On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World) is one of the most powerful experiences I’ve seen in VR, and is also one of my favorite piece in the Sundance New Frontier 2022 selection. It tells the story of a errant emergency alert text message that was sent to 1.4 million people in Hawai‘i on January 13, 2018, which read “Emergency Alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” This VR piece takes us to a variety of different people in Hawai‘i providing a range of different reactions, but it ends up being a dream-like meditation on facing mortality, connecting to friends and family, and reflecting that we still live in a world where nuclear annihilation is still a reality.
This project was started when Games for Change founder Susanna Pollack reached out to Notes on Blindness producers Atlas V and Archer’s Mark to produce a VR experience on nuclear disarmament in February 2018. It was through their collaboration with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security where Tamara Lilinoe Patton and Alexander Glaser pointed to the false ballistic missile alert in Hawaiʻi as a way to translate his normally abstracted geopolitical issue into the embodied experiences of over a million people.
Because the piece was produced remotely, then audio interviews had to be combined with actors who were acting out the actions within Dimension’s volumetric Capture Studio, and point-cloud abstractions of the landscapes of Hawai‘i. It ends feeling like a mix between an audio podcast, and a dream-like spatial exploration that immerses you into many surreal moments and reactions that people had over the course of that morning. The spoken work poem from Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio opens the piece, and ends with more of her deep reflections on this experience. It is very cinematic in it’s approach without any opportunities for direct interaction, but overall I found the piece to be really emotionally evocative and thought it used the spatial medium quite effectively to immerse us into the looming threat of nuclear annihilation
I had a chance to interview Archer’s Mark co-founder Steve Jamison (co-writer, co-producer, co-creator of On the Morning You Wake), Atlas V co-founder Pierre Zandrowicz (Creator), and Michaela Ternasky-Holland (Creative strategist & impact producer for Games for Change) on Friday, January 21st to unpack the journey and creative process of creating this piece.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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. So in today's episode, I'm going to be covering one of my favorite experiences from the Sundance New Frontier 2022 selection. It was called On the Morning You Wake to the End of the World. It was about the 2018 Hawaii false missile alert, which was a text message, an emergency missile alert that went out to 1.4 million citizens that said, ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. You can imagine what it must have felt like to be in Hawaii and to receive a message like this. Looming potential nuclear annihilation as you read this message and have 15 to 20 minutes to figure out what to do to try to avoid this imminent missile threat. Turns out that was a false alarm, but the impact of the citizens there was quite distinct. And a month after that, Games4Change, Susanna Pollack, had sent an email message out to producers of a great VR piece called No Time Blindness. It was produced by Archer's Mark and Atlas 5. and asking them if they would be willing to start to work on this project to think about a VR experience to analyze some of the various issues around the nuclear threat that's still looming within our world. They decided to focus on this specific event in Hawaii and to talk to different citizens there and to get their own personal reactions and to really ground this larger abstract issue down into these very real personal stories. Just an amazing job of doing that translation. using all the remote production and virtual production techniques of Mixed Reality Capture with point cloud aesthetic of the landscape and some beautiful poetry from Dr. Jamaica, Haoli, Meli Kalani, Osario, which was just an amazing setting of the context. And this is chapter one of three total chapters, but I'm just totally blown away and really moved by this piece. It's really quite powerful and highly recommend it when you have a chance to check it out. So that's what coming on today's episode of this is a VR podcast so this interview with Michaela Steve and Pierre happened on Friday January 21st 2022 so with that let's go ahead and Dive right in
[00:02:14.508] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Hi all, my name is Michaela Ternoski-Holland. I am a creative strategist and impact producer, as well as a creator for virtual reality experiences. In this specific project, I'm focusing a lot on the impact production. So anything outside of what's happening in the headset is my realm. So from social media, to website, to festival activations, to a larger impact campaign strategy for On the Morning You Wake. And I'm excited to be here with my fellow collaborators who are working on what's happening inside the headset.
[00:02:46.237] Steve Jamison: Yeah, I'm Steve and I am one of the co-founders of a studio in London called Archer's Mark. We're a production studio working across all different forms of media from feature films to feature documentaries, TV, branded work, and obviously also immersive work as well. This will be our second VR experience we produced together with Pierre and the team at Atlas 5. We produced Notes on Blindness previously. But this is actually my first VR experience as a creator and second as a studio. And it was just amazing to be able to build on the experience of working with Atlas 5 that we had on Notes of Blindness. And that's what brought us to this point.
[00:03:24.914] Pierre Zandrowicz: I am Pierre Zvendrovich, co-founder of Atlas 5 and artistic director in the company. Especially on this project, I was more focusing on the technology side. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
[00:03:38.057] Kent Bye: Maybe you can each give a bit more context as to your individual backgrounds and your journey into the VR space.
[00:03:45.105] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Sure. So I actually have always been really passionate about storytelling in general, whether that's through movement and theater and dance or with journalism and photography and filmmaking and audio-based storytelling. And I just happened to drop out of college and jump into a Disney Cruise Line contract, where I really realized that immersive interactive storytelling has such an incredible impact on people. And I spent nine months being immersed in an immersive story, which can be very meta. But coming out of that experience and continuing my degree in journalism, I decided to look at ways I could put people inside stories and ways that people could interact with stories. And that eventually led me to the door of virtual reality and augmented reality and the XR industry as a whole. And I first started in XR as a huge fan and just kind of knew all the players and was going around and trying to find a way to break into the industry. And I got really lucky and Mia Trams at Life VR saw my work and I worked at Time Magazine for a few years on all kinds of incredible projects from 360 documentaries to volumetric experiences. to also augmented reality covers of Time magazines and Sports Illustrated magazines. And from there, I decided I really wanted to be a consultant and a creative strategist and really focus my efforts in the ethics of storytelling in the quote unquote metaverse, as we now call it, as well as the continuation of really amazing, diverse uncomfortable stories in virtual reality and augmented reality with a lens of making people feel comfortable to be uncomfortable, which I think this project does in such an incredible way.
[00:05:30.915] Steve Jamison: Yeah, I'm admittedly, I'm probably the least experienced or bringing the least experience when it comes to the world of immersive storytelling or VR or XR. You know, Mike Brett and myself, who founded Archesmark together, we spent the best part of a decade making more conventional linear films. And so we're coming very much from a cinema background. We've spent years making films and documentaries, all kinds and durations. I think what's particularly amazing about this moment in time, therefore, is all the reason that we move towards immersive storytelling is I think, you know, there are just so many more opportunities and forms of storytelling and methods of reaching an audience and methods of communicating, as Michaela said, a challenging story than there were when we started out in the film industry, you know, whether that's, you know, advances in technology or advances in audience understanding or ability to interact with stories. And that applies to, you know, not just to immersive storytelling, but also I think when we were starting out podcasts, you know, the fact that we're recording a podcast now, podcasts weren't even really popular when we started the business. And therefore what's become increasingly exciting to us as creators and as storytellers is that we can choose whichever medium or platform we believe is the best platform for a specific story. And then we can find an audience that way. And that's something we always try to do. Some of the stories that we're working on, we try and work across multiple different platforms. So we'll tell it as a documentary and as an immersive experience. And this experience actually started out as a series of audio recordings, as did Notes Unblind. So That's been our journey into immersive space, and we feel pretty blessed that we've arrived with this project, with the ability to tell the story in this way, because frankly, five years ago, the same technology wasn't there for creators. And so we're unbelievably fortunate that advances have happened in the last few years to enable this.
[00:07:18.954] Pierre Zandrowicz: Well, it started, I was a director in commercials, I would say maybe eight years ago. And one day I went to this get-together, like kind of a party at France, where developers and video games, and I discovered the DK-1, the first headset. It was a roller coaster, my first experience, pretty bad one. I felt pretty sick, but I was really like, I went out of this party and I was like, OK, this is something we definitely should dig. So we ordered the same headsets, the DK1, and we did like 360 films. I directed a film called iPhilip about the robot of Philip K. Dick for Arte in France, and then commercials in 360 films. And then I met Arnaud Collinard, who is now my partner. And he made me discover the real power of VR. And I mean by that, Game Engine, because, you know, at start, I thought basically VR was looking around you. And then I discovered that VR can be also walking around and interact with things. But still, I really wanted to bring something coming from cinema. I wanted to bring cinema in VR. So I didn't want to do video games. So basically at Atlas V, this is for now, this is what we do. We do narrative experience. And this is also why I really like with this project is that it's the best of both worlds. It's like a really narrative, but also you have the real power of VR. So yeah, then I created Atlas V with Arnaud and Fred and Antoine Caron. And this is why we are here today.
[00:08:56.677] Kent Bye: Yeah, Atlas V, Atlas V, I sometimes call it Atlas V, but I guess it's Atlas V. In France, we say Atlas V, but in the US, most people call us Atlas V, so we just don't know anymore. Yeah, well, I know that Atlas V has been a part of a lot of the major film festivals over the last number of years, always with some amazing projects, and this year is no exception here. So, Steve, maybe you could set the context as to this story and how it came about.
[00:09:23.292] Steve Jamison: Wow, yes, it's a great question. And actually, I was just today wanting to check some dates on that and I realized the first email from Susanna at Games4Change landed in our inbox to discuss this project in February 2018. So, you know, coming up for four years ago. Yeah, the origins of the project, Michaela, as you know, works for Games4Change. Games4Change is a non-profit organization who promote social change through video games and XR and immersive experiences. And, you know, they're real thought leaders in that space, in my opinion. And the origin of the story is they were working with Princeton University, who have a department of science and global security. And the objective of which was to try and create a VR experience or an immersive experience centered on the theme of nuclear security. Because, you know, nuclear threat and nuclear security is felt like this is something, it's an issue that belongs to the eighties and that's long forgotten. And it's an issue that belongs to a previous generation. And their objective was to try and bring that issue back into public consciousness and specifically to connect with a young audience. And therefore they wanted to do that through the creation of an immersive experience. So they brought Games for Change on board and Susanna immediately reached out to us. Collectively, our studios are just Mark and Atlas V, I guess we're going to say. I always say five, so I'll say V now. Atlas V, we'd obviously made Notes and Blindness together. And as I recall from that first email that I caught today, you know, they were just moved by the power of the narrative and that experience and how, you know, it's ability for people, users to emote with that experience. So they reached out and said, did we want to collaborate on this? Instantly we got together. I think within a day we said, yep, because nuclear security is something that is really incredibly important to us all as an issue. So I guess that was the origin of the story. I think from there, the challenge was, how do you even begin to unpack an issue as huge and complex and bewildering as nuclear security? And we knew that on the one hand, we have these huge details, like we have technology, we have politics, lots of which can be a barrier for entry, especially for a younger audience. It might be that as soon as we start talking about numbers of weapons or payload or political systems that actually were disengaging from our audience. And we said that what we wanted to do right from the very get-go was try and engage with an emotional narrative. And we were incredibly fortunate that Tamara Lillian Patton, who was one of the fellows at Princeton at the time, was in those early meetings with us. and has been a great collaborator through this project. And I think our first meeting was just a couple of months after the false alarm in Hawaii. And Tamara herself is a Kanaka Maoli indigenous Hawaiian, born and bred, but also happens to be a specialist in nuclear security. And she was studying nuclear security at Princeton and receiving these text messages from her friends and family saying, what do we do? Where can we go? Where can we take shelter? And she shared some of these text messages and deeply personal stories with us in those early meetings. And I think it was from that point that we said, that's it, you know, that is the kernel of this idea, rather than taking the whole sphere of, you know, the kind of the macro of this story, we've got to harness it with the micro of these personal responses, not least because I think nuclear threat is something which is incredibly abstract. It's very hard for most people to imagine what the end of the world via nuclear war would look like. Our brains don't allow us to go to those places. We disengage from the thought that that could be possible, or how, or what would happen. And so how better to try and communicate that than through people who for 38 minutes really lived that experience for real and thought that it was real and went through those processes. And then I think the final thing I would say is that what an opportunity to be able to communicate that story through an immersive medium, through an immersive art form, because as a documentary or as a thesis or as a linear film, I feel like there is a limitation for your ability to bring an audience into that story. But in immersive, you have the opportunity to place them right at the centre. And so that from the outset was our challenge. How could we tackle this broad, broad issue, an important issue, but through the in Hawaii in 2018. Sorry, that was a long answer.
[00:13:48.065] Kent Bye: No, that's great. And maybe I'll have you help set a bit of the broader context, because, you know, we're talking about a text message that got sent out to all these Hawaiians on January 13, 2018, that there was an inbound missile threat. And so it sounds like that following February, Steve, is when you first got email from Games4Change that was following this event that happened in Hawaii, which was 1.4 million people that live in Hawaii got a text message on the morning of Saturday, January 13th, 2018. And maybe you could sort of set the context for what that text message said.
[00:14:21.513] Steve Jamison: So I would just say that actually when Susanna reached out, the false alarm in Hawaii wasn't part of our conversation. Susanna reached out and said, you know, we want to tackle nuclear threat as a whole. And it was only Tamara's personal experience of bringing, you know, those memories that were so fresh for her that we decided to center that in our approach to the story. But to give you the context, yeah, on the 13th of January, 2018, seven minutes past eight in the morning, 1.4 million citizens of Hawaii received a text message said ballistic missile inbound, take immediate shelter, this is not a drill. And it took 38 minutes for the Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency to reset that message. And what happened in between was cell networks collapsed, people took to Twitter, people hid in basements, people hid in storm drains, People were forced to contemplate, my son is six miles away in one direction at soccer practice, my daughter is 10 miles away in the opposite direction at the Saturday farmer's market with my husband. I can choose to be with one of them for the last moments of my life. And people face those very real decisions. And so our job was to try and find people who lived through some of the most extreme emotions of their lives in those 38 minutes and to try and take those testimonies and turn them into something.
[00:15:41.437] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah, I just have to say, even just hearing you read back that text message and after going through the VR experience, it brings up all this emotion of our lives and what it means to be mortal human beings on this planet. And to get a message essentially saying, well, there could be a nuclear annihilation, but in a nice way, like inbound missile threats, seek shelter. This is not a drill. And I think that to take us into the lives of so many different people in that context of what it was like to be there in that situation, I think it was done in such a way that I could project myself into those stories and imagine what I would do. Yeah, just a really powerful piece overall. I think it really speaks to the power of the VR medium of being able to take this experience. It's a very surreal experience that these 1.4 million citizens of Hawaii went through, especially considering that I remember hearing about it, but it's a lot different than seeing something come up on social media and by the spectacle of it. And I don't think I may have even heard of it after it has had already been resolved, or I'm not even sure like, when I heard about I remember I heard it on that day, but it's a lot different to be taken into the lives of the people in Hawaii. So I guess that's a challenge of like, how do you do that with the medium, and maybe Pierre, you could start to talk about the use of the technology and how you start to think about of all the different ways to start to tell this story, you end up using a lot of windows mixed reality, volumetric capture and reconstruction of scenes through a variety of different kind of photogrammetry and tabletop scale. And maybe you could just talk about generally your approach of how to take people into this story.
[00:17:18.303] Pierre Zandrowicz: Well, I guess the art direction came up pretty straightforward when we talked about it with Steve and Mike. We're looking to something that is close to reality in a way, you know, because when you have a background in films and then suddenly you start working on Unity, you know, sometimes the shift can be kind of hard. So we explored different aspects of art direction and we did a first prototype on Rift S with Kinect. It was really nice. We really liked it. And then when we started working with Oculus, of course, we had to switch to the Quest. So we had to find a solution to create the same aspects with real actors, film scanned actors in a Quest. So then we turned to a volumetric capture and we went to a studio called Dimension in London. And this is where we shot the film. And beside of that, at some point we were supposed to go to Hawaii, of course, to scan different environments. And then the COVID came. So my dream to go to Hawaii suddenly disappeared. So what we did is we recreated everything in 3D. but with the look of the point cloud and the photogrammetry. So it was really hard to recreate it, but we made it. It took us a really long time to achieve this look. And also we wanted this look because of course, you know, it's memories. So it gives this tone, you know, it's like the characters don't really know if they recall everything. So we have those dissolved sets and also to recreate the, of course, the atoms and this kind of environment. I think it's pretty much it. Do you want to add anything?
[00:18:57.198] Steve Jamison: No, I think thinking from the top why we went for volumetric capture, because we also knew from the outset that we were going to be creating a long 38 minute in total experience over the multiple chapters that we'll release. And so if we're going to put volumetric capture assets in, that's going to be an incredibly heavy file for the Quest to have to deal with. You know, they're big, you know, in terms of data, they're big assets, but So we thought about, well, could we create our characters through CG, or could we use the Kinect like we used in the prototype? Ultimately, we knew that if we wanted our audience to emote and empathize with the characters, that we wanted to render them as authentically and as realistically as possible. We couldn't afford to have an uncanny valley or a breakdown between the audience and the characters themselves. we took on the challenge of having volumetric capture at that scale. And it's huge, the number of characters that we've got in total, the number of assets. So that was a really important piece. And then I think from the outset, when we were working with Pierre and Novelab on this art direction, this idea, we wanted to explore this idea that actually the threat of nuclear weapons hangs over all of us. a weapon is dropped, its very presence, you know, as you only have to see through this experience, weighs heavy and casts a significant shadow over people all across the world, the people of Hawaii, especially in this experience. And so we wanted this kind of almost like a parallel universe that they're you know, from the moment that first text arrives, we kind of drop into this more point cloud environment that is, you know, there's darker and built from these atoms to kind of represent the fact that, you know, we can be going about our lives now, you know, blissfully unaware of the threat that exists, but it is there every minute of every day. And we have lived through an extraordinary number of close calls and false alarms where any one of which could have led to nuclear Armageddon. So we started on the beach where it's almost photorealistic before the first text message drops in the experience. And from that point on, we wanted to enter this kind of other world to somehow try and represent that.
[00:21:10.836] Pierre Zandrowicz: Yeah, kind of limbo in a way. Yeah.
[00:21:15.130] Kent Bye: One thing that comes up for me is I remember talking to the creators of Kasunda, who had plans to be able to shoot in that space, talking about this language that was being lost, but with the COVID forced them to turn that as more volumetric tilt brush paintings and kind of push the aesthetics in a direction that they weren't planning on going initially. They were just planning on doing photogrammetry and just a straight up volumetric capture. But I feel like there's a similar thing here where given the pandemic, it forced the project into this point cloud aesthetic, which I think actually works quite well, giving this more abstract space of the sense of volume, but to juxtapose that with these volumetric characters. And I wanted to bring in the Games4Change, but before we do that, I just want to follow up with a quick technical point, which was that as I watched it, I was just sitting in my chair and I wasn't trying to test the 6DOF, but is it volumetric? Are you giving that much full 6DOF footage for all these different scenes and characters, or was it rendered out into kind of a 2D plane for people to watch? It's hard for me to remember what you did.
[00:22:18.930] Pierre Zandrowicz: Actually, you could stand up and walk in the scene and go around every character, but it's not meant to be because the sets are not exactly designed for this, but you definitely could walk. It's just better just to stay and look around you. I think it's more a 6 DOF experience than a room scale experience.
[00:22:35.902] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah, because I didn't feel the need to get up and walk around. It felt very cinematic, like it was framed in such a way that I didn't feel the need to do that. That's why I don't remember whether or not it was fully volumetric or not. But you did eventually have to figure out then how to deliver that much volumetric content across the scenes then, essentially.
[00:22:55.691] Steve Jamison: Yeah, first we had to figure out how to shoot in a volumetric studio, you know, the capture space of which is about two and a half meters wide in the middle of a pandemic, where in the UK we had social distancing, the bottom limit of which was two meters. So, but we, you know, we had a timeline that really forced us to execute that shoot, as Pierre said, that originally we were going to shoot the whole thing in Hawaii. We were going to go out and film interviews with all of our contributors and then scan them in Hawaii, find a way of doing that. Probably we would have shot this using the Kinect with the real contributors in Hawaii. And we were going to scan through photogrammetry or LiDAR, the real locations. And as Pierre said in the end, that wasn't possible. But what we did get is everybody to submit photography and references for their spaces or for the locations so that we can make sure that all of the CG locations that we were building or environments we were building were as authentic as possible. And then we had a really long task of casting as authentically as possible as we could here in the UK. And then our physical production team here in the UK did an absolutely insane job, brilliant job of putting together that volumetric shoot with Dimension Studios in November 2019 when we were in the middle of our second wave. And yeah, there was a lot of data came out of that for all of our characters. I think we had a crew of about 65 on that day, which was a bit of a fee for the time of year. Okay.
[00:24:22.629] Kent Bye: I guess I didn't realize that those are actors. I just figured they were so there you had to hire actors and then where the stories then were they written or are they composited stories or source from people? Like how did you piece together?
[00:24:36.913] Steve Jamison: Yeah, it's a good question. We had a casting team on the ground in Hawaii who were sourcing us the richest stories that we could find. And then over the process of about three months, we were conducting interviews no different to this via Zoom with all of them, obviously, either very early in the morning or very late at night, given the 12 or 13 hour time difference between London and Hawaii. And, you know, we had hundreds of hours of incredible testimonies, and then we cut together an audio version of the experience as you now see it, you know, three chapter podcast in a way, you know, complete with full sound design and a script. And as I say, the plan was to go back and film with those people, but the pandemic just wouldn't allow for that. So what we did is we cast each of those in London. And then, you know, some of those scenes, we then had actors train to lip sync to be able to deliver the lines. So we, you know, we would play the audio testimony of the original interviews in the studio and then have, you know, so Tamara's scene, for instance, when she's talking in the library scene, where we see this map roll out in front of her on the desk of the library, we had an actress lip sync with the original audio from Tamara's interview, which was an incredible experience.
[00:25:52.147] Kent Bye: Okay. Well, I'll have to go back and watch it with that new lens. But I guess I didn't realize also that the Games4Change was involved so early on this project. And I think I'm very familiar with the Games4Change as a conference and festival that curates different selections that were being created. But I don't remember any other projects that were produced by Games4Change. Maybe Michaela, you could give us a little bit more context as the games are changing, if this is the first production or if there's other productions that they've been involved with that maybe I just am not aware of.
[00:26:23.166] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, that's a great question. So the history of Games for Change has been itself a nonprofit organization. And what really put Games for Change in everybody's purview in the game industry is an annual festival that they do usually was hosted in New York, and lately they've been having to host it online. And one of the things they did within that festival, which then put them in everybody's mind for the XR community, is they then created a vertical for XR for Change. And so while Games4Change is very well known to be a curator and sort of a funnel for these types of games to come through, whether that's like traditional sort of like 2D gaming or mobile app gaming, they're really powerful in the way that they're able to connect people to each other. So for example, you know, they can connect someone at the United Nations working on world hunger with a developer who's working on a mobile app that starts to make the impact and the understanding around what world hunger could be. And there could be real life changes where like a child playing that app here in the United States could actually be helping make food through a UNICEF vertical appear for like children who live in places that don't have as much food. So like a child could basically be raising money using like a mobile app that encourages them to like exercise. So like this is the power where Games for Change does. And they work not just at like sort of the organization institutional level with people like you and other NGOs, but they also work at the education level. So they work a lot with local high school teachers, middle school teachers, museum curators, and they just are of the mindset that by making people play, it helps people understand. And when people understand, it helps create that impact. It helps create that behavioral change. And so the expansion into XR for change as their vertical was sort of a very natural progression for them, I think as a company. and I have been as a part of Games for Change both as an XR creator with work that I've done that's non-fiction or social impact as well as a speaker and a panelist and a curator for different types of items that they're looking for and this is really my first time working with them full-time in a position and that is exactly what you said Kent because this is one of their first ever XR productions and so If I look at the long view of Games for Change, I know that there is more content they want to create to come that blends both the XR for Change vertical as well as the traditional Games for Change vertical. They just recently produced a Minecraft curriculum that is a gamified experience for children in middle school to learn about Nobel Peace Laureates. So they just did this incredible launch with Minecraft and Nobel Peace Center and were able to put themselves as the bridge. And so I think it's really great because now not only are they putting themselves in that sphere, they're now putting themselves in the XR sphere, where I see them again as a bridge between these incredible storytellers and technologists like Archer's Mark and Atlas Five with these incredible nuclear experts like Princeton University and sort of what's to come for the impact campaign in the near future.
[00:29:33.553] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah, that's, that's really great to hear. And cause I've also attended the games for change and spoke there and, you know, saw the selection and everything. And I think it's a great organization. I'm really drawn towards it. And I'm really happy to see that they're getting more involved with proactively producing projects. And just in terms of the producing, are they also raising money for other things or is that something that is also left upon the collaborators to just help find other partners to help fund things? And, or is it more just a connections and relationships?
[00:30:02.541] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, I would say it definitely looks different for every collaboration for games for change because it's such a new initiative they've taken on in the last few years. So I can speak to the initiative we're talking about today with on the morning you wake so games for change and Princeton University. helped to raise the initial seed funding for the vertical slice that was premiered at the Games for Change Festival in 2008. And then from there, it was sort of up to Archer's Mark and Atlas 5 to say, okay, well, you know, we have this really great proof of concept, but we don't really have the time and energy to invest in funding the actual production. But if you all find a way to make this piece happen, then we will come in and start to fund the impact campaign, right? Because Games4Change as an organization, their true goal and mission and value is what is the impact of the actual product? Like what is the impact of the project, of the assets, of the design, of the experience? And so they sort of launched this project and then like props to Archer's Mark and Atlas 5 for raising the actual production funding with the prowess of what they built with the vertical slice, but also the prowess of who they are in their own industries and the trust that their organizations have to fund them to create the project. And now at the point where the production is now starting to come to a close, Games4Change is coming back in to now raise the funding for the impact campaign, which is where I sort of get involved and where my current project rate is currently coming from.
[00:31:28.576] Kent Bye: Okay. That helps set a lot of context and thanks for that. I want to come back to the next phase of the impact campaign here at the end, but I want to also dig into the experience just a little bit more because that experience of watching this piece, I think it was one of the more emotionally moving pieces that I've seen in a while. And it is surprising in some ways, because it was hitting me in a way that took this threat that has been so abstract that we've just kind of accepted it and it grounded it in a way that made it feel real. especially in the context of Hawaii being such a spot where the people that live there are being more reality that they have to live with day to day. I think living in the United States, I've become numb to the larger threats that may exist in the world theoretically, but in Hawaii, that's not only a theoretic, but actual real threats to the point when they get a text like that, then it grounds it again, but going back in the history with Pearl Harbor. And so I feel like being able to set up some of those contexts, but to take us to that place, but also with some of the data visualizations that you did as well, in terms of trying to visualize different aspects of things. And I thought that overall, it was, it was a combination of all the things that I think by the end of it, it just was like a really moving project that I'm really curious to see the reaction to a piece like this as it gets out into the world. But maybe you could talk about some of the other parts that you were able to do, because you basically have these scenes that's very cinematic in a way of just kind of telling a story and cutting from different people. But there's also these moments where you're able to animate all these text messages that someone's getting or to kind of simulate a nuclear explosion and other parts. And so maybe talk about the other parts where you felt like you're able to really use the medium of VR to start to maybe go above and beyond what you're able to do on a 2D screen.
[00:33:14.173] Steve Jamison: Yeah, wow. It's such a great question, and I will try not to meander in answering it. To go back to your first point, then, thanks for your comments. And I suppose we're pleased to know that the project moved you, I think, because ultimately, I think that's what our goal is, to engage people and move them. And also, ultimately, we want people to feel like they have agency in this story. I think that's one of the common feelings towards nuclear is that individuals don't feel like they have agency, and we're trying to move towards a conversation and involve people in the conversation and broaden the community. But in terms of what you said about this nuclear shadow that people don't realize that they live with, well, you know, for the indigenous people of Hawaii, this was something that has been imperialism and colonialism has visited on them. This is something that was brought to their shores. Not only has their land been taken, but every day they live with helicopters and military bases and were a target in this instance only because U.S. forces are based on Hawaii. And that was something that really came to the fore in one of our very early interviews with somebody who became our co-author of this project, and that was Jamaica Heole-Melikalani Osorio. She's an indigenous activist, poet, author, scholar, one of the most extraordinary collaborators we've ever had the privilege of working with, and we interviewed her specifically about her experiences on that day, because we felt like her response, which was, take shelter? What are we going to do? Like, where can we go? What a ridiculous thing to say. Like, I'm just going to paddle out into the ocean and be connected to the water and to the land, which is so important to my culture. And so we were absolutely floored by the interview with Jamaica. We spoke to her for several hours on several occasions. But Jamaica is also an extraordinary poet. She's won several national awards for poetry in the US and is able to articulate lots of these huge concepts about the history of colonialism and what that has imposed on indigenous communities. And so we asked if Jamaica would be interested in authoring a poem that would form the spine of this piece, which for me, I think was a transformative moment for the entire experience, because what it does is it brings an emotional quality and it allows us to unpack some of those ideas in a truly lyrical way, which means that we're not simply getting bogged down in numbers and data, because there is a lot of data that we're going to unpack over the course of the experience. but it allows us to approach it in a really lyrical way, which also allows us to broaden our thinking about what the solutions to this problem will be in the long term. So, you know, Jamaica wrote this poem and it was, I think she sent the first draft through to us and we were all weeping listening to it and reading it and Jamaica's poem will now form the spine of each chapter that we're going to release of the experience. So each chapter is going to begin with a stanza, which tackles a different theme, and then the theme of that chapter will blossom from the section of her poetry. So yeah, I think in that sense, I think we have to give an enormous amount of credit to Jamaica and being able to ground this, not only in something lyrical and beautiful and emotive, but also something that's connected to the cultural heritage heritage of Hawaii. So that was the first part of the question. What was the second part of the question again?
[00:36:31.013] Kent Bye: Oh, well, I guess both the story elements, but also the data visualizations and other ways of tapping into this as a story. I felt like you were starting to use the medium of VR in a way that was particularly powerful. What I was thinking of as well, you know, there's a quote that part of telling a story is putting characters into a situation that's under pressure and the decisions that they make under pressure is revealing of their character. I feel like there's another part of this story that you're also showing how a variety of different people responded to this intense situation of being put under pressure that is reflecting of the larger dynamics of this as an issue that we were talking about. And so you're both using data visualizations to show different aspects of that, but I think it was also just the human story that was also a consistent thread throughout the piece that was able to allow you to imagine that if you were in this person's situation or that context, or you know, if you were in this familiar relationship, separated from your family, and just the variety of different ways that people were trying to seek shelter, protect themselves, or just be connected to the land. I just felt the whole matrix of the variety of those different situations, which was the same pressure being put upon 1.4 million people, which not being underneath that pressure, you don't realize how traumatic that would have been for folks
[00:37:47.258] Steve Jamison: There was something subtle that we tried to do in lots of scenes actually that I think might help towards achieving that sense of like how each specific individual, you know, responded to the pressure of the situation, but also our ability to place ourselves in there. And that is, I remember Alexander Glazer, who was also one of our partners at Princeton University and somebody who's been a big spine of the project throughout. He said early on in the project that if this day ever comes, there isn't going to be a big warning. There isn't going to be a big, pre-roll or fanfare, or we're not going to be able to prep for it. It's going to happen when you're eating your breakfast cereal. It's going to happen when you're at the farmer's market or just on your way to the bathroom. Like it's going to happen with no warning. And you're going to be like in that moment, you like no grand gesture, like you're trying to find your car keys. It's like any other day. And so that was something that really came through when we spoke to all of our contributors and everybody we interviewed was just that the surprise factor. and sometimes the mundanity of it, the mundanity of the fact that you just sort of just happen to have just gotten out of the shower or you know you're just trying to do your laundry and so we just tried to see that in lots of the moments or the starts of where we join each story that people are just getting about their daily lives and I think our aim of doing that was to try and help people place themselves in those scenes because it just makes it feel hopefully more relatable. I might be reaching, but that was something that like really struck us and it's something that I live with, like Alex's words and the words of all that I contribute to always What would I do? What would we do if we got the text message now, all of us, and we were in the middle of a call? Would we see ourselves through to the end of the podcast, or would we quickly all just take a beat to text our loved ones? You know, it's a question we have to ask ourselves now more regularly.
[00:39:34.134] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, and I think a really good way to think of that is like nuclear threat tends to be very political and it tends to be very far away. And the beauty of this piece is that it makes nuclear threat very personal and at your doorstep, but very human as well, right? Because this isn't a political issue. This isn't like a materials issue. This is like a real human issue, right? And humans are the ones controlling these things, but also like humans are the ones that get directly affected by these things. And so the genius and the beauty of what Archer's Mark and Atlas 5 have done is they've taken a theme that feels very existential, it feels very large, it feels very overwhelming, and they've brought you down to that level. And using VR, they're able to bring you down to the level of a human moment to then take you into the existential data issue to get you back into the human moment. And so using the expansiveness of VR, you're feeling that constant pressure cooker buildup, but you're also that feeling of like, this could be me. And I hate that idea that VR is an empathy machine, but there is a sense here where you're utilizing the ability of what VR can do to create that level of human empathy. It can be just as well done in a documentary for other amazing stories, but for this specific one, it feels very much like the why VR question gets answered very quickly.
[00:40:55.168] Pierre Zandrowicz: Actually, it's interesting because every time we start working on a project, we always ask ourselves, why should it be VR? Or could it be something else like a film or even a podcast? In this particular case, I think the first thing we said is like, of course, it's VR. And when you are in the balcony with Bruce and Cynthia, and they receive the text message, you're with them. And you feel suddenly like what it feels like if you were there. So I guess it wouldn't be the same thing if there was a fourth wall, like a film. So yeah, this is exactly what VR needs, I guess.
[00:41:34.146] Kent Bye: Yeah. And what comes to mind is that, that scene where you're showing the sunrise and just people commenting on how beautiful that sunrise was and how you were able to really recreate the quality of the golden hour of that moment, which I thought was really powerful. And it's hard to really cover the full celestial mechanics of what it feels like to watch a sunrise in a 2d plane. You know, when I took a trip to the grand Canyon with my family and watched a couple of sunrises, you know, and try to take photos. It's just like pointless to try to capture what it feels like to be at a sunrise and a photo, because it's just something that's a total immersive experience where the light is reflecting. And I feel like that reflection of light was able to really be captured really beautifully in that scene, which I think helps set this larger context of grounding you to this location of Hawaii. So yeah, that was a great way to kind of start off the piece.
[00:42:24.058] Steve Jamison: I always love in that scene how Cynthia says to Bruce, go and get the good camera. You know, that's something that we, you know, like it's such a relatable thing to say, but I also wanted to say massive props to our technical studio, Nova Lab, for the tireless, tireless hours that they've done in the dark in their studios in Paris and Toulouse to create those scenes and the sunrise and all the other effects that that you mentioned there, this whole thing has been iterative and they've done an extraordinary work to try and bring Hawaii to life from there using all the references that we provided.
[00:42:55.049] Pierre Zandrowicz: Yes, Street View was really, really helpful.
[00:43:00.212] Kent Bye: Michaela, I'd love to hear a little bit more about this impact campaign, just from Games4Change as a key producer and contributor to this project. And it sounds like this is going to be three episodes. This first episode is premiering here at Sundance. And then I can't wait to see the other two episodes, but is the impact campaign going to start before the other episodes are out or what's sort of next for you and what's the plan when it comes to be able to take this piece and get it out into the world?
[00:43:24.843] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Yeah, it's a great question, right? That's always what we struggle with as VR creators and producers is what is this distribution strategy? Like, how are we gonna make sure people see this thing? And I think the biggest part for me when I approach any sort of project as a creative and as a producer is I always think about the rabbit holes people can fall into to find the project, right? So the project's essence and the project's ability to impact somebody doesn't start when you put on the headset. it starts when they stumble across the Instagram page. It starts when they stumble across the Twitter handle. It starts when they Google virtual reality experience about nuclear threat, and they find the page about Princeton, and then they find our project page, right? So thinking about these rabbit holes, it's important to remember that when you're creating a project for impact, that you're creating a project not just for the project itself, but the livelihood of everywhere the project exists. So It's hard to think about an impact campaign as a website sometimes because it doesn't feel like a website's enough. But that's the start of an impact campaign, right? Like a collection of resources for people to dive into to learn more about the threat of nuclear weapons. It's hard to think about an Instagram sometimes as the extension of an impact campaign. But if we can get just one person curious about what happened on that day in Hawaii, and then they understand that this is something that could happen to them. And then suddenly now they're going down their own rabbit hole of discovering how nuclear weapons have impacted their neighborhood or how they've realized that their city is not on the I can ban nuclear weapons list. And so they signed themselves up to be the 15th signature for their city in rural Texas. Like that, to me, is not necessarily something I can measure as a producer, but it is something that I can set up a rabbit hole for someone to find. And so it's important, I think, when we talk about this project is we're not creating the movement. of abolishing nuclear weapons. Like this project is not the spark that's going to light the forest fire to suddenly abolish nuclear weapons. There have been eons of people and organizations and artistic representations of the threat of nuclear weapons that have come before this project and will come after this project. What we hope, though, is that this project becomes a vehicle for people to utilize, whether that's working with organizations like ICANN to say, OK, why don't we take, you know, a van for ICANN with a couple of VR headsets and take it all over the cities that haven't yet been able to get 500 signatures to their local folks that make their policies. We call those politicians. I call them their people, too, you know, and get them looking at this nuclear ban treaty that the United Nations signed that their country still hasn't ratified. Right. So, like, it's looking at that at the grassroots level, but it's also thinking about this at the grass tops level. And then for that, I think a lot about what Carney Arena did, where they literally brought the project the whole experience to D.C. and they set up shop and they just invited people in the door. And that's something I think we're also looking at doing, whether that's with public institutions like the Nobel Peace Center or with like small local libraries and inviting local politicians and policymakers to come. So all that to be said, it's a multimedia impact campaign. It's not necessarily a specific call to action because there's so many ways people can recognize that nuclear weapons impact them. I think just even allowing people to recognize, right, that nuclear weapons exist and that they are a threat. is such a big step because it is an invisible threat that when it becomes visible, it's too late, right? Like that idea that Steve was talking about, like if we're at breakfast and suddenly there's a deployment, it's too late to suddenly think, well, what could we have done to avoid this, right? Versus being like, how can we bring this conversation forward? I know there are plans to bring this project out of headset as well in 2D formats, which I think Steve can speak to and Pierre can speak to better than I can. But what I hope to do as the impact producer and as well as a creative strategist is to continually support these creators with the story that they've created to make sure that however it exists in the world, whether that's via WebXR, via traditional documentary, that it always has a really clean quality look and feel and has the same voice throughout its representation, so that once people find it, they always feel like they're bumping into the same friend over and over again, versus feeling like they're bumping into somebody's cousin, like a different cousin, right? So that's a little bit of that insight. I could give more specifics, but I feel like I've been talking for a while.
[00:47:59.203] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's great. And I wanted to just reflect on one thing, which is I feel like that whenever I talk about tech ethics, as an example, that I think about as this nested context where we live on the earth, we need to be in my relationship to the earth. And then we have the culture where we have all these different education and science and communication and ways that we create cultural artifacts of movies like this. And then there's the laws that get set at the political level, and there's the economic context. And then usually when we talk about tech, there's the tech architectures that are driving different things. But in this case, we're really looking at the ways in which that there's our human stories, but they're in this larger cultural and political and economic context of our lives. And I feel like VR as a medium in some ways is doing a great job of allowing us to jump between these different layers and levels. of saying, here is the larger political issue, and this is how it feeds down into someone's life. Now let's go back up into the political level and see what needs to happen at this larger scale, because these are large issues that then get boiled down into the real human experience. And sometimes in the absence of that connection, it's difficult to know how to motivate people to bring about the cultural shifts that need to happen in order to bring those political changes. So as I watch a piece like this, it's become more and more clear that that VR as a medium does a great job of allowing you to create those broader worlds and those contexts to be able to both collapse the context into a very personal story, but also be within that larger context that you can see the impact of those larger decisions that are being made.
[00:49:26.095] Steve Jamison: Well, I mean, look, I'm not sure I could put it any better than you just did there, Ken. I think you sort of hit the nail on the head. And when you set out to make a project like this, you have some objectives in mind, but not a clear picture of how it's going to make an impact. And then when we're fortunate enough to work with Michaela and the team at Games for Change, we're able to articulate exactly how we're going to put this impact campaign together and how we're going to bring this experience to young people and use it as a tool for education, but also take it to policymakers. And I think really, really often about what Michaela touched upon before about being able to put kids and young people or the next generation into a headset and allow them to engage with this material and feel like you know they can be playful with it and engage with it but at the same time learning about this really important an issue in a way that I think it's never been delivered to them before you know the issue of nuclear threat has never been delivered to that generation in such a playful way before. And I hope, as Michaela said, we're not going to be the sole agents of change. We hope that other creators join that community as well. But we hope it sparks some young minds because, you know, quite honestly, there's a huge amount of pressure now on younger generations and they feel that, and that in itself is a bad thing. that they feel the pressure to be able to fix these giant problems that our generation, the generations before, have let go by or have exacerbated. And so it's a real drive for us now to be able to get this into institutions and educational institutions, as well as to policymakers, and to hopefully broaden the community and make people feel empowered that they can bring about change and see the end of nuclear weapons.
[00:50:55.700] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: I think it's important to note just on the impact side is that there are countries that are D weaponizing their nuclear weapons and it's been very successful in the past. Few years since the ban of nuclear weapons has been ratified and put into force in the United Nations, so there is a template for this there's just those. couple outlying countries in the world that refuse to start to de-weaponize. And so it's not like this is a global issue because every country has them. It's a global issue because there are few countries who refuse to start the process of using technology and science and accountability to start to de-weaponize these weapons. So it's not an issue that isn't able to be bite-sized taken apart. It's just making sure people know that there's hope and there's people doing that. It's just how can we get people to engage with the issue, to continue the process for these specific countries and neighborhoods and organizations that are not willing to de-weaponize or have been impacted by the production of these weapons as well.
[00:51:56.901] Steve Jamison: And also being able to, you know, engage on a local level, you know, for instance, if even if there's an unwillingness at a federal level to engage with the nuclear ban treaty that, you know, a state level or a community level, you know, now we've seen individual states signing up and banning nuclear weapons or the use of nuclear weapons or standing against the presence of nuclear weapons on their territory. And that is how people, the individual can get involved at a community level. And so we're trying to connect those dots and as Michele was saying before, create a set of resources that hopefully somebody experiences this for 45 minutes or 15 minutes, whichever version they see and are engaged by it and find it entertaining. And ultimately that's, you know, we do want people to be entertained by it, but then say, I hadn't realized that this was such a pressing issue still. I thought this was something that hung over us in the eighties and is no more. But now I'm going to look up on the website and see what I can do to get involved. and I can communicate this to my followers on Instagram or my friends. And that's hopefully how a movement not starts, but grows.
[00:52:55.089] Kent Bye: Yeah. I recently did a series of interviews with DocLab celebrating its 15th year anniversary. And one was with William Yurkio of the MIT Open DocLab. And one thing he told me, which I thought was really quite interesting, he said, you know, a lot of new mediums have always had like documentary as one of the first forms to really help form a lot of the different types of the medium and the affordance of the medium. I think there's been a mainstream narrative that games is bleeding edge of innovation when it comes to virtual reality. I think that's certainly true in terms of the technology development and things like Beat Saber to even have hand track controller is a good example. But I think that it's an interesting to see the games for change is kind of like this combining of that gaming, but with that documentary aesthetic and how the documentary as I go to the different film festivals is really on the bleeding edge of trying to form these different affordances of VR as a medium. And so, yeah, I think this piece in particular is another part of that lineage of the different projects that are helping to say what this medium is about and what it can do in terms of storytelling. So maybe I guess as we start to wrap up here, I'd be very curious to hear from each of you what you think the ultimate potential of virtuality and immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:54:06.090] Pierre Zandrowicz: Wow. I guess I could answer for like three hours, but I'll try to make it quick. I think, of course, you can share messages and as any artistic medium, share stories. but also you can make the audience enter another room where any other medium can allow you to go. I think of another experience we produced last year about the Chauvet Cave. The Chauvet Cave is a place where you can't go in anymore because they're trying to protect it. And the experience allows you to go there and witness the first drawing of humanity. And once again, this is, Bernard Arzal did a film on this and you don't have the same feeling and you can't share the same thing with movies. So yeah, I guess VR is really like a stargate to another part of our humanity in a way, if you use it wisely.
[00:55:01.040] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: I think it's important to recognize that we as humans, from the start of being born, we integrate information through a spatialized experience, right? Like, yes, maybe some of the newer generations grew up with an iPad in their face, but even that was interactive, right? Even that responded to their touch, right? As a human, when I was small, I cried, people paid attention to me. When I bumped my head on a table, it hurt. And so we understood our world through spatialization and through the ability to interact with this spatialization, this 3D world, this 3D physical reality we live in. And I think that the formation of virtual reality is that now you can create digital assets that are spatialized. You can create a digital experience that has depth, that allows you to integrate yourself into the experience very similar to the way you have integrated yourself into the physical reality. And that can lead to a lot of things. It can lead to a range of emotion, such as like endorphin release, such as fear, such as nervousness, discomfort, sometimes nausea. But I think it's important to recognize that when our body responds to those types of emotions, we're having real change happen in our brains, right? Like there's a chemical change that's starting in our brains because now we are associating something with an emotion. It's not just you reading about it in a history book. It's not just you watching it on a documentary TV. It's now you experiencing it as if you experienced it in the physical reality. And I think that that can cause transformational behavior changes. That being said, just like with any power comes great responsibility. So it can lead to probably negative behavioral changes can also lead to positive behavioral changes. And my hope is that with this project, we can lead to positive behavioral changes and thought patterns for people, even if it's slight, even if it's small. It doesn't have to be suddenly like they wake up and they realize they need to become an evangelist against nuclear weapons. But just the fact that now they can talk about this experience that they had with their family or their friends and start to think about this thing that exists in the world that puts them at risk?
[00:57:11.391] Steve Jamison: Yeah, that was a really good answer. You know, everything that Michaela just said, I can totally, totally agree with in terms of the chemical reaction that's happening. And even to you say earlier, Ken, that you found this really emotive, this experience. And the question for me is, can VR as a medium make me empathize or create emotions in me that are stronger than the ones from you know, watching any other medium. And I think the answer to that is 100% yes, like it has the potential to do that. And if so, can it create the stronger chemical reaction? And if so, can it, in fact, can we be more ambitious about the goals and say, you know, what we hope VR can achieve? You know, one of the things that we've talked about in this project, right from the very top is an anecdote, which is raised, you know, introduced to us by Cynthia Lazaroff, who was one of the contributors of our piece, who has dedicated a great amount of her career to building relationships between the US and Russia. And so she knows a huge amount about nuclear threat herself. And she often talks about the height of the Cold War, when tensions were perhaps at their highest between the US and Russia. Ronald Reagan watched a film called The Day After, and that film depicted the reality of what nuclear war and nuclear disaster would look like. And the impact of watching that film created that chemical reaction in him that he started to de-escalate the tension. A piece of art wasn't the single catalyst that brought about the end of the Cold War, but it played a huge role. And Cynthia said right from the top, we need more artists to create works like that that have the power to change minds. To take those two concepts, what Michaela just talked about, and the idea that a single piece of art can change one mind or many minds, or can be part of multiple pieces of art, multiple creators who between them can create a movement, then would it be too ambitious to say that what I think is the potential of VR, can it make the world a safer place, as well as being a more fun and entertaining place? Then, yeah.
[00:59:07.433] Kent Bye: Yeah, it brings to mind the recent film of Don't Look Up, which tells a story of imminent destruction of the planet, but in a way that doesn't have the saviors come through in the end and feel like that all will just be fine. It kind of leaves you with this narrative tension that this is an existential threat and it's an unresolved story, so it's time for you to get involved. And Michaela, you posted something here in the chat, which I thought was really interesting in terms of the, you know, the feeling I had after Don't Look Up was this, sometimes with dystopias, you can feel like it's a cautionary tale, but also like, it could be just like a roadmap for how things are going to go. It's the type of risk that you take when you do that type of world growing, world cultivating, world building, that shows you a vision of the future that you just want to sleepwalk into because there's nothing else to be done. So the challenge of that type of cautionary tale that's a dystopic twist is that can be a nihilistic kind of inevitability that that's just what's going to happen. What's the point? But you posted a little bit of what is a language of, let's say, like land acknowledgments in terms of trying to speak the truth of the different relational dynamics of colonialism in a way that is speaking a truth of the story of what those relational dynamics are. And maybe you could read through this thing that you posted here and give this context, if that's the intention to not live people hanging, like that, there's nothing that they could do that all their agencies taken away from them. But here's a way to kind of restore your agency with this almost affirmation or acknowledgement. And I don't know what you call it, but maybe you could give them more context as to what this is and how it's playing a part with what you're doing with his impact part.
[01:00:41.933] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: Sure. So when I think about a virtual reality experience, I think about the onboarding, right? You put someone in headset, and then I think about the story and headset, and then I think about the aftercare, right? Like, how are you taking care of this person once you've put them through this experience? And so what we've done on our website is we've kind of created this aftercare section, which is called the Get Involved. And within that, we've crafted these statements of understanding for people to help them reground themselves and to help them empower themselves. So that's the context. The statements read, I acknowledge the production, storage, and testing of nuclear weapons is causing people and the planet harm today. I acknowledge the existence of nuclear weapons is unjust. I acknowledge communities worldwide are being held hostage by nuclear weapons. Part one. Part two is, I recognize. I recognize I have the power to create change. I recognize I can ban the presence of nuclear weapons in my neighborhood. I recognize that I don't have to do this on my own. And part three is, I'm ready to. I'm ready to learn more about the violence and oppression caused by nuclear weapons. I'm ready to join others dedicated to banning nuclear weapons. I'm ready to support organizations working to eliminate the threat we face from nuclear weapons. And once you finish that section on the website, there's, of course, a link you can go to learn about some of the organizations we've identified, like Plowshares, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ICANN and Global Zero. And there will be more to come on that site and there will be more to come to explore. This is sort of what we call the soft launch or the soft opening of this impact campaign.
[01:02:15.089] Kent Bye: Okay, are these going to be links for people like if you're ready to learn more about violence, you can click on the link and you learn more or is it like an affirmation that people just sort of acknowledge that this is the reality that we're in? I feel like the framing of that's really quite interesting to kind of speak the truth of the reality of the situation in a way that just hearing you read it was really powerful just to hear you say all those things. So I don't know if that has a lineage of like it reminds me of land acknowledgements as a practice, but if this is a part of larger impact methods and best practices for how to translate what happens after people see something and then trying to have them to move into action and not just be paralyzed and not feeling they can do anything.
[01:02:55.940] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: It is. Yeah, exactly. So the hope is whenever we're doing in-person experiences, obviously we can't control the online, but whenever we're doing in-person experiences, the goal is to be able to help mitigate some of that stress and frustration and feeling of hopelessness because obviously the topic can feel very hopeless, but the action and the reality is that it's not hopeless and this is a topic we can tackle. So these statements are meant to sort of help reground people in a very similar way that like a breath exercise can help reground people in a very similar way that a land acknowledgement helps to sort of like recognize what's really happening in the world. This is that same exact idea. And the goal is to take these tentpole statements. And just like you said, Kent, sort of like piecemeal and kind of thread through specific resources with each statement that someone could explore and dig deeper into. And none of these have to be said that like, you have to believe one to believe the other. Like, it's not like these are linear either. It's sort of like today, maybe I can look at that. I accept this. And tomorrow I can look at that. I recognize this. And maybe in a year I'm ready to do this. And there's no specific timeline you have to take with these statements either.
[01:04:03.485] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah, this project is, you know, when I think about the pieces each year at these festivals, there's usually a number of projects that really stick out and, you know, Book of Distance and Traveling While Black and this piece this year, On the Morning You Wake to the End of the World. Yeah, it's something that's really going to stick with me. And I think going from the Games from Change and producing it and then coming in at the end and kind of evolving all these practices, I think it's really great to see the evolution here of how these pieces can really play into a larger story here. We've covered a lot of ground, but I'm just wondering if there's anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community.
[01:04:40.258] Steve Jamison: No, nothing specific other than thanks for your kind words today and your interest in the project. And obviously we're excited for you to see future chapters as well, because we're obviously, you know, we pivot in the themes of each of those chapters and specifically our final chapter does relate to a lot of what Michaela's just explained in terms of that feeling of empowerment or recognition or building a community. And our final chapter is really geared towards trying to create a community. So we look forward to you seeing that one relatively soon.
[01:05:09.172] Michaela Ternasky-Holland: I echo Steve, just wait, strap in, On the Morning You Wake is just getting started. And I'm excited to also see how this potentially inspires future creators. Doesn't have to be in the XR medium, but I hope to see like iterative works that have been inspired by the ways that Steve and Pierre have been inspired by works that came before them and works that continue to inspire them in their day-to-day lives too.
[01:05:32.298] Pierre Zandrowicz: Just one thing I wanted to say is I'm of course pretty proud to be involved in this project, but also I just wanted to do a heads up to Mike and Steve because they wrote an amazing script and they did all these interviews and looking for those people. on the ground. It doesn't happen a lot that we work on scripts that are that good in VR, because it's a new medium, so people are looking for what is the best way to tell stories. Mike and Steve really did find a great way to tell it.
[01:06:08.231] Steve Jamison: I definitely don't want this to turn into some sort of mutual back slapping. But I, you know, somebody who for a lot of the time in immersive space, I feel honestly like a bit of an imposter because I haven't been there here this long. I've never created anything immersive before, but it makes part of that experience. I do really want to share with somebody who comes from a traditionally linear film background is just how extraordinary the immersive community is. in embracing collaborative spirit. A project like this would not be possible in any way without serious, serious brains and hours and application in lots of separate departments. And that is, I think, more true of VR than it is of film and documentary and other media where you obviously you can write, direct, edit, star, hold the camera, do all of those things and lots of people do and we've been truly blessed on this project to have just the very best and specialists in every department from you know the advice that we get from the science and global security team at Princeton, all the way through to our impact campaign with Michaela and all of the tech teams in between. And that has been just such an amazing, rewarding process. And so if I could give one thing back to the immersive community listening, I would say thanks for that collaborative spirit and embrace it because I think it's stronger here than it is anywhere else.
[01:07:25.983] Kent Bye: Nice. Any ETA as to when episode two and three might be available?
[01:07:31.468] Steve Jamison: Soon.
[01:07:32.634] Kent Bye: Okay, well, I'll sit tight. I'm really, really looking forward to seeing the rest of this piece. And like I said, it's a very emotionally evocative and moving piece and is able to connect the larger scale dimensions of what's happening in our political reality and economic reality down into the very real human story and the use of poetry. And yeah, just some scenes that I think are really just going to stick with me. The going out into the ocean as a way of finding shelter is a powerful response. And yeah, so Steve, Pierre and Michaelis, thanks so much for producing this project and unpacking it with me today on the podcast. So thank you so much. Thanks, Kent. So that was Michaela Tarnarski-Holland. She's a creative strategist and impact producer for Games4Change, working on this project, On the Morning You Wake, To the End of the World. And then we have one of the co-founders of Archer's Mark, which Steve Jamison, and one of the co-founders of Atlas 5, or Atlas V, as well as artistic director, Pierre Zandrovich. So I've a number of different takeaways about this interview, is that first of all, well, this is a piece that just was really emotionally moving to me. I think it, It puts you into the situation if you were to get a text message like this. It forces you to face your mortality. But also to contextualize these larger political issues that are in the background, but then to make it deeply personal for all these people that were living in Hawaii during that time. And you just really empathize with what it must have been like to go through this situation to get a text message like that that said, ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. And, yeah, just an amazing use of the medium, I think, to really immerse me into this experience. I don't know if I would have had quite the same reaction in a 2D screen. I think it's a powerfully written piece. Like they said, the poetry from Dr. Jamaica, Hayole, Mele Kalani, Osorio is just Absolutely beautiful in the way they abstractly visualize it was also really compelling But the beginning in the end is bookmarked by some photorealistic photogrammetry scenes and then in the middle there they really shift into this point cloud aesthetic that I think really works quite well that to give you that kind of Dreamlike feeling but it's juxtaposed with some of these mixed reality capture studio Actors they actually had to get actors to be able to act because they couldn't travel during kovat They had to do all this remote production and Rather than going there to Hawaii to capture all this stuff, they had to take what they could from Google Earth and recontextualize it within these abstracted point cloud representations. But to see the Mixed Reality Capture Studio volumetric captures contrasted into that point cloud aesthetic, I think just worked really quite well. It really gave you a sense of the overarching architecture of these spaces to make you feel immersed into these stories that are being told. It was also very much produced like a podcast because you're hearing these interviews that are then cut in and a lot of times the actors at the beginning have to kind of lip-sync because they weren't able to get the actual people within the volumetric portion. But it was so seamless that I didn't even notice a difference between the two. I just assumed that the people that I was seeing on the screen were who I was hearing. But you notice it says the voice of all these people. So just a really, really powerful piece that I think was deeply moving and did a great job of taking this large issue that is always in the background, but grounds it down into these personal stories that I think does a really effective job of communicating this larger issue. Like, why are we living in a world like this? Michaela was talking about some of the impact strategies, which I thought was really interesting just to hear a little bit more of almost like these affirmations and acknowledgments of the reality of these situations. And as you start to go through and just even read through those different acknowledgments on their website, they'll have ability for you to kind of click through and get more information about that. But that offboarding and aftercare and with her background in VR creation and creative strategy and experiential design in general, thinking about the onboarding and offboarding as entering into this sphere and then exiting and then having that aftercare, which is to acknowledge the reality of the situation and then to be able to give the audience members a little bit more agency to take action in some way. It'll be really interesting to see how this impact strategy continues to unfold. Also, I'm really just happy to see that Games4Change is getting into the process of producing some of these types of VR experiences. Up to this point, they've been curating and holding these different conferences, but to really Take their network and to bring all these people together and to gather different producers onto this project lots of great Partners that were coming on to help fund and support this including oculus slash meta to help produce this piece Yeah, so like I said, I really look forward to seeing the other two chapters and highly highly recommend you check this out And I think that's the powerful use of the VR media So that's all that I have for today And I just wanted to thank you 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 listen supported podcast and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue doing this coverage So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash with severe Thanks for listening.
