This is Not a Ceremony is a cinematic VR piece that asks us to “collectively bear witness to tragic events in the lives of two Indigenous men — Adam North Peigan and Brian Sinclair — and entrusts us to share what we’ve seen and heard.” It uses 360 3D documentary storytelling techniques to create opportunities to bear witness to stories of Indigenous trauma, and then that is juxtaposed with a more impressionistic, ancestral realm beyond space and time that’s filled with with trickster poets, Matriarchs elders, and Inii (buffalo). The end result is a deeply layered experience that seamlessly blends mundane physical representations with more etheric virtual representations that provides a new way for how VR can be used for cultivating empathy.
There’s also a wide range of tonal shifts with trickster poets who offer “darkly humorous and occasionally caustic” reflections that help us decompress and contextualize the 360 footage that recounts Indigenous trauma. The non-spatiotemporal ancestral realm is created from stereoscopic Adobe After Effects composites from Cinema 4D, 2D billboarded footage, 360 video, a metaphorical fire at your feet, and a cosmically-transformed Indigenous architecture. There’s also a chromatic displacement special effect applied to the characters in the ancestral realm, which symbolically represents the deep layers of relationality between individuals and cultures.
I had a chance to catch up with director Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon) and art director James Monkman on January 19th to unpack the process of making this piece, some of the technical details of their production, but also how they’re translating various aspects of Indigenous culture into this piece. Filmmaker Ahnahktsipiitaa is Blackfoot and Dutch, originally hailing from The Piikani Nation, and James Monkman is a Cree visual artist and art director residing in Toronto, Ontario.
Here’s a bit more context for where this piece was produced:
This Is Not a Ceremony was created in Alberta on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Piikani (Brocket) Siksika, Kainai (Bloods), and Amskapi Piikani (Montana / Browning), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3), and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta;
in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations;
in Coquitlam on the core territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) (Kwee-kwet-lem) First Nation and lies within the shared traditional territories of the Tsleil-Waututh (Slay-wa-tuth), Katzie
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So, continuing on my coverage of the Sundance New Frontier 2022, today's episode is featuring a piece called This Is Not a Ceremony. It's asking us to collectively bear witness to some tragic events in the lives of two indigenous men, Adam North Pegan and Brian Sinclair, And it's interesting as to share what we've seen and heard. And in the process, we're going back and forth between like a documentary recounting of what happened and then into this place beyond space and time where we're able to connect to the ancestors and the any buffalo spirit, finding ways to visually communicate different aspects of our relationality, how we're connected, but also connected to our ancestors and to expand this process of bearing witness and to see the trauma that's happening and to be able to become a human ledger and keep track of that knowledge and to witness it and share it later. So this piece is by a number of different Indigenous creators, including Anatsabita, in English that's Colin Van Loon, and the art direction by James Monkman. This is a piece that's 360 video, but has a lot of volumetric feel. So they're using Cinema 4D and After Effects and a lot of this layers and compositing to be able to create this sense of otherworldly locations. And yeah, just really impressive in terms of how they're able to piece it all together. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of a severe podcast. So this interview with the Nazi Bita and James happened on Wednesday, January 19th, 2022. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:41.649] Colin Van Loon: Okay. I'm a student in technical at Nazi Bita. In English, I go by Colin Van Loon. I currently reside in West Bank First Nation, which is interior British Columbia. Originally, I'm from Southern Alberta. and my nation is the Kitane Nation, better known by its English name of Brockett, Alberta.
[00:02:07.056] James Monkman: Tante, my name is James Monkman. Cree from Manitoba. I grew up in Winnipeg. My family is from kind of interlake area, like Fisher river, Peguis. And currently I'm living in Toronto on the unseeded lands of the Mississaugas of the new credit. And just happy to be here.
[00:02:31.176] Kent Bye: Great. Well, maybe you each could give a bit more context as to your professional background and your journey into working with virtual reality as a medium.
[00:02:39.206] Colin Van Loon: Yeah, so, you know, I'm a filmmaker and a producer. I wear many hats. So I'm also the operations manager for what's called the IM4 Lab at Emily Carr University, which is a AR VR training program for Indigenous youth. But I was really looking at VR a number of years ago, because I was doing some curation for a film festival. And the more I started to look at different VR works, I really realized that there was an incredible power of presence. There was this opportunity to really meet people or feel like you were in the same space as somebody. So that's why I was really passionate about this story and doing a documentary, an experimental documentary in VR.
[00:03:33.453] James Monkman: Yeah, for me, my background is visual arts. I guess I'm an art director working in film, television, experience design, kind of all over the place. Before working on this project, I did a few VR tests, but I hadn't really done anything significant in VR. I mean, part of it, like when the producer approached me to work on this project with Colin and hearing the story was really important for me. And I liked the challenge of new mediums and seeing what they kind of bring and how skill sets traverse. And the one thing with VR that really kind of stuck out to me was how it had the potential to build empathy. and you know like experiencing things in a different way where you're more present than you are when it's a flat screen in front of you. So that was kind of where I came from and trying to starting into VR.
[00:04:32.127] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I think experimental documentary is a really good way to describe this cinematic VR piece of This Is Not A Ceremony, because it is kind of blending a lot of imaginal, dream-like images, but also going into the past, present, and future, trying to tie in a lot of aspects of the past into the present, but also kind of imagining the future in a way. So I guess maybe you could start off by describing how you think of or how you tell the story of what This Is Not A Ceremony is about.
[00:05:02.142] Colin Van Loon: Yeah, you know, I always like documentary, but I've always taken issue in some forms of documentary, especially now I feel like we're really inundated with a lot of things on the internet, which are either documentary or feel like documentary. and also are very similar to what we might see outside of her window or as we go around town. So I just felt that people are used to seeing that kind of, you know, if we really talk about it as being verte. So I was not interested in telling this story in that way. I felt that As people in Canada, we hear a lot of traumatic stories about Indigenous people. And in many cases, people are paying attention. And in many cases, people are jaded. They're numb to these stories. So I really wanted to use a more expressionistic style. So I felt that that would have a stronger effect on people. As I watch a lot of VR, I was conscious that there's a wonderful opportunity for performance within the medium and I really wanted to include the trickster poet characters because as people were witnessing the story of Adam Northpig and the story of Robert Sinclair, I wanted them to witness these young men, these young Indigenous men, and how they thought and felt about these stories that we were witnessing collectively.
[00:06:41.373] Kent Bye: Yeah. And James, as you, well, maybe before we dig into some of the visual aesthetics, cause I think there's the very distinct look and feel to this piece. Maybe you could take us back to the origins of this project. Where did this project begin? What was the moment that you decided that you wanted to make this before you started to bring in other folks to be able to start to collaborate, to manifest that vision?
[00:07:02.614] Colin Van Loon: Yeah, so I had pitched this as part of the imaginative digital project pitch. And so I think that each year imaginative will select one or two projects to give somebody to so that they can begin development. And I had pitched this project. I think it had a really bad title. I think it was called Walk a While in My Moccasins or something like that. And, you know, the concept stayed relatively similar to what I had originally pitched. You know, the concept was really inspired by Brian Sinclair. So, you know, Brian has passed away, so we had to find somebody in his family to help tell the story. So we found Roberts, and we began the work of thinking about how we might tell that story. And then, as I was doing this, you know, I was talking to Adam, who's my relative, and he does a lot of advocacy work around the 60s scoop. And, you know, he started to tell me a little bit about his story. And I said, you know, Adam, like, I think that this, you know, this particular part of your story would work really well in VR. And he was happy to tell it because, you know, because of the work he does and how passionate he is about working with and for survivors. So that was kind of really the beginning. And then, you know, the piece grew and took more shape. as we went along. And I think there was a certain point where I had a conversation with Rob McLaughlin about, not this year's New Frontiers, it was like a couple of years ago, New Frontiers. He was talking about, there was like a glove and like, if you put the glove on, you would feel something cold and you would feel something hot. But, you know, he was talking about how it's not that thing. You know, it's actually not that, you know, you're just feeling some strange things in a glove. And, you know, from that, you know, I was kind of thinking about, like, what are we witnessing? And, you know, that was really where the poets came from, because I wanted to have this kind of perspective of young people who might really be on the front lines of a lot of movement, who might be protesting, who might be using social media to create social change. So I really wanted to include that perspective. And, you know, I was always a fan of Taran Kootenai. He was a friend of mine. I was always a fan of his and I really wanted him to be involved in the project. So that's kind of how the poets came about. And then, you know, as we went through post and everything, we started to add other collaborators. And eventually we discovered the amazing talents of James, even though I had been to Imaginative and watched him aspire and seen his work before without knowing it. So we were just really thrilled when James said he would join us.
[00:10:06.053] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so James, maybe you could start by giving a little bit more context of this imaginative gathering and then, you know, how you started to come onto this project and start to create the look and feel and what you were trying to create this experience of this is not a ceremony.
[00:10:21.449] James Monkman: Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks for that, Colin. Imaginative is the largest Indigenous film festival in the world, from what I understand, and I've been working with them for years, kind of working on promotional trailer stuff and art direction in that capacity. with some wonderful people there like Jason Ryle and Naomi and Terry Lau and stuff like that. So it's a fantastic festival and I think from that Colin saw that work and then our producer Dana that we were working with he knew my work and so connected the dots and thought oh maybe he would work well with this topic and the style that Colin was kind of wanting to go with and so he kind of reached out to me and we had a little brief conversation and talking about like what Colin's vision was and the story and all of that. And I mean, for me personally, I think that resonated, you know, I'm from Winnipeg and the Brian Sinclair case was really close to home for me because we're relatives with Brian's brother, are like friends, like we call them relatives, we grew up with them, but with Brian's brother, we knew them growing up. So, I think that part of it was like, yeah, this thing needs to be brought to light. And then also just the opportunity to kind of, I think for myself as an Indigenous designer and artist, I always want to push the envelope as to what people perceive to be Indigenous art or aesthetic. And I thought that there was a lot of room here for that. That was kind of what was exciting for me, was trying to take some of the traditional concepts of how we see the world and visualize those in a different way that would hearken back to these ideas, but that would maybe show them in a perspective that would be slightly different than what was anticipated or thought of.
[00:12:11.009] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah. I want to dig into some more of the aesthetic and the technical parts in my own experience of the piece, but I want to ask a clarifying question before we start to dig into that, because the title's piece is, this is not a ceremony. And then depicted within the piece are also things that you could consider different ceremonial aspects of indigenous culture. And so I'm just curious if you could maybe elaborate on this title of what you mean by this is not a ceremony. while also featuring different things that could be perceived as ceremonial aspects within the piece.
[00:12:43.314] Colin Van Loon: I think like a really amazing moment for me with the trickster poet characters, everything that they said was sort of off the cuff, like as if they were freestyle rapping or something. We did a bunch of rehearsals and we spent a day filming with them and recording a take and talking about you know, how that take had went and really crafting the performance that way. But, you know, everything that they had said was in some ways live and they knew that we would edit it. And, you know, before that we had a sort of rehearsal where we talked about the concepts in the piece and, you know, really worked together to think about what they might do. But during the filming, You know, Terrence says at one point, this is not a ceremony. This is a tradition. And, you know, that was so intelligent and so bright that we knew right away that that was the title of the film. And, you know, there's a lot of things within Blackfoot culture or any of the cultures, Dene, Chamath, Cree, any of the cultures represented on screen, you know, there's many things that we would never show. But, you know, the things that we did show, we made sure that we did that in a way that was cognizant of the traditions of those nations represented. But, you know, it is in some ways, it's a fake ceremony. It's a fake ceremony for all of the shit that happens. You know, there's too much of this stuff. There's too many things that are on the news that are stories that could have just as easily been represented in this piece. And I think that we're really asking in that traditional way, we're really asking audience members to be a witness and to take that duty and responsibility very seriously, just in the way that we would as Indigenous people if we were invited to a naming ceremony a ceremony where somebody got a headdress, or if you're on the West Coast, if you're invited to a potlatch, you know, there would be a witness, they would be responsible to the community, and they would have a duty to hold this knowledge. And if somebody had come to them later, even if it's years later, they would have a duty to repeat what they had seen and heard. And so, you know, really, it is for the viewers to be compelled to take this very seriously.
[00:15:24.093] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's connections to other VR pieces that came out a number of years ago, like Tribeca in 2017, there was a piece called Testimony VR, where women were giving testimony about their own experiences of sexual assault. but because you were immersed it was almost like you were feeling like you're holding space with people and really bearing witness to their stories and i think there's a similar quality in this except for instead of just listening to the story there's these other elements of the imaginal realm of i don't know how do you describe where you take it because you're showing the reality of people sharing their experiences, but then you are taking us and there's the white buffalo that's going by and there's these matriarchs and the trickster characters, and we're kind of in this ethereal realm. And so I don't know how you describe or even think about the juxtaposition between these different realms that you're exploring in this piece.
[00:16:17.947] Colin Van Loon: Um, this, the, you know, that was a, well, I'll tell you about it. I mean, I think at a certain point I was calling this like, an ancestor simulation because I was thinking a lot about really metaphysical concepts but like I kind of had this idea that maybe at some point in the future our future ancestors might run a simulation of some sort to try to understand what the hell was happening during this time. And I was thinking about that place as a place that was free of time in a way, past and present didn't play as big of a role. And, you know, we still I spent so much time working with James to sort of develop that space in a way, you know, it kind of resembles the Powell Arbor in my community, but in a way that also represented this idea of being free from space and time. James, you want to talk about that a little bit?
[00:17:15.148] James Monkman: Yeah, sure, man. I think that was the thing, like what Colin just touched on there. was for me was like, how do we create this space where, you know, it's kind of like almost parallel to our universe in a way, like we're outside of the realm of physical time. And we're kind of in this space where our ancestors can come and go when they want, and they can take us wherever they need to go to tell these stories and to understand these stories. Like the arbor was always kind of an idea that was there, it was kind of like how do we create this space, this arbor space to feel. like traditional, but also like kind of a cosmic gateway in a sense, you know. And so that was kind of what we were doing when Cole and I were working a lot on this together in terms of, you know, even placement of the rocks, you know, the different stuff that's in the space, you know, from vegetation, placement of vegetation, different things. you know, all of that was considered in terms of this space. And it's, yeah, it's like a simulation of a ceremony, right? Like, and it's kind of, in a way, it's to help people kind of understand what a ceremonial environment would look like if you're not from Blackfoot culture or Cree or, you know, an Indigenous culture from Turtle Island, you wouldn't know these things as much. So it's kind of there too, to be a bridge for that. I didn't feel like it was very hard for us to come up with this. It felt very natural for us when we were working on it, like things just kind of flowed. Yeah, it just kind of came together, which that was one of the coolest parts of this project was being able to create the space and it was working and we were just kind of, what about this? What about this? And building on it and creating this kind of magical space. Yeah, it was a challenge, but it just seemed like it was in a flow. We're on the same page.
[00:19:18.310] Colin Van Loon: And I just have to add, you know, like, there's lots of, I guess, Easter eggs, if you're Blackfoot, there's lots of Blackfoot Easter eggs in that space. And, you know, just from a technical filmmaking perspective, you know, we needed to have that space, you know, to cut away. It's so difficult to cut in VR, you know, for a lot of time in the beginning, I was like, how do we get to these places? And also, I have to tip my hat to Jessica Diamond, who was our editor. She was a documentary VR, but she was really willing to take the journey with us. And so it was, you know, there was lots of technical experimentation on everybody's part, you know, but I think the film is better for it because sometimes you find people who've done something a million times and they'll say, this is the way it's done and we don't do it a different way because. and I felt very lucky with the team because the team was really open to new ideas and open to, let's try that, let's try to figure out how that's going to work, you know, and especially with all of the work James did and working with Vince at the NFB, you know, there was so much, you know, how are we going to put this together, but still be able to send it around? Because we had to send things all over the country. I'm in interior BC, the film board is in Vancouver, you know, the digital studio and James is in Ontario. So we're sending all these large files around and Dropbox isn't particularly fast at that. So, you know, there's, they had to be very creative.
[00:21:04.060] Kent Bye: Yeah, what I was impressed by was to see how well the translation of existing architectures that are coming from your indigenous culture that has this kind of circular orientation, everything from the building that you're in, and then you're extrapolating that in the cosmic version, but also being able to connect to the sky and have one of the more accurate representations of the sky that I've seen in VR. I saw at the end that you had like some footage from NASA Goddard's visualization studio connecting us to the cosmos, but also this imaginal world, all the way down to the zenith where you have the fire that's happening there. Usually that's a black spot that's composited out in some fashion, but to be able to put that additional element of the fire and all the lighting, I think I was just really impressed by the level of compositing that's happening in this piece that I haven't seen as much before. And on top of that stereoscopic compositing, because usually if I see something like that, it's monoscopic. doesn't have the depth. And so it's not only got the compositing of all these different layers that you're doing in this piece, which is a 360 video, which typically you would see stuff like this in a CGI piece, but to draw from the documentary and then to build upon it, I just thought it was so many layers that I haven't seen before in pieces like this, drawing from your own cultural reference points that just translates so well into the medium that I just was really blown away and floored by how immersive it was, but also how it really felt like you were taking me to another place and how that place was grounded in the spatialization of the depth that I don't typically get to feel in pieces like this. So that was part of my experience of this was being just in awe of the layers that you're able to create in this piece and the detail that you went to, to be able to replicate being in relationship to the world around you, but also to the cosmos.
[00:22:54.470] James Monkman: Yeah, thank you. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, it was a technical challenge for sure. And I think, yeah, it's part of my neuroses that was like, no, this has to work in the stereo. Like if it didn't work, I was not happy with it. And I think doing the story justice was the crux of it for me. And so, yeah, as you know, there's not a lot of technology out there that is great for VR compositing or VR creation. It's kind of a hodgepodge of different technologies that you have to kind of shoehorn together. So, I mean, I had a pretty good working knowledge of After Effects and Cinema 4D. And so it was kind of like, how do I get the most out of these things to create the vision that Colin had? And how do we visualize these things in the depth in order to make sure that these things are hitting when they need to hit? But yeah, no, it was, it was a lot of trial and error and just trying to, you know, headset on, make a change, headset off, headset on, make a change, headset off. And then until you start to see that depth starting to work. And yeah, so I think too, part of my experience in working with experience design and working with like, say a museum piece or something like that, where you're building a lot with loops and stuff like that came in because like you only have so many rendering hours that you can use for a piece like this. So yeah, I kind of like had to pull out all the tricks to try and try to get it to work, but it's amazing that you thought that it worked. And I know it's just working with Colin and Dana and the whole team, like, and Vince do have to give a shout to Vince. Vince was a trooper man from the NFB. He was the one that I would build all these things. And then I would say, okay, can you animate these things and move these into here? And, and he would take the files that I sent and start to work through them. And it was not an easy task for him. So, yeah, I think we all were on the same path and everyone had the right mindset and it just felt like it worked and we were just doing our best to get to the best result we could.
[00:25:04.694] Colin Van Loon: Yeah, did you start a little bit about like the smoke and the fire? I think we worked on the, you know, we spent a week talking about the fire. Oh, yeah, yeah. The smoke around the poet's feet. These were some real challenges. But yeah, I'm so proud of the film every time I look at it. Oh man, that's good, yeah.
[00:25:22.799] James Monkman: Yeah, the fire, so I wasn't sure we came up with that idea. I know I had a thought about it at some point, but it was like bearing witness was such a huge part of this, right? And so it was kind of like this idea, it was like, well, let's hold people's feet to the fire, like literally. And so it was kind of this idea of like, when you look down, you are in that fire and that fire, we used a volumetric fire simulation in order to get the depth. and smoke as well. And so that had to feel like there had to be that feeling of it coming towards you. Yeah, that was a huge part of that idea where we wanted that fire. And when the poets light the fire, you know, it's a part of ceremony. And it's also it just symbolically made such a huge part of it for us. But getting the fire right was tricky too, because it was like, okay, how big are we going to get it? And how much smoke comes up to occlude your vision? You know, how aware you are? And I know there were certain people where we had to go back and forth a little bit on that, but, and also too, like the poets, the look that we came up with for them, the one thing that we were talking about was really wanting them to kind of, have a presence, like they're bending space and time around themselves, like they are not in that space and time, but they are outside of it. So we used a lot of forms of displacement and chromatic displacement to get the light to bend in certain ways to kind of give that feeling like that they're there, but they're also distorting the light around them because of that. I think from my perspective, when I'm thinking about these things, like just the idea of our connection and our cultures, like our relational connection to one another, I wanted them to distort the space around them and each other because it shows that connection. And we were talking about that a lot. So all these little things kind of go to kind of make these unseen things a little bit more visualized about how we can show our relationality as cultures and to one another in these kind of means by using, I mean, in this medium you're using light. It's all about light and also the audio, which Nagamo did a great job of kind of taking cues from the visuals and creating audio.
[00:27:49.564] Colin Van Loon: Oh, we were doing audio right till December 20th, you know, at Sundance, like this thing has to get in, you know, but just to go back a little bit, you know, I have to tell you, James, one of my favorite things in the piece is the grand entry. And, you know, I really had to get everybody on my side because I really wanted the grand entry to happen at the beginning. And it's ultimately meant that there would need to be a little bit of rotoscoping done. And I think that they may have initially used an AI program to do the first pass of the rotoscoping, and then a number of people touched it. But, you know, right before you see these kind of spirits and elders come in, in the grant entry, and, you know, also we chose a certain look because, you know, we don't want to show people close up that maybe we didn't ask them before. You know, people knew that we were filming at the Powwow and there's supportive, but we didn't want to just take people's thing. But right before you see them, I'm always feel very moved by that moment of like the air is displacing and you can see this right before they come in. And yeah, I've always really thought
[00:29:04.502] James Monkman: Yeah, well, I mean, that's part of that same kind of idea and treatment was like that, you know, you can talk about it in terms of like energy or whatever, but it's like these relational connections that we are all related and connected and I think For me, this is always something that I like to bring into my work, is this idea, because it means so much to me and the way that it's kind of a pushing back against Western culture and the individualism of the enlightenment period, right? Like this enlightenment of the individual and we are islands in ourselves. And this pushes back against that to say, no, we are connected to our generations past, to our generations forward. We're connected in these ways right here. And it's just to visualize some of those things. So it was always like, whenever we could make use of that technique to kind of show those things, it was always like, yeah, let's push it as far as we can go. And, and yeah, I think it was just part of the things that I'm thinking about and stuff like that. So, and I'm so glad that it works and that you really like it.
[00:30:09.076] Colin Van Loon: Our ancestors are always around. Yeah.
[00:30:14.131] Kent Bye: Yeah, that focus on relationality, I think I resonate with that as well. As you were saying that the filters that you're having to give this kind of liminal feeling that they're an etheric space with the light bending around them. I thought, well, so the ways that you were applying those kind of chromatic aberration filters at different levels as well, I think. adds to that overall aesthetic that you're able to achieve. But I wanted to ask a question, because I feel like it's called, This Is Not A Ceremony, because in some ways it's not reflecting an existing ceremonial practice. But at the same time, you seem to be, in some ways, potentially starting to create new structures of ritual, at least a healing process that is able to allow people to present their story, to have people bear witness to that story, And then the tricksters are kind of commenting on that story. So they're also speaking the truth that may not be spoken to whatever degree some of these issues or topics are taboo and people don't talk about them and to just put it out there with a story and then have them share their honest, authentic reactions and oftentimes changing the color of the environment to be red, especially if they're just righteously angry about the injustices that are being shared in these stories. And so, you know, there's also other parts of, you know, as different protagonists in the story are sharing their stories about how they're being seen and witnessed by the community as a part of this larger community practice to have the traumas that they may have gone through to be seen by the larger community. But I'm wondering if you could comment on the degrees of which that you feel like you're reflecting existing culture and other aspects where you may be trying to cultivate a new culture that doesn't quite exist yet by using the medium maybe explore these topics in a way that no one has seen before?
[00:32:00.141] Colin Van Loon: You know, I'm always very just so careful around cultural practice, because it's very contentious, you know, so I have to be careful in terms of how I navigate that. But also very important to interpret things, you know, like, as we take our culture, our traditions, and our stories forward as Indigenous people, I always felt that, why can't we interpret things? You know, we show powwow in the film. Powwow is very much a tradition that has evolved and continues to evolve. You know, there's a lot of innovation in powwow, from how people dress, like regalia is getting nothing but better. And actually, people have been talking all through COVID about, you know, the powwows that are going to happen after COVID. People have been beating this entire time. And like, everybody's going to have sick regalia. So I think that, you know, powwow is an incredible example because powwow is a part of the culture, but it's also very social. And it's something that really continues to evolve. And nobody says, It's very uncommon for somebody to say that powwow shouldn't evolve. There's many other things that are contentious and people will say, no, we should, because it is the tradition, we have to do it this way. And we should, especially very ceremonial things, especially with some of our societies and the Blackfoot Confederacy. But I've always admired the kind of innovation that there is in powwow. So as we wanted to take this tradition of witnessing into this piece, we had to, in some ways, interpret it for the audience so that, A, we were meeting our cultural duties, but also we're using it to tell the best story possible in this medium of VR.
[00:34:02.582] James Monkman: I think to like, just to add to that, I'm always careful about saying, creating new cultural. I think it's more like continuing the process, because, like our traditions are continually evolving, you know, like, just like what Colin was saying about powwow. And so, you know, there's constant conversations happening about things, you know, about what our circle of relations are and what are these things happening. Like in community, there's all so much conversation. And I mean, even if you look at how many Indigenous artists there are, like there's constantly new expressions of our tellings of stories and our ways of understanding and things like that. And I think these are just kind of natural ways that our people kind of work. There's one thing that I've heard said to me and that resonates is Our cultures are oral traditions, and in such, we're not tied to the written word like Western cultures are, like the Constitution and things like that. They become interpreted in fine-tuned ways because they're written, and so the people can interpret them based on their context and not necessarily how it was meant to be interpreted. But when you have an oral tradition, it's passed down, and the idea and the ethos and the understanding is passed down with it. So I think in that sense, that's kind of how I see it, too, is like the idea of bearing witness is here. The method is different, but it's there. And I think Colin did an amazing job about creating a different way of seeing it and for people to understand it in a slightly nuanced way.
[00:35:45.910] Kent Bye: Yeah, what I really love about the VR medium is just the ways that it's able to capture an anthropological slice of a culture in a way that you're able to express these different aspects of your culture, but you kind of continue that conversation and evolve it. And there are certainly moments that were really just tingles back to down my spine and just really being moved by not only the content of what was being discussed, but the aesthetics that you had around it, that was really taking me into a whole nother place that I've never been before. And so as a piece of VR, I think it's able to really do what you're saying is to continue that conversation. So I'm curious if you've had a chance to have people From your culture that are familiar with the larger context and maybe see those Easter eggs or whatever else, and what some of the responses they're having in terms of being able to use the VR medium to express different aspects of our culture in that way.
[00:36:38.691] Colin Van Loon: I don't know. I'm super nervous. You know, I got to take this home to a beginning. We showed it to, you know, everybody involved in a way, you know, so we showed it to Adam. And I was very nervous about Adam, but we showed it to Roberts. We showed it to Taryn's family. So we showed it to all these people that were involved directly in the piece. But, you know, this will be one of the things I have to do. I think that I told chief of council I was going to come shoot at the power and they said, like, we want to see the piece, you know. So, you know, I have to go do that. I was very nervous to show it to Adam because it's his story. He's also a family member. So, you know, I was nervous about what he would say. He liked the film. So I felt very good about that. It was a sense of relief. But we plan to sort of take it to a number of communities, you know, at some point we'll take it to Winnipeg, you know, that's where the story of Brian Sinclair was, and we'll take it to Pikani, we'll take it to Cold Lake, where Tara was from, you know, we'll take it to a number of communities across Canada so that people can see the piece and, you know, it's always nerve-wracking, we just hope people like it. And hopefully we get to take it out to Toronto and hang out with James and stuff like that. Oh, actually, and it will go to Imaginative. Imaginative is a little while away, but it wasn't done for this year's Imaginative. We're still working away. James was probably building the fire at that point or something. But, you know, very excited to take it back to Imaginative, which sort of started this whole thing.
[00:38:22.345] Kent Bye: Yeah. And, uh, and finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and being able to tell these types of immersive stories and what it might be able to enable when you go first?
[00:38:34.795] Colin Van Loon: I gotta, I gotta, you gotta think about it.
[00:38:42.399] James Monkman: Yeah, I think I mentioned this up near the top, but creating a level of empathy, I think. You're put into these situations and into these stories, and there's an awareness and there's a presence that you're there. And I think in our context, like in Canada here right now, there's a lot of talk about reconciliation, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding. And we just recently for context, there was just, I'm going to do air quotes because we're on a podcast about like discovering the people that died in residential schools, the kids that died in residential schools up here. Our communities have known this for a long, long time, but the collective public has just kind of started to understand that and starting to see that. And so I guess from my perspective, being able to tell stories where people can put themselves in the shoes of others that they might not totally understand, and start to see how those stories, you know, affect them. And I think to hearken back to that idea of relationality and how we're connected, you know, I think that helps kind of that understanding and bridging these gaps, maybe these ideological gaps or just gaps in the way that we live, starting to see the other as someone who's closer to yourself than you thought. You know, that to me is the most exciting part of VR. I mean, there's lots of technical things that are cool too, but I think for me, like that particular part of it has the most meaning.
[00:40:21.085] Colin Van Loon: Yeah. You know, I always am amazed by the power of presence. So when I was Developing this piece, I felt very lucky because there's another film called Big Dobbin, and it was made by Lisa Jackson. It was created through the NFB's digital studio, and I got to watch Big Dobbin in various versions of its final form. But there was always something I liked to do. in Badabin, which is, there's a point where you're on a rooftop and you can sort of use your six degrees of freedom to lean forward and look over the rooftop and look down. And I always thought that this was really amazing because I always got seasick a little bit. I got queasy every time I would do this. And I was thinking about, you know, if you watch a horror movie or something, know the first time you watch it when the monster jumps out from the closet or under the bed or something you jump you're like ah you know the monster jumped up but you know if you watch it now 10 times eventually you kind of build up this tolerance moment of surprise. But the thing I found really amazing with VR is no matter how many times you do it, you always have that embodied feeling. So when you look over the ledge, you always feel a bit nauseous. And there's nothing that my mind can do about it. There's nothing that my mind can say to my body that says, you're not going to feel nauseous because you know that this is going to happen. And so I think that there's this incredible opportunity in VR to kind of leverage this mind-body connection that we have and use that in terms of the stories that we're telling. And I know that adoption is still happening, but I'm very excited for the future of VR and the storytelling that will happen because, wow, there's such an opportunity to tell stories and have people feel that they're a part of them in a way that's completely different than watching something on 2D or watching something on Netflix or something like that.
[00:42:41.525] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:42:45.394] Colin Van Loon: I would just say, please, everybody start making VR films. I know a lot of people are intimidated. I was very intimidated by it at first, being somebody who makes films for 2D as well, but like, where do I put my crew? Where do I put my lighting? I have the budget to design the whole set. Like it's possible. So, you know, please, I think that it's so important for people to adopt and use this medium of storytelling because we need it. It's another canvas. You know, there's a push for diversity. We need diverse voices within XR just as we do within traditional mediums like film and television.
[00:43:29.475] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, James and Colm, thanks so much for coming on the podcast to unpack. This is not a ceremony, like I said, that's got such a distinct visual aesthetic in terms of being transportive. And it's a real accomplishment, I think, to be able to give this whole spatial feel and something where you're basically having to paint on 2D canvases to do these illusions. to give this sense of depth when really it's not a spatial environment. I mean, you can't design that in Cinema 4D, but you have to composite it down into all these 2D layers, but you know, to use all that and to give that sense of depth in this piece and other worldliness. But on top of all that, just the topic that you're covering, you know, is really digging into some really important and intense subjects that are worth bearing witness to, like, as you said, and not only allowing the stories to reflect that bearing witness, but to allow the user themselves to have their feet be put to the metaphoric fire and to bear witness to these stories. So thanks again for creating the piece and for coming on the podcast to be able to unpack it a little bit.
[00:44:27.348] Colin Van Loon: Yeah. I, you know, and also I have to say, you know, if we didn't have James, we wouldn't have such a beautiful Buffalo, such an amazing ending. And of course in our press kit, that is the thing that everybody has gravitated to first. And yeah, thanks for having us on the podcast. You know, I've listened before and I think it's really wonderful podcasting you guys have.
[00:44:50.430] James Monkman: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, again, thanks to everyone on our team too. Dana, Laura, Vince, everybody. There's been so many people that helped us with this and, you know, Colin's vision, obviously. So thanks again.
[00:45:07.955] Kent Bye: So that was a Nazi beta in English, that's Colin van Loon, and he's Blackfoot and Dutch originally hailing from the beginning nation. And he's a filmmaker who's also the operations manager for the indigenous matrix for AR VR media lab, as well as James Munkun is a Cree visual artist and art director who's residing in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and children. So I remember different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, Well, the story itself, as I go back and watch it again, it's asking us to bear witness to the tragic events of these two indigenous men's lives, Adam North Pagan and Brian Sinclair. And in the piece, they're asking us to bear witness and become a human ledger and to be able to hold a knowledge of what happened. If anybody asks what happened, then part of the job of bearing witness is to share what happened. And so with this story, there's aspects of child abuse, sexual trauma, and ways in which that the orphanage and the residential homes, some of these decisions that were being made for these young indigenous children were being made by some bureaucratic types that didn't necessarily know the full context or details or weren't really listening to some of the abuse that was happening to be able to stop that. And then the other story of Brian Sinclair is going into the hospital and essentially becoming invisible for 34 hours as he sat there waiting for medical care and pretty much didn't get any help from the hospital staff as he was waiting in the waiting room and basically died there. that can't even determine when he precisely died because he was sitting there for so long that rigor mortis had already set in. So, yeah, just the reflection upon how the ways in which that these indigenous men can be invisible through this kind of stereotyping or racism that is happening within these contexts. And there's these two trickster characters. One of them says that, you know, this is not a ceremony. This is a tradition of letting our people die. and creating this invitation to bear witness and to open our hearts to be able to feel what is happening and also to just bear witness and to tell the story of what's happening. You know, I was asking Colin around this etheric realm, and he sort of thinks of it as this simulation for ancestors where the ancestors in the future, they're able to simulate what's happening and then create this realm beyond space and time and have these interactions and direct interactions with the ancestors, but also to be able to tap into these deeper stories and to reflect upon them. So, quite interesting to see how they're using the virtual reality technology to be able to expand upon different aspects of the relationality, that you're not just an individual autonomous being, but you're actually connected to your past through your ancestors and connected to your future through your future generations, but also that you're in relationship to each other and the other cultures. I found it really interesting to hear from James how they're trying to visually depict that relationality just by showing these trickster characters and other things that are happening within this ancestral realm, that the edges of their body was being morphed through this chromatic displacement that was giving it this kind of like flickering light field, so that you feel like they're not quite physical in the realm, but they're in this etheric light realm beyond space and time. So, in that, as these individuals are moving around, that they're actually changing the world around them into emphasize this fact of relationality that James was really saying that, you know, there's a way in which Western culture does have this kind of reductive materialistic objects that are individuated, but I think from this more indigenous philosophy or in process relational philosophy where the core of the nature of reality is relationship and how we're fundamentally in relationship to each other. And if you go all the way down, you can get to the aspects of relationship. And so, just trying to embed those relational perspectives within the context of this piece and to show that visually within some of these characters, but also just how we're trying to be in right relationship to the world around us and to ask us to bear witness to these situations where we're not in right relationship. So, yeah, I just thought it was a really powerful piece and to take a different aesthetic and a different take, it's more of impressionistic and it gets away from getting jaded to how normally some of these documentary stories are being told about the dramatic stories about indigenous people, as Colin had said. Yeah, at the end there's the matriarch elder who's expressing gratitude for us being able to bear witness to this and that we're to carry this knowledge and to speak about what we've seen and heard and that we are these human ledgers who are bearing witness to these different events and to share it with the world around us. So yeah, I thought it was a really powerful piece not only technically in terms of all the stuff They're doing in terms of the compositing and just giving this sense of volumetric feel but just the way that it was structured and you know there's a whole other aspect so that we didn't dig into here in terms of the creation story and different aspects that what Colin has said some Easter eggs that the culture of the Blackfoot would understand and And so, you know, I got this sense that there was some things that they could share with me and other things that were kind of left to be heard within their community. So there's a level of symbolic communication that's happening in a piece like this that we're not even fully aware as people outside of their culture and community, all the deeper meanings of the different symbols that they're sharing with us. And they're very careful around some of these cultural practices that can be very contentious and that, you know, they're not trying to reinterpret things. but also just leaning into how all of this is an unfolding process and that is evolving in different ways and that, you know, in some ways this is a piece that is adding to that overall dialogue and evolution of some of these different practices that they're doing within their communities. It'll be really interesting to hear any feedback in terms of how their community is receiving this as a medium to be able to have these different types of conversations and to reflect upon this way of using VR as cultivating empathy, but also to be able to bear witness to the traumas that are happening within their community. So, that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. 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