I interviewed Joseph Rouleau: Final Encore co-directors Émilie Rosas & Colas Wohlfahrt remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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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. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So continuing on my series of looking at different immersive stories from South by Southwest 2024, today's episode is with a piece called Joseph Rouleau Final Encore. which is a spatial biopic documentary that tells the story of a renowned bass opera singer from Canada that blends archival photos, videos, music clips, and some light interactions. And it's all set within this sparse black and white sketched world with some bursts of color. And originally it was meant to be a documentary, but they weren't able to find funding, but they were able to find funding to make it more of an interactive spatial documentary. And so we talk about the journey of telling the story about Joseph Rouleau on today's episode of Voices of VR Podcast. So this interview with Emily and Cola have been on Wednesday, March 6 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:09.663] Emilie Rosas: My name is Emily Rosa, and I'm a director. I'm mostly a director of live action movies. And this is my first PR experience as a director. So it was very entertaining for me.
[00:01:25.746] Colas Wohlfahrt: My name is Cola. I'm a interactive director. So I work mostly with other artists or directors or producers to create VR, XR, AR. I also come from web documentary, so interactive storytelling mostly. And yeah, that's it.
[00:01:46.411] Kent Bye: Great. And maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:01:52.608] Emilie Rosas: Well, first of all, for this particular documentary, Joseph Rouleau, Final Encore, it was supposed to be a traditional documentary. And we were not able to find any financial support to do it. It was refused by the institution here. Here in Canada, we work with institutions, public funding mostly. So at some point we're about to almost drop out of the project, but I didn't want to do it because I made a note to Joseph, which was the documentary subject, that I will do a film about him, about his career. So we had to think outside the box. So we thought, let's make a VR documentary. Maybe we can find something else too, it's more interactive, to find something to make this more appealing for young audience too. So I met Colas, which is a specialist in VR. So with that proposition, we almost found financial support immediately.
[00:02:58.491] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, I worked with one of the producers before and they contacted me telling me that they had this really interesting subject, but they couldn't make a movie. They couldn't get the funding and everything to create something. So we tried to think to a VR piece and we gathered the team. So we had a great artist, Karine, who did all the artistic direction. She's actually a motion designer. She does a lot of stop motion. And she's actually a painter. So we wanted to create something different, to have a signature, to have something strong. And it was, I think, the right choice to go with Karine. So I had a portrait in my living room, drawn by Karine. She has a technique. She does it like a fingerprint mostly, and the face appears at some point. So that was a starting point for me. It was this portrait in my living room. And I thought it would be interesting to work with her. And we had the chance to work with a great team of developers too, and sound designers. So yeah, we got a great team. It was during the pandemic. So we met at some point, but not directly. We did it through Zoom, like we do today. But yes, we're quite happy with the results now.
[00:04:20.240] Emilie Rosas: I think Cell by Southwest will be the third time I'll meet Kola in real life. It's always reassumes.
[00:04:32.002] Kent Bye: Okay. So yeah, it sounds like that you come from a traditional film background and then this was originally supposed to be a traditional biopic documentary. And so maybe you could set the context for who Joseph is.
[00:04:45.937] Emilie Rosas: So Joseph Rouleau was born in Matane, which is like a fisher town, really far, far from the big cities, Quebec. And this guy decided to be an opera singer at a time where there was nothing for opera singers in Quebec. So he was really a pioneer. He was accepted as a singer at the Covent Garden, which is a big opera house in London. It's the Royal Opera House of London. So he made a career over there, he made a career all over the world, and he came back to Canada to give back to the society, to give back to the young singers, and he started the opera here, the opera genre, if you know what I mean. But it's basically unknown, like nobody knows who Joseph Rollo is here. So I thought we need to make something with that guy. I mean, he had an amazing life, but nobody knows him. So I decided to make a documentary about him, about his life. And it was So kind. So we made a lot of shooting with him, a lot of interviews, but we had no funding. So it was and unfortunately died while we were filming. So at some point, it was a question, what do we do with all this archives? What do we do with all this film we made with all these interviews? So when we decided to make a VR experience, It was a great challenge to put this 2D media in a 3D environment. So how can we enhance that? How can we try to show those interviews, those pictures? We have a lot of pictures of videos. How can we tell his life in a very short film, because normally it was supposed to be a long feature, so a 15-minute experience. How can we tell his life and all what it did and give an insight of what it is to be an opera singer, basically.
[00:06:57.137] Kent Bye: So as you start to adapt it into what was going to be a much longer feature-length documentary, but make it into more of a short interactive piece, Cola, maybe you could talk about this process of trying to figure out both the through-line of the narrative, but also the interactive components and what that collaboration looked like if you had a sense of what the rough script was overall, and then you're coming in and trying to say, okay, how can we add more interactive components, but maybe talk about that conversation back and forth.
[00:07:25.218] Colas Wohlfahrt: There were different stages because we got some funding, but not for the whole project at first. So we did a prototype. And so we did a second act where you have a pop-up book in front of you and you can play with it and see Joseph on the stage. So yeah, we first tried with this one and we didn't know actually where we were going, but we had to make this prototype. So I was mostly working on user experience, on working with the team, with developers for the artistic direction. And Emily was involved in everything, but she was also writing the story and the dialogues. So it's back and forth. And, and in the end, we, we made a few tests with some people and we realized that at first we thought it would reach some people who love already opera and classical music and everything. But now, in the end, it was playful, it was rich, it was interesting for a larger audience. So that's what we're really happy about, because we're gonna reach some people and make this story known in Quebec and everywhere. The process was mostly because of the funding and we had the chance to participate in something in Quebec called Atelier Grand Nord. It's something where you have mentors from different fields gathering for a week and you have some funding too and you have input from different people. So it brought us much further. We had this idea of the portrait to enhance the feeling of presence of Joseph and they told us maybe you could add some movement to it. So we found a way to make it react to your face. So we tried a lot of things. We also have a lot of limitations because of the Quest 2, because of the way we want to distribute this. So it's a lot of compromises, it's a lot of finding ways to play with the music, because we had a lot, a lot, a lot of archives of music, of interviews, of images. So at some point, we added a TV to show some videos because you have to see Joseph. We realized that we only showed him as a portrait. So we had some videos, we have some pictures. So we're always trying to work with that 360 space and create frames in it. And we Small interactions are really interesting for us to activate some documentary stories. So you have the music box, you have the pop-up book, you have the TV that you turn on. Yeah, that's it.
[00:10:11.048] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so the piece opens up where you're like sitting in a big giant theater and the style is like this outline style. So you get this kind of animated sketchbook, black and white sketches that you're embodying in. And so you have this ability to draw these more vast architectural spaces without having to give a lot of details, but you end up sitting in a big theater and you end up almost like watching a documentary about him. And so I can see the origins of some interviews and other stuff that you're starting off with, but then you're able to have a little bit more interactive components and then going into his home and a little bit more of his personal life. And so maybe you could talk about the overall structure and the different acts that you were trying to take this story and how you started to break it down to tell the story of who Joseph was.
[00:10:57.417] Emilie Rosas: Yeah, we decided to separate his life in acts, like in an opera. An opera is made of four acts. So first act is the childhood, his early life. Second act is going to the Covent Garden. The third act, it's in the hotel room because he had to travel a lot to go everywhere around the world to sing. He lost his first marriage because of that. He had to divorce and everything. So more of his family life. And the last act was, of course, called his death, but his legacy, basically. So we separated in acts, like in an opera. And in each act, there is singing, and it follows the greatest roles of his life, because he played big roles. He was a bass, so that's the lowest in singing. So we explored those roles also. So that's what we try to do. But the experience begins with the curtains that are closed and there are interviews of people who know him. Famous singer and famous conductors like Yannick Nézet-Séguin. So they talk about him, about how he changed their life. So that's maybe just before the opera begins. That's how we started.
[00:12:19.257] Colas Wohlfahrt: And at first, we worked with an actor for the narration, and it worked, but it came in the end. What was really interesting about this story, it's the meeting of Emilie and Joseph, and the interviews they made, and the story of this meeting of two people. So then it appears a good idea to create this posthumous conversation that create a storyline with it.
[00:12:50.119] Emilie Rosas: Yeah, because he was dead by the time we made the narration and the screenplay. He was dead, so we had to find little pieces of interview And I recorded myself asking a question and we assembled the different answers he gave me of those questions around the three years we had together shooting. So we had to construct this conversation.
[00:13:19.520] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, you feel it more in the French version, but we kept the original Joseph voice in the English version too.
[00:13:28.381] Kent Bye: Yeah, I was going to note that as I watched this in the English version, that in the French version, you have more direct quotes and conversations. And I think with the English version, it was more of like I was listening to someone speaking in English at the same dialogue. And so I didn't hear as much of Joseph's direct voice because I was watching the English version. So I feel like that was one of the main differences of watching the English version, that there was already somebody who was stepping in and speaking on his behalf.
[00:13:55.897] Emilie Rosas: We thought about adding subtitles, but in VR it's not easy because they follow you everywhere. It gets you out of the experience. So at some point we also thought about using AI to dub Joseph's voice in English. It almost succeeded, but Finally, we just decided to add an actor, make the dubbing version above Joseph Beuys. So you can hear a little bit at the beginning of the sentences and at the end, but it's mostly the actors who speak.
[00:14:32.326] Colas Wohlfahrt: We also tried to create a different storyline using English interviews, but there was not enough materials to create this.
[00:14:40.947] Kent Bye: Yeah, I noticed it particularly in this piece, just because he's an opera singer, he's bass. And so there's something about his voice that I was like, wishing that I could speak French to hear the original version of that. Cause it is so much about his voice and his singing.
[00:14:56.063] Emilie Rosas: But the singing is, is from him. Yeah. Right. Right.
[00:15:01.705] Kent Bye: There is, there is singing that, that happens in there, which I think that's in the second act where you have a lot more of an interactive component. Maybe you could go into a little bit more of that because it really is featuring a lot of his singing, but also you have different like a jack in the box that you're turning. You have these pop-up books that you're interacting with. And so there's these light interactions where you're using the hand tracking to very clearly, you know, put your hand here and do this action. And then it's in the context of seeing a larger stage in the background as more of a theatrical presentation. And so there's kind of a fractal representation where there's a small scale of what you're working with and seeing some aspect, but then there's a larger backdrop that's also changing. And as you listen to the operas and you have the translations or at least the subtitle of all the specific language that he's singing in, so you can follow along as he's singing. But yeah, we could elaborate on that process of trying to create a little bit more of a interactive dimension to get people more engaged as you're telling this part of the story.
[00:16:03.854] Emilie Rosas: Maybe, Kola, you can talk about the fact that our first public was for elders, people who loved opera. And maybe that's why this is light interaction, because it's mostly people who would never... Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:19.817] Colas Wohlfahrt: It's mostly contemplative and we wanted people to to try this sitting. So yeah, it's the idea to take time to listen. We wanted it to be mostly about audio also. So we took all the archives, all recordings, and there is a huge work to specialize the sound, to clean some sound, to enhance the bass. And we also explored, we wanted to use haptics and butt kickers to make you feel the bass, but it didn't really work. So we tried to play a lot with the sound. we wanted people to take time to listen to him. So that's why nothing really happens. You start some different sequence and then you have to listen and get immersed in the decor. Yeah.
[00:17:09.220] Emilie Rosas: But we made it light and easy to use because our first public cible, how do you say that? Our first target audience was for people who love opera and this is mostly elder people. So we wanted to make it really user friendly. So you have a hand, you put your hand there and you use it. And we had some user testing with very, very old people, like as old as 93 years old, and they were all able to do it. And they find it wonderful to be immersed in that music and with that voice and with the sea at the end, the ocean. So for them, it was really a great experience.
[00:17:54.517] Colas Wohlfahrt: It was a really a challenge to play with hand tracking because because of a lot of limitations, technical limitations, because we started this project two years ago, maybe more. And yet we realized we had a lot of issues with people to have the exact same gestures that was shown maybe to play with the music box. So there was a lot of back and forth, but in the end, it works for everybody. And And so we're happy because we found a middle ground.
[00:18:31.344] Kent Bye: So yeah, Emily, you'd said that you had promised Joseph that you would follow through and make this film or this project, what ended up being an immersive, interactive documentary biopic about his life. So maybe you could just give a bit more context for how you first came across Joseph and his work and how you came into contact with him and where this story really began for you.
[00:18:53.768] Emilie Rosas: I was working at the time at the marketing department at the Orchestre Métropolitain, which is an orchestra in Montreal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. And my colleague knew I was making movies and she just told me, you know, Joseph Rouleau, this man is a giant and you need to make a film about him. And I was like, Who? Joseph Rouleau? I didn't know him, so I started to search about him and I learned that he sang with Maria Callas, with Pavarotti, he sang all around the world in front of the Queen. So I was like, oh wow, and I don't know anything about him. So I decided to make a film. I contacted him and he said yes, of course, immediately. And yeah, so we started shooting, making interviews and trying to get some financial support. And we were not able to find any money for a traditional documentary. So at the end, we decided to do a VR experience.
[00:20:00.548] Kent Bye: Okay. And there's a section in the film where he goes off into some place outside of Canada to sing. I don't know if it's in London, but maybe you could set more context for where he went and why it was so important and maybe a little bit more about why was he such a unique singer?
[00:20:17.212] Emilie Rosas: Well, you need to understand that in the 40s in Montreal, there was nothing. There was no cultural institution, no opera, almost no theater. So it was really starting from nothing, you know, wanting to be an international opera singer. It's a wild dream. You're not supposed to have those wild dreams in the 40s in Quebec. And he said, I'll try it. And if I fail in five years, if I fail, I'll be a lawyer. That was basically it. So he did a lot of little contests. he won those contests. And putz de putzi, he was able to add a teacher in Italy. So he went to study opera in Italy. And after that, he had this big, big audition in New York in front of Sir David Webster, which was at the time the director of the Covent Garden. Covent Garden was the Royal Opera House of London. It's one of the biggest opera house in the world. It still is. So, he had this audition in front of this guy, and the day of the audition, poor guy, he had a laryngitis. He had a bad throat, so he was not able to sing. So, the doctor in New York, because he was able to contact the doctor of the Metropolitan Opera there, and he said, okay, you can sing three arias and that's it. Three areas maximum. So he went to the audition. He signed the three areas. And David Webster, the director, said, my boy would like to join Covent Garden. And that was the beginning for him. He was young. He was full of promises, full of hope. And he said, yes, of course. So he went to live in London over there. And he stayed at the Covent Garden as a regular singer. for almost 40 years and you don't see that anymore. It's like he has a memorial dedication over there in London at the Covent Garden because he stayed so long. And after that, he did what few artists do. He came back to his country to pay it forward, you know? So he started an opera school. He found a lot, a lot of financial support to have a real opera house in Quebec and Montreal and all around Canada because he became the director of Jeunesse Musicale, it's youth musicals. that helps young singers, young pianists, young violinists to perform. So he gave back to his country. And not a lot of artists do that, you know, most of the time they just retire with their money and musical rights, that's it. But he decided to give back to his country. So
[00:23:17.257] Kent Bye: Okay. Well, I think that helps to set the larger context for this piece and some of the topics that you explore in the piece. And there's one section where it starts to get into a little bit more of his personal life in Act Three, where you're in this hotel or this room where there's a suitcase and all these photos are around, but you're talking about the difficulty of, you know, having been a part of the Covent Gardens for 40 years. how he originally had a marriage that fell apart, but then he was able to have a second wife who I think he said at some point where she was alone for like 16 or 18 months without him. And so there's this cost of being an artist like this is it can be difficult to maintain your professional life, but then you have your home life and your relationships in a way that is kind of like a stress or difficulty to have a work-life balance as it were. So you have ways that you're trying to symbolically represent that. in the third act and maybe could talk about how you start to tell this part of the story.
[00:24:14.027] Emilie Rosas: Well, it is still difficult for singers, opera singers, to be a singer and have a family life because you're always on the road, always singing in different opera house all around the world. So, but at this time, I think it was worse than today. So, he had to go, he was booked four years in advance. So for the next four years, he knew where he would be singing next, like London, after that Australia, after that South America, after that Italy and France. So he was going everywhere, but he was not seeing his family. So it was tough. You needed really a partner who understands what it is, who understands the passion. because otherwise it will fail. So the third deck is about that. It's really his personal life and the toll it's taking on it.
[00:25:07.028] Kent Bye: And Cola, wondering if you can maybe expand on how do you start to approach and symbolically represent that through some of the spatial and VR design of that section?
[00:25:17.403] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, we wanted to create a room, something really standard that you can find in every city and play with the view, what you can see through the window. So yeah, we played with the room and the suitcase opening, closing, opening, closing, and the idea of stop motion. And we play with the light. So we wanted to bring some color in this situation and make it like it was a full day. So the light turns all around the room and around you. And the light is all the textures were done by the artistic director, Karine. She painted every textures and we created the light through textures. So it's basically this act is a long day and a lot of travels. So yeah, that's the way we approached it.
[00:26:08.583] Emilie Rosas: And you can see the different cities in the windows, you can see like Paris, New York, Moscow.
[00:26:15.726] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think a lot of the piece up to that point has a lot of tone of black and white. And when you start to open up the window, then you start to add a little bit more color. But it ends up being a little bit of a portal of representing all the different cities that he's traveling to, I guess.
[00:26:32.092] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, exactly. We use the color at some point also with when you are on the stage in the opera and you play with the music box and the color comes. But we use a lot this black and white also as a limitation because of the Quest 2 that we're using. So it's an artistic choice, but also a technical choice to go further at some point, like in this room, where there is a lot of videos happening. It's technically heavy. So yeah.
[00:27:04.540] Kent Bye: Yeah. It sounds like as the technology gets more and more advanced, I'm sure that it's not going to constrain your artistic decisions and drive them as much if you wanted to have a little bit more higher fidelity or heavier scenes in that way.
[00:27:16.936] Emilie Rosas: At this point, I like the artistic view that Karen gave to the film, I still call it a film, to the experience. Because yes, it was a technical choice issue. But at the end, it became with all those white lines and the black background, it's almost like a memory. And it's all the experiences about memory, remembering his life. So it feels like a memory with all those lines around. So At the end, I think it's a good choice.
[00:27:47.814] Kent Bye: And throughout the course of the piece, I also noticed that there was this multimodal approach of bringing in different photographs, different documents, newspaper articles, videos that you have either done interviews or other clips that you're having. So wondering if you talk about all this research that you'd done on his life and ways that the VR medium allowed you to show the complexity of all these other types of media that VR was able to provide a spatial context that allowed you to have all these other archival photos and documents and other videos?
[00:28:27.374] Colas Wohlfahrt: It was hard to find a middle ground for this also, because we wanted to show to give a sense of all the materials we have, all the images of the pictures of the archives, but some people during the test were quite a bit frustrated not to be able to spend time to read some telegrams he received or to look at the pictures a long time. But we see this as an exhibition, so it will be in different places, shown in different places in Quebec and we hope elsewhere, with some real archives, maybe some costumes, The VR piece will be in the center of this exhibition, but we have a lot of materials to play with and to show also.
[00:29:09.586] Emilie Rosas: The next step will be to make an exhibition with it that can travel. So you can have the VR experience and after that you can see the real pictures, read the real articles, newspaper articles, old telegrams. That will be the next step.
[00:29:28.165] Kent Bye: Okay. And what's your plans for South by Southwest in terms of the booth or the exhibit? Are you going to have a little bit more of that other ephemera or other documents or things? Or is it just going to be someone coming in and watching the experience, but maybe talk about like what your plans are for exhibiting there at South by Southwest.
[00:29:46.051] Colas Wohlfahrt: We created some visuals to give a sense of who Joseph is and tease the experience, but it's not the exhibition we have in mind at all. But yes, we try to create something and there will be some sound of him singing also in the background. So it's a first test of an exhibition. A little test.
[00:30:12.773] Kent Bye: Yeah. Great. And so the last part is talking about his life and his death, and you're kind of hovering over this ocean that is really abstracted in a way that is beautiful, like blue and textured layers on top of it. But maybe just talk about as you're wrapping up this and reflecting on his life, both honoring the fact that he came back and was able to contribute back to his Canadian home community, but also just what you also wanted to do to be able to wrap up this story about Joseph.
[00:30:42.599] Emilie Rosas: Yeah, well, he was always talking about his hometown, Matan, which is close to the, well, it's the ocean, basically, because it's the end of the river, and it goes into the ocean, so the water there is salty. So he was always talking about Matan, and before entering on stage, he was making a little prayer, thinking about his mother, his father, and his hometown. So I like to think that at the end of his life, he made that same prayer to his mother, to his father and to his hometown, thinking about them and thinking about that big ocean. So that big ocean at the end is basically an image for death or maybe what's after death. So that was how we wanted to hand it. It's a peaceful image and with a peaceful sun that goes with it.
[00:31:37.716] Kent Bye: Nice. Cola, any other thoughts on the final chapter there?
[00:31:41.039] Colas Wohlfahrt: It's an effect that I saw in a VR piece I saw before. It was called Tales of a Wedding Ring. It was like an anime, a manga. And at some point there were some box of like out of a comic book. And at some point some image come through you and you dive into a scene. So I wanted to use this effect for you to go in the mirror. Saint-Laurent, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Laurent river. So yeah, it works. And everybody was really touched by this and by the music. And a lot of people are watching the credit till the end, till it gets dark and it's finished. And it's really long in the end. So we are really happy with this end. And yeah.
[00:32:27.868] Kent Bye: Yeah. So you have a number of different archival photos of Joseph and then some video, but you also have like a illustrated animation of his face that appears at some point. So maybe you could talk about the decision to use this animated version of his face.
[00:32:46.856] Emilie Rosas: Well, we wanted to give the impression that you are Joseph when you're putting the headset. So when you look in the mirror, you see his face. So it's like you being Joseph and you're hearing his voice. So when you turn around, either on the right or on the left, the animated figure moves too. So we wanted to give that kind of immersion into the character.
[00:33:13.356] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, and so the artist did a few portraits of Joseph at different stages of his life and playing different roles. And we explored a lot that idea. So it situates you also in the story when this portrait changes. We used it more in previous versions. In the end, it appears only at some point of the story, but it's something central. And it's the start of this. We started at first to represent Joseph that way. we wanted to give a feeling of presence, to see Joseph through time, to see his face evolve, and also that it reacts to your movement. So to feel in the 360 space, to be in presence of Joseph.
[00:34:01.297] Kent Bye: Have you had a chance to show it to Joseph's family?
[00:34:04.679] Emilie Rosas: Yes, we showed it to his wife and it was pretty funny because she was talking about the facts while she was hearing all the stories. Yes. And she was she was glad we managed to do something with that. So she's really glad.
[00:34:24.140] Kent Bye: Was she trying to correct some of the facts or just... Yes, we did.
[00:34:27.562] Emilie Rosas: We did correct. Because, for example, in the first version, I was saying you had an audition with David Webster and she corrected it. It was Sir David Webster. those kind of little facts. So we had to record the other sentence to correct that. So that's funny.
[00:34:48.696] Kent Bye: Nice. And you said you're also trying to target this for fans of opera who are maybe a little bit older. And so wondering if you've had a chance to show it to some of the target demographic of people who were big fans of Joseph's work.
[00:35:02.855] Emilie Rosas: Oh yes, yes. We were able to find people who worked with him or who knew him, who listened to his work and they were really thrilled. Yeah, they loved it. So now the next challenge is to make people who don't know anything about opera look at this experience and find a way to listen to more of it. That's the next challenge.
[00:35:28.043] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, I know that you have a background in film and you were able to explore the power and potential of VR, but I'd love to hear any reflections on how the story came out and just reflecting on the medium of VR that allowed you to maybe go down some paths for how you told the story. And maybe if it was film, you could have made some other choices or told the other aspects of the story, but I'd love to hear some of your reflections on reflecting on the medium of VR to be able to tell the story.
[00:35:55.170] Emilie Rosas: I think a documentary, it's really a traditional media. And with VR, we're able to explore new ways to tell the story, to tell the story of the life of somebody, to make a biopic. It was a new way to make a biopic with VR because it is interactive, but we wanted to have more of a subtle relationship with the user and something more intimate. So that was the biggest challenge. And you don't necessarily have that when you're just seeing a movie on the computer or on a big screen or on TV. You don't have this almost personal relationship with the viewer. So I think VR will be a great way to make documentaries in the future because the user really immerse himself in the subject.
[00:36:54.385] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, I think the universe who created this black and white style is great to be immersed in sound and to take time to listen. And you, you won't look at your phone or do something else, you're trapped in this situation. So you have to listen, you have to take time, you have to slow down. And we put just a little bit of small interactions to keep the youngest ones. But yeah, I I think it's great for us to use this medium because this story wouldn't have the same impact or reach the same people or the same audience and be in South by. So yeah, I think VR works very well for us, for this project particularly, I think.
[00:37:41.524] Emilie Rosas: Well, you can create an emotional connection when you're in the outset, because as you said, Kolar, you cannot check your feed or your Instagram. You're really in it and you have to interact to make it work. And I think it stays more longer in your head after that, because you lived it.
[00:38:03.913] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling and what it might be able to enable?
[00:38:16.718] Emilie Rosas: That's a tricky question. You want to try, Kola?
[00:38:19.099] Colas Wohlfahrt: No, go first.
[00:38:23.613] Emilie Rosas: But as I say, I think it's a great future for documentaries, the VR. Because of all I said before, you can create an emotional connection between the viewer and the subject, so they get more involved in what you're telling them. This is a musical documentary, so it was more like entertaining, it was a story we wanted to tell. But if you want to make more of a political documentary, where people have to get more involved in real life, I think that's going to be a good way to do it. So there is a lot of potential over there. You get the viewers more involved so they can be involved inside the headset, but also outside after that, I think. Because I think VR will trigger something else that traditional media won't. I don't know if it's a brain thing, because you have to interact with things, you have to be part of the story, so you're becoming a member of the team, you know? You're creating something with the headset, with the VR, so you can be more involved after that, I think. It's maybe the future of documentaries at some point.
[00:39:35.231] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, me, I don't think there is one. Because me, I start from the story and I look at the technologies to tell it. So I'm working on AR, XR, VR, and more and more on hybrid solutions. So I worked on immersive theater. And at some point you take a VR headset and you dive into a world for five minutes and then you go back to this immersive theater piece. So it depends on the story, depends on the the context and the audience we want to reach. If we want it to be something collective, we try with other people that is mostly social, or if it's something we want you to be immersed in and alone with your thoughts. So it depends on every story. But sure, all these XR possibilities we have now, and we see in Quebec that more and more projects come from dance companies, from musicians. So it's becoming something really that makes the specialties, the media, the people, everybody's trying to work with the same device to tell different stories. So it's not only VR, we have to think one technology for a story.
[00:40:52.258] Emilie Rosas: I think viewers want to be part of the story too, more and more, to take action, to choose your own adventure. And VR can permit that. The next step for VR will be to be more accessible, of course, because it's still very niche. You have to buy a net set, you have to program it, you have to be able to access all the movies. So the next challenge will be to be more accessible.
[00:41:21.365] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left and said that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:41:25.547] Colas Wohlfahrt: Yeah, we're really glad to come to South by and to show this piece to the world.
[00:41:32.111] Emilie Rosas: Yeah. We're so glad because it was a surprise for us and it means the world really to go to South by Southwest really.
[00:41:41.917] Kent Bye: Awesome. Emily and Cola, thanks so much for coming on and sharing a little bit more about your documentary about Joseph Rouleau, the final encore. And yeah, just all the ways that you're able to explore biopic in the context of XR and tell his life story across these different acts and to have these different interactive components as well. And yeah, just the aesthetic and the style and the way that you're sharing the story of his life through all these different media artifacts that you're able to integrate into the VR piece. very much appreciated having a chance to see it and to be able to also talk to you about your journey and the process of making it. So thank you so much.
[00:42:18.036] Emilie Rosas: Thanks to you.
[00:42:21.257] Kent Bye: So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesofVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, can't buy. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
