't ready for her beauty. And I thought, it made me think of Dunbar, and we wear the mask, it made me think of black hoodies. It made me think of all of the things that we tell the people we love to protect themselves, all the beauty that people hide to protect themselves, hiding who they were. And then a barrage of questions started. And because it initiated such creativity and so many questions, it became very clear to me that this was the piece that I was going to use. And it really led itself, as far as I was concerned, to a bit of what I knew I wanted to bring in, the look and feeling of the African-American experience. And so when I think of the African-American experience, I think of a people who have the ability to make beauty from scrap. And whether or not that's soul food, which is literally that, whether or not it's jazz, whether or not it's quilting, whether or not it's collage, it's this creativity in you give me this much and I can make it beautiful. And the beauty to me of collage is that outside of itself, each and every piece has its own story. It was a part of something, it was a part of a dress, it was a part of a magazine, it was a part of a newspaper clipping, you know, but inside itself, it has its own story. But together it creates something that isn't quite right, but gorgeous. And it also, to me, sort of reflects the fact that the African-American experience isn't monolithic. You know, it isn't together fantastic, but each and every square has its own specific beautiful story. So I very much wanted folks to walk into a Bearden painting, to walk into a Stephen Townes quilt. And there's a great poem by Nikki Giovanni called Quilt, which is also, I mean, it's not an aesthetic, but it's an aesthetic in my heart. I just pointed to my heart. This is a podcast, so you don't know that. But it's aesthetic in my heart. Did I answer your question, Kent?
[00:19:47.092] Kent Bye: I get a little excited. No, that's a really great broader context setting for coming across a story and starting to develop it. And so maybe you could each walk through like once you settled on that this was going to be the story, where did you begin to start to either flesh out the specific version of the story that we're going to tell or the art style or, you know, because obviously with VR, you have this interchange between the spatial dimensions of what's possible in the medium for how you're going to tell it versus the actual scripting of it and then talk about what kind of iterative process there was between like the scripting of it, the storytelling of it, versus the spatial way that it was told through the visual storytelling of actually using the medium of VR.
[00:20:28.161] Melissa Joyner: Well, luckily, because using the medium of VR was already at the forefront when creating the script, luckily, we sort of had kind of a nice outline as to how we wanted to shoot it and we wanted it to look. A lot of what got folks excited about using this story and the concept of insects and a human was scale. And that's so much fun in an immersive experience. So that was something that I got to play with, even within the script, or making sure to list how I wanted the camera to move in a dream world, and this concept of floating and flying on the breeze and settling down into things. tipping up to look up at her and she's, you know, the size of an oak tree, like making sure to kind of use that great language to make it very clear as to why this was going to be so beneficial in a VR medium. And then after that, assembling the crew and storyboards. And so just sort of taking those steps to get it off the page into the hands of creatives and then moving from step to step.
[00:21:35.444] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah, and I think because this was not only Melissa's first go in VR, which I deeply associated with, but also her first go as a director. I mean, we really just sort of approached it as the film, which is how we've approached every single volume. There was a proper script. with camera direction we had quite a bit of story meetings even when we were in outline it was what does the character want what does the character need we were really incorporating an actor sensibility into it like what are the motivations here what is happening do we need this story beat can we edit why is this moment here can we justify it and we really went beat by beat for a long time the way we did with each volume on that so it really had to, one thing Mikayla and I knew is that it had to hold up to the standards we were trying to set for those series overall. Another thing that was really interesting to me was incorporating this idea of a flat world in this immersive space and how that was going to play out, but still be interesting and intriguing and push the story forward. So we sat for a very long time again, plotting this out the way we had done in volumes before, making sure that this was going to hold up and not just something we were taking and running with because it sounded good and all of that. So it really took quite a bit of time. Although we knew what the inspiration was, it took quite a bit of time to find exactly what this visual language was going to be. And we collaborated with a few people before Samia was kind enough to come on board as our production designer and just kind of nailed it. And then Zoe, our art director, took the ball and ran with it in a way we couldn't have imagined. But again, it was really coming from a cinematic point of view and bringing that into this medium and working with it that way.
[00:23:39.110] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like any production, the beginning of it is always like, what is this going to be? And I think there was a lot of discussions around the uniqueness of the script. Obviously, it's like very heavily like prose oriented, the uniqueness of the character design, we literally have a character that's like made out of water. We have you know, other than Blue and Nisa, we have a lot of animal characters and bug-like characters and this like 3D human girl. And so I think a lot of the early discussions wasn't just about like, what is this going to be? But like, how are we going to achieve this process? There's a lot going on. We have a 2D art style, a 3D art style, a heavily prose structured script, like how are we going to execute this vision without it feeling like we're trying to shove too much information into the experience for the audience? You know, how are we going to make sure we are immersing the audience into the world without overwhelming them with the world? How are we explaining sort of the rules of this world? You know, you have these insects that are talking, you have this water that's talking, you have this girl that's hiding herself in a second skin. And so I think the beauty of like some of the early work that we did as a team was really to try and make sure we were refining every idea to the point where the idea had to be in the experience or it wouldn't be the experience we wanted it. And then any other idea we had, we sort of have to leave by the wayside. And the refinement of all of these key moments, like an edgy 2D world with a beautiful kind of 3D girl inside of it, this idea that the script had to really shine and the voiceover acting. I think we really just sat and just continued to refine, refine, refine during the beginning process so that when we came to executing, it was like we could execute as quickly as possible. And it was a lot of actual pre-production work in this process. I think this project, more than the other two, took more pre-production time within the visual language, like Julie said, within the what is this, how are we achieving it, but I think it paid off at the end because everybody was on the same page to bring the vision to life.
[00:25:46.980] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah, and there's this standard, just like these three questions that, you know, we actually learned in the actor's studio, but it was coming from a writing point of view that has always stuck with me when I write. And we literally went beat by beat and held ourselves to that standard where it's when you're deciding what stays in the story, is it revealing something about character? Is it revealing something about the world? Or is it funny as hell? And if it does not satisfy one of these three things, it's got to go. And so we were really, as Michaela mentioned, we were very, very rigid about that and making sure that we really whittled down what this story was and why we were telling it.
[00:26:31.482] Kent Bye: Yeah. And one of the other things that I was really struck by, by watching it is that there was a lot of color palette changes to indicate different mood shifts or different moments and story beats. Cause you have literally like all the different assets, like change colors in these different moments. Like it creates this real sense of how you use color and the lighting and the way to shift the moods and the tone. And so I'd love to hear maybe elaborate on this development of these different color palettes and how you're using it in terms of how you're telling the story.
[00:27:03.509] Melissa Joyner: First off, the young thing artistic community is fantastic. I think that there was just such a connection to understanding that the world that we were creating was both real and magical in a space where we could manipulate. Why not? And because the environment we've created is a little off kilter. It may take you a few seconds to realize, oh, a tree looks like this or a stone looks like that. How can we change what is happening around you without upsetting that has been established? And I think Michaela was talking about that. Like, there's so much going on. How do we refine? How do we refine? But also, how can I play with less dialogue? Luckily, we're in this space where I can control everything, like we can control everything. And why not shift? Why not edge? Why not bring the lily pads down over you so you feel as small as she feels in that really big hand? How can we help? How can the environment help you to connect emotionally, especially because the lead character for so long is a 2D spider. The face isn't yours. It's not 3D. So I think we knew that we had to kind of pull out all the stops to really help you connect. with the story. But the team was just so beautifully open with trying new things and kind of saying, Oh, I feel what you're doing there. Wait a second, let me shift this sky. Let me let me see it, but I can do there. And so much of it was just going, that's better than I even thought. Oh, my gosh, that's gorgeous. So my job is really, really hard. But the team made it so easy. Yeah.
[00:28:52.513] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, I think from the beginning, I kind of have a sixth sense about certain things. Like when Nisa's palette, like if you look at the posters, like Nisa's palette's really like this black and red striking imagery. And I think we use that a lot just like throughout marketing Nisa and with Mahal, it's really like these yellows and these like deep blues. The first and foremost idea I had about Young Thing when it first started coming into being was I knew it was going to be a lot of purples, a lot of pinks. And so I think that nighttime scene that you see her lose herself is a really compelling scene that we actually started with as our vertical slice. And like just seeing all of those deep purples that started to come through and seeing the worlds come into being and into focus in this like sort of nighttime environment. And what you'll notice too, Kent, is like the color theory of Young Thing is we start in sort of this like lighter, brighter daytime sequence. with a lot more pinks and pastels. And then we move into like her dream world or her like mental world or her spiritual world is like what I like to think about. It sort of has like that dark black aesthetic to it. But then we move into like this nighttime scenario for her. And when we're in nighttime, it's sort of like when everything hits the fan, like everything's building up to that. And I think a really beautiful moment is when we go into this like thought world, which is sort of this like hyper green, hyper like almost like neon-esque version of her ideas. And so as we move into the nighttime of that experience, things get darker and deeper and it's almost like she's getting darker and deeper inside of herself. And then we don't return back into that pastel day world until the big climactic action has finished. And then we kind of are inspired by that like neon twisted world and we create something that Melissa calls jazz or this hybrid world at the very end where it's really about bringing in 2D and 3D together and like this idea of like the world's conjoining as to like what she would want it to be in her mind. And I think the color theory in Young Thing is to me actually like some of the most complex color theory we've ever played with in this series. And for me, I feel that it makes sense that it's so complex because Nisa is like a classic hero's journey, like a young witch leaving her home to go explore outside. Mahal is sort of like a classic series around being at home and dealing with struggles at home. And then I think what's beautiful about Melissa's project, and one of my favorite things about it, is it's truly like a spiritual journey. It's really one person, human, going deeper and deeper inside of herself and how that affects her external world. And so I think what's beautiful about that for me is that we really play with all of these shades of self and these shades of being inside your own head, being in your own outside world, not feeling like you belong, finally belonging, and what it all comes down to. Yeah, I think that to me is sort of where the visual storytelling and the color theory really works for Young Thing and that's all thanks to Melissa's direction and of course like Samia and Zoe's production design and art direction.
[00:31:59.320] Kent Bye: Very cool. And so as I was watching through this piece, there's a lot of the themes of feeling this level of exile or being separated in some way from a community. And then there's this journey of turning inward and trying to figure out what's happening inside of the young thing, the main protagonist, and then at the end, being able to come back to the community and be accepted from that either explicit exile or self-exile. knowing that there was a disconnect. And so there's these spheres that end up being the metaphor of this inner journey where there's these three spheres that get thrown up into the heavens and then creates this Shakespearean reflection of how the world is reflecting the inner dynamics of what's happening. And so you have this dam that's there and all the ways that the external events that are happening in the world are also reflecting the internal events And so maybe you could expand upon this journey from being exiled to turning inward and then being able to be accepted by the community.
[00:32:59.479] Melissa Joyner: Oh, wow. You must do this a lot, Kent. You really grabbed all of the good, yummy stuff out of the film. I love it. He said exiled and spheres. OK, yay. Well, you absolutely hit it on the head. I think one of the struggles for this in particular, which is different from the woman with two skins, is that the villain is within. Right. So how do I take something that I don't have to fight with the sword or overcome in that way? It's not a dragon. You know, how do I take that and make it interesting to watch? Like no one wants to sit in VR with inner dialogue. And so I had to make the inner dialogue external. And that actually led me to try to figure out, okay, I'm talking about community and even how I said the things that it got me starting to think about. is, you know, you hiding yourself and being forced to hide yourself to protect yourself. So then that led me down a rabbit hole, and I ended up rereading How to Make a Slave, Willie Lynch. It's an essay where he literally is like, this is the formula, like, this is how you do it. And those became my auras. So that was literally a blueprint as to how to take a person and separate them from their beauty, and then kind of control them. And so when I read that, it became very clear that the pieces in order to do that was you separate someone from their language, from their voice. So the first thing that I had was her voice was thrown away. And then in order to colonize them, you separate them from their religion and their traditions, and you put yours on top of that. So then I took that and I threw her thoughts away. And then it became you literally rip apart the black male, you literally rip apart the physical image of them, because at least in the essay, black women held the power, they gave birth to children, they're the caregivers. So that's who you wanted to control. And in order to do that, you literally ripped them apart, the men. And so that then became so I throw away my physical appearance. And so that's where all of the auras came from. Again, it was sort of a nod to my African-American roots. There's also a lovely nod to that when she's looking into the water and ripping at herself and really examining herself. And I wanted that examination to be a nod to standing on the auction block, especially the teeth part. I remember the teeth being very important to me. Learning at a young age that that was a bit of it, that you had to open your mouth and they wanted to see your teeth. I don't know, that just stuck with me. So I knew that I wanted her to do things like that. But yeah, it was like, once I sort of figured out, okay, I have to make this villain external, that's where it came from. But then again, as you so beautifully shared, it is sort of a spiritual journey, she came to it kind of on her own or seeing what separating herself actually does to the world around her, it's actually more chaos than to just be yourself. And so allowing her to be her own hero, as well was important. But also, yes, fixing the dam and fixing the things that you broke. It wasn't like, oh, it's magic. And now the world is all fixed, because that's not how it works. Sometimes you do have to then put in the work to fix it. And when you do, the whole world benefits. The whole world has changed.
[00:36:19.087] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah. And from where I was on it, we had these kind of conversations, even when we were in score, about how that moment was going to be treated. And there was strong conversations about like, no, this is not a happy, everything is fixed moment. Like she did damage. And although the dam itself is repaired, this moment of seeing the dam being repaired is actually one of reflection and ownership versus like, oh, the magic wand went over and I thought that was a really powerful direction. Just from where I stood in the story process when Melissa was kind enough to share this Willie Lynch inspiration, it struck me in such a way. And I had read it in school in the way that you read these things and you kind of assess it. But then I went back and literally was underlining and highlighting these moments that Melissa felt so passionately about. And then when we came back to story and we're figuring out, OK, how are these auras going to behave? And how are they taking this inspiration and growing from it and building their own identity? And almost, excuse my French, but almost an FU to it at the end of the day, how is that going to materialize? And how are we going to treat these auras as their own characters and have them grow in these short, short moments that we're giving them because they do deserve that arc. And then at the end, going back to even the visual language, when we did reconcile with it, the reason why this sort of idea of jazz came up is because then these auras infused the world, both in the way that they were behaving and their color theory and all of that. And it's really that classic, the road rose up to meet her. you know, in that not everything changed. The other characters didn't become three-dimensional, right? The world did. And the characters took on new colors. And those were infused by the auras and everything and her experience and the fact that she did take responsibility for what had happened and for her role in it. And that changed the world and brought this idea of dimensionality and the acceptance of the community is what recolored them, but they still maintained their visual design. They didn't gain any kind of dimensionality.
[00:38:43.688] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, I mean, I think my biggest note for this project was constantly like, where are we in this world? I think it was really hard for us sometimes to be like, where's the dam? Where's the school? Where's the riverbank? Where's her home that she like wakes up in? And I think my biggest note was always like, I don't know where we are in the world. I'm not sure where we are in the world. And I think by the end, it was almost like so clear where we were in the world. It helps really bring these story beats together. Like we start to understand like, okay, This experience that Melissa is making has these elements, a lot has to do with water, a lot has to do with being immersed in water, but where is the water flowing? It's the water flowing from this place and this place and there's a dam and so it creates a really interesting experience now where you see the scale of things start to come together towards the end, right? Because you kind of get a sense that she's very large compared to her parent spider, but then we don't really get a sense of how large she really is because she shrinks down to a spider and she's sort of the scale of the world, but then when she reveals her true self. And so I think playing with all of those elements and making sure we were staying really true to scale and where we were in the world really helped drive all of these beautiful narrative moments forward. And I think For me, some of the best work in the camera actually comes from when the camera is a lot more still versus moving, because it allows some of those narrative moments to really rest in the intimacy and also in the discomfort of what our main character is moving through. When the hammer doesn't move away as fast as you might want it to move away, or when we don't cut into the next scene as fast as we might want to cut into the next scene to make it move faster. I think the moments we take to be more still, the moments we take to be more extended, and every moment really counts, Kent, as you know, in this production, because every minute we're drawing it out, every second we're drawing it out as extra time and energy and work for everybody. But I think the choices that were made to really have you sit with some of this, like, really uncomfortable things that happen to young thing, I think is some of the most powerful moments for our project here at Volume 3, which is very different than how we did it with some of the other volumes.
[00:40:54.530] Kent Bye: And there are some ways in which the four elements are playing out throughout the course of this piece. One that's very explicitly invoking each of the different elements in this very poetic interchange that has the insect kingdom responding to their view of humans and having all these metaphoric ways in which the elements are saying, like, even though they may have not had some direct experiences, knowing the essence of the elements, they're able to get a sense of what the truth is, like, even though you never touch the sun, you have the sunbeam and all these other metaphors that get played out through the elements. But it seems like water is certainly a key element that is throughout the entirety of this piece, both with the river and the dam, but also the reflection and water as a character. So I'm wondering if you could maybe elaborate on using of the elements, because I know Julie and Michaela, we've talked about, and Nisa, how you were more explicitly leaning upon the metaphoric and esoteric interpretations of the archetypes of the elements and how they played in the story, but I'd love to hear a little bit more elaboration for how you were in relationship to the elements and to how you were telling Young Thing.
[00:42:00.575] Melissa Joyner: One of the things that I really loved about and do love about African-American stories, or even with the Nigerian folktale, is there's magical realism. There's no line between and then the sun picked you up and put you over here and you just keep going. And Water Juju within A Woman With Two Skins is a character that I wanted to bring into the second so I knew Water Juju was going to be a fun character to see. I knew Water Juju would be awesome to play with scale and what is folding water going to look like as paper? Oh my god, that's going to be sick. Like I just like I knew Water Juju had to be there. But so much of the other elements of water and reflection came when we were in the space, when we were in the environment. It was really lovely to almost be able to have this script and, in a strange way, have rehearsals. Because as I'm looking at that, it becomes, yes, at the top, I wrote that she looks at her reflection in the mirror, but I didn't realize how beautiful it would be. Or how fantastic it can be to have her coming down and you see her reflection as she's saying just how sad she is. There's no way to get around. She's looking at herself. You're looking at two versions of her. And so the elements of nature being a part of it and water specifically helping to tell the story became a gift, a bit of a surprise that also then started to be played with in a really great way. Tyler did this really beautiful rendition of when she smacks the water, it changes. Now the water is glass and shattering, and it really helped to land the importance of these elements, but also that we totally play with it. And so I really just wanted to make sure that we were marrying in this concept that one of the things that the community also really loves is that they do value all of this. And there is this acceptance that the community is a character, right? And even in the script, the community also means, I say the insects, but it's fire, water, it's nature is a part of the community. And my hope was that their reverence of it and their use of it also helped you to understand their disbelief in humanity. Like, that's why humans are so crazy. How do you rip this apart and tear down trees? And that's, that's insane. So that the argument about humans made more sense, and could also be construed as true, depending on one's perspective.
[00:44:41.338] Kent Bye: Nice. I don't know if Julia and Michele have anything else to add on the elements.
[00:44:46.828] Julie Cavaliere: Sure. Yeah. I mean, as you mentioned, there were parallels. That was certainly something that I thought about and played with quite a bit in volume one and was reminded of when we were jumping into volume three in this way. One of the things I think that volume one and three have in common is it is a bit of a coming of age. story and in volume one we're dealing thematically more with fear conditioning and female self-actualization and volume three as you know we're dealing with code switching in this environment but they are both dealing with coming of age especially in young girls. And I think when I was dealing with research for volume one and looking at which trials from around the world and these kinds of things, one of the reasons why young girls were targeted the way they were is because they were seen to be extremely in touch with the environment around them, including all the elements and being able to harness that and use that in what was viewed as a negative way. So there is something to a young girl coming into her own and just being aware of the environment around her and using that and then whether that is suppressed either explicitly or implicitly or whether that is encouraged. Is up to her environment in the society in which she exists. So there was inevitably. I mean, and that wasn't something we sought to mimic in these volumes. It was something that really. came about organically and exists in volume two as well. So in this way, it was letting that theme speak to us. Like when I wrote volume one, I didn't seek out first couple of drafts to incorporate the elements, but it kept coming for me and then wound up informing camera and then the evolution of that treatment of camera. And I think the same thing happened here in the way that Melissa described. So it was just a really interesting part of each volume's journey, you know, as well as the series overall.
[00:46:54.403] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, and I don't think I have anything to add. I think both Julie and Melissa really summarized that use of elemental, like to me, water is like both cleansing and very healing. And I think like what we're finding is young thing is constantly being asked to cleanse herself of her humanness. And then like, we actually find that like, there's a lot of deep healing, like even at the end, she gets into the water, is splashing around with the different insects and communities. And so I think the power of like water and what it can do and how it can heal and cleanse is like a really interesting metaphor that is constantly being toyed with and played with within Young Thing.
[00:47:31.160] Kent Bye: And these fairy tales can sometimes have these mysterious qualities or magical realism, but there's always the human experience of feeling exiled or separated from a community and then at the end feeling that you're being able to be accepted and get out of that exile and have that more acceptance both from within but also from without within the context of the community. And so Julie had mentioned the code switching dimension of that. And Melissa, I'd love to hear you maybe elaborate on some of those deeper themes of how you feel like that theme of exile resonated with you and your own experiences as an African American here in the United States, but also like if there's any dimensions of how the original context of Nigeria, if there was any similarities of that type of exile, of how that may have played out. But I'd love to hear from your own reflections on those exile elements that you were resonating with in the story.
[00:48:22.687] Melissa Joyner: The woman with two skins, the original, the exile elements were very, very black and white. It was, she marries the king and they think she's ugly because she's an insect and they put her up in a tower and she has to hide. And totally. So there was that very, very clear. This on the other hand, I wanted it to be a little more subtle. My hope was that that feeling of exile would be made more clear that it's It's your own personal struggle, yes, from the elements around you. And I also, you know, it's like, when do you start to make people feel that way? Like, if you're, you know, have the privilege of raising a little one, right? Or if teaching a little one, or like, at what point do we start to make them feel small? And the exile elements were very clear in the original folktale. I wanted it to be less clear here. I wanted you to feel like the community that she lived in was bright and loving and shiny. I wanted you to feel that the protectors that watched over her, those sort of parent figures, Water Juju and Spider, were loving and thought she was amazing. I didn't want it to be sort of a Cinderella situation, but that even in that space, that feeling of exile can be real. And I know Personally, I felt that time and time again, you know, even as an adult, moving into a new space, or being in a classroom, you know, I've had professors ask me, if I wasn't here for an athletic scholarship, how did I get into school? And that's to my brown face. And you and that's, that is what it is. But then you you can have exile that feels as small as being at a party and you're, you're someone who leans against the wall, because you just that's not who you are, but yay you for going to the party. Do you know what I mean? So I think we all have that and have many, many stories that we can tell both small and large. And the hope is, and it did seem that at the festival, that people felt that, that people walk away and connect to that and say, I know that feeling and, and how brave to look that community in the face and say, this is who I am. Like, whoa, that can take a lot. Whatever it is you're hiding, whatever it is you feel silly about, or awkward about, or too poor for, or too fat for, or too queer for, or too, like, whatever it is, hiding that beauty, it's such a disservice. And it's so, it's so heartbreaking that many of us have to. My hope is that we won't. We won't.
[00:51:18.212] Kent Bye: Awesome. And, yeah, as we start to wrap up, I'm curious to hear from each of you what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and this type of immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:51:32.142] Melissa Joyner: Oh, man. So much. I want one of these headsets in every home. Like, for the free. As, like, government assistance. I want kids to be able to, like, learn different languages in immersion and to get into Quill, which is so much fun from what I see them do. And to just, it's just such a blow your mind experience. It is such a blow your mind experience that it just, it's sad not everyone has experienced it yet. Soon, I hope. But that's my novice response. Julie and Michaela are into this world a lot more, and I'm sure they have like a 10-point plan as to how to better this, but that's mine. I just think it's so amazing what can be created and the imagination that you can step into really, really beyond this world, really. It is. It's a virtual world. So there you go.
[00:52:38.106] Julie Cavaliere: I think for my part, because again, this series is my first go, What struck me, and this was touched upon earlier, was this opportunity with this series to bring a very cinematic sensibility to this medium. I think that felt really exciting and fresh for someone like me, who comes from a totally different background. And what I think, at the end of this trilogy, what I stand very proud of is And what I think one of the things, because Quill has been around, you know, for a minute, but what I think it continues to do, it allows different people to come in and create stories. It's extremely user-friendly. It was for me. So it's not only talking about with the series, we're not only talking about what kind of stories we're telling, but who gets to tell those stories. And this was touched upon, but it was extremely impactful for me stepping in as someone who was stepping into this space. for the first time, and then helping usher Melissa in, is that we were able to take this kind of tool and use it to tell these very specific yet very universal stories. Not with the intention of pushing the medium forward in this very noble way, as some other people have, but more to talk about the possibility of different worlds. I think with each volume, we're talking about what if. What if this little girl was given the space and the support to self-actualize? What if in volume two, this family came together to support each other in grief and lifted each other up? What if in volume three, this community learn to accept those who were different and maybe they previously feared, you know, and celebrate individuality. So for me, it's taking that and potentially continuing that in this series, but holding storytelling to that kind of standard where we're looking at different stories, different perspectives, you know, and asking these questions, if not, what if, then what have they be from a cultural, political, societal perspective, whatever you have, but continue, because there's so much potential here. And when I first came in, it felt like the Wild West to me. So to continue to push these boundaries and ask these questions, because I think asking the question a lot of times can be just as powerful, if not more so than providing an answer. to the audience. And I think that's something that this medium has such potential to do that excites me to continue to create in this space.
[00:55:23.242] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: I mean, we know this is not my first time on this podcast, so I might have said this in a previous episode in my own words. But honestly, you know, the world we live in is a 3D spatialized world. The world we live in is immersive. The world we live in has haptic feedback to our senses. And I think the beauty of this medium, you know, within a digital immersive technology, within a non-digital, more analog, immersive theatrical environment or medium, or just, I think, creating an immersive event experience for people or going to an immersive museum experience, I think it's where true change and social action actually happens. I don't think change happens just in our mind. I don't think change just happens in our heart. I think change happens when our mind and our heart experience things in life that allow us to make them make sense, like both the heart and the mind being in communion in union with each other. And I think the medium that we are so passionate about trying to push forward in this immersive storytelling space was never easy, right? Like, there is no clear way to monetize these works yet. There is no clear way of getting on the store and getting the big million dollar hit that so many phone applications get or desktop applications or video games get, you know. And we've talked about this multiple times around, like, frustrations around distribution, the frustrations around mobilizing these experiences. But I think the reason we stay in it, I think the reason we continue pounding the pavement after all this time, even with like Vision Pro coming out and supposedly being sort of the new savior in our field, which I don't think it's going to be, I think it's still going to just take time, is that it is just a true agent of creating change. It creates the perfect environment, the rich soil, the fertile soil for conversations. It creates a fertile soil for connection. It creates a fertile soil for there to be recognition, for there to be accountability. I just have seen this medium be used in so many different ways and I think the potential for it is to bring us back into our human selves instead of pushing us into a brain self or a heart self, but actually allowing us to feel human again inside of stories, exploring stories, and being able to feel like it's okay to ask questions, feel like it's okay to take agency, feel like it's okay to make mistakes, which we get a lot in video games, but we don't get that immersive quality where it's like a mind-heart-body reunion or union of all those things coming together. So yeah, that's my like heart song to VR.
[00:57:54.764] Kent Bye: Awesome. And is there anything else that's left and said that any one of you would like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:58:02.789] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, I mean, I think we're looking for the next steps for reimagined. I mean, I'm okay to like shamelessly like ask and request to the immersive community. Like what do you want to see next for the reimagined series? What do you want to see next? Whether that's quill or whether that's animation or whether that's like exploring new realms, new stories. I think we're sort of in this moment now where we've pushed one, two, three incredible projects. Young Things coming out later this year. We'd love for you all to experience it. Give us your thoughts. But what's next? And what do you think should be next? Because I don't think an incredible project is an actually incredible project if it doesn't have an audience. And if we're not listening to that audience, we're not listening to that community, then or just creating in a vacuum and not creating in communion?
[00:58:50.439] Julie Cavaliere: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful note to leave it on. I personally am just deeply humbled to have been accepted the way I have been, being such a newbie and getting to know so many immersive creators throughout this process and learning about their backgrounds, what drove them here, sharing stories, sharing experiences, sharing insights, do's and don'ts. So I'm just deeply appreciative. And as Michaela mentioned, we're certainly listening as we figure out what we want to do next.
[00:59:20.553] Melissa Joyner: Seconded everything they said. And thank you for having me, VR World.
[00:59:26.623] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, at Venice Immersive this past year, 2023, I had a chance to talk to a lot of the Quill artists, including Zoe Rowland and folks from Studio Syro and Ryan Genji Thomas to talk about what's been happening in the Quill community has really been quite amazing. And I'm glad I had a chance to catch up on that at Venice and tell some of that larger story. But I think that this series of Reimagined, you've been able to really take what's already been developed by that existing community and to take it even further in terms of way that you use color, the way that you're telling the stories, the way that you're bringing in all these different diverse perspectives and reimagining these fairy tales and setting them into a real contemporary context. Just a really beautiful job in each of the three pieces, but also in this reimagined volume three, The Young Thing, where you're taking this existing myth and reimagining it for the current context here in many different dimensions of this inner journey that you're going through of exile and how to tell that inward process of trying to reintegrate yourself to be able to then be accepted by the community. So just a really powerful story and just a really amazing job overall with what you've been able to accomplish with Reimagined. And yeah, hopefully you'll be able to find the next steps for where you take it here in the future. And thanks again for each of you for joining me today to help break down not only the story, but also your process in creating it.
[01:00:41.758] Julie Cavaliere: Thank you so much, Kent. Thank you for your support across all three volumes. It's such a pleasure to sit down with you again.
[01:00:47.624] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Thank you, Kent. You're the best.
[01:00:50.027] Melissa Joyner: Thank you, Kent, for more reasons than I'm willing to say. But I really appreciate meeting you. You are so lovely. Thank you.
[01:01:00.667] Kent Bye: So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesOfVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, Kent Bye. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
