I spoke with producer Rayne Zukerman & lead programmer Luke Ruminski about The Dollhouse as a part of my remote coverage of Cannes Immersive 2025. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] 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 voicesofvr. So this is the last interview that I did remotely on Con Immersive 2025. So this is a piece called The Dollhouse. And And the directors, Charlotte Bernou and Dominique Desjardins, were not available, so I had a chance to speak with the producer, Rain Zuckerman, as well as the lead programmer, Luke Ruminski. And so I'm gonna read the description of the dollhouse and give some other high-level impressions and then start to dive into a conversation. So the dollhouse is an unfolding paper world where nine-year-old Juniper untangles feelings of guilt around how her family treated Magnolia, a woman who came from far to work as a cleaner in their house. This animated interactive VR tale explores how power dynamics are born within the intimacy of our homes. While reenacting memories with her dolls, Juniper grows ashamed of her actions and finds the courage to disagree with her parents and follow her heart. Will you help her ask for forgiveness? So in this piece, you end up being in this dollhouse context where you're watching the unfolding of this at like the tabletop scale, but you're also in the context of this VR experience in a larger dollhouse. So you yourself are kind of like a fractal expansion of this world. So there's different ways that the creators were trying to give you this feeling of interacting and participating in different moments so that you could be complicit in the unfolding of these power dynamics within the context of the story. So in essence, this started as a documentary project by journalist Charlotte Bruneau, and they got some funding to be able to turn it into more of a poetic, magical realism type of project where there was a lot of dream logic of the different symbols. I mean, there's a lot of dialogue and discussions, but also just a lot of symbols that for me, I needed to have like decoded in terms of like what exactly they meant. I think that a large part, I understand the gist of the power dynamics that are being explored within the context of the story, but I found it helpful just to hear a little bit more of the intended meaning around it. So it ends up being like these personal symbols that I just needed to have like decoded and locked a little bit. but also it's got like a very theatrical staging. So you have this building that's being reconstructed in front of you as they're having different scenes in these different rooms, then they'll add another part of the spatial architecture. And so this house is kind of building up and you're hearing more around like the back channel conversations with parents around their personal feelings and the power dynamics that Juniper is learning and adopting based upon how she's hearing her parents talk around this power imbalance with their housekeeper Magnolia. Oh, one other quick note is that I was doing this interview and completely lost track of time. And so it kind of ends abruptly because I had other people on the other end that were waiting for me for another interview. Apologies for the abrupt ending and cutting off the usual way that I end most of these conversations. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Rain and Luke happened on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:25.106] Rayne Zukerman: My name is Rain Zuckerman and I'm a producer based in Toronto, Canada. And The Dollhouse is my first immersive project. The Canadian director Dominique Desjardins is also my partner in life. And he is the one that brought the quest into our home and introduced me to the world. And it just opened up so many incredible opportunities. And so we worked on The Dollhouse with our Luxembourg partners, our co-director Charlotte Bruneau in Luxembourg and our co-producer Wild Fang.
[00:03:53.690] Luke Ruminski: And I'm Luke Kruminski. I've been doing VR since VR was a thing. Had my hands on the first Oculus prototypes, as well as HoloLens mixed reality headsets and any emerging technology before then. I've done it, so... Yeah, love doing new things. And yeah, I love creating meaningful VR experiences as well. So I've done experiences for Sundance as well. Tribeca premiered, I believe, Draw Me Close. I was working on that kind of after the initial first run, but we made it better. So yeah.
[00:04:30.442] Kent Bye: Nice. And maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR.
[00:04:36.081] Rayne Zukerman: So I'm a lawyer by training, made the leap into the world of drama and television. And with Dominique Desjardins, we started a company and we just guerrilla style made our first feature film together. So it's been about 15 years that we've had our company and I have no regrets from jumping into this world. Dom's training as an actor, and so my training as a lawyer, I feel like between us, we've kind of got a lot of different bases covered in the creation of storytelling. And I like the business side, but I love the creative side. And so for me as a producer, it's just really about finding stories that I feel like have a universal appeal and that I really believe in and that I'm passionate about. It takes so much energy and time and money to do a project. So I feel like there are two things that are really essential. You've got to really believe in what you're doing and somehow it's got to grab at your heart and, you know, you feel like you're creating and putting something that's into the world that's important. And then also just working with collaborators that are really good people and and that have skills that they're bringing to the table and also are doing it for more than just the money?
[00:05:52.347] Luke Ruminski: I mean, I've always been a computer, I guess, scientist at heart. I started hacking games from a very early age on. And straight out of high school, I pretty much started a company with 500 kids. We did everything from web hosting to creating websites to managing a record label and everything in between. So, I mean... I've always been kind of on a journey to create content and do all things computer related. That's kind of on the bleeding edge of technology. So that brought me into VR and into working with Rain.
[00:06:30.734] Kent Bye: Nice. And so we're talking about the piece called The Dollhouse, which premiered at Cannes Immersive that was just happening there in France. And so I had a chance to see it remotely. And we're talking about this today. The directors are not able to be here with us. So maybe you could give a bit of context for how this project first came about.
[00:06:51.219] Rayne Zukerman: So the dollhouse is an original idea by Charlotte Bruno, who is a Luxembourg director and journalist. And so she worked for different news agencies around the world, really based all over Ukraine, Middle East. And she was developing a documentary idea on domestic workers. So she was doing interviews with people in different places around the world. And then the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg had a conference and they brought together creators from around the world to try and come up with ideas for VR projects. And so Dominique Desjardins is a fiction director, but also worked at the National Film Board of Canada for years where they had a really... innovative VR program. And so he worked on a number of VR projects at the National Film Board and really jumped on that bandwagon. Like Luke is also at heart a computer geek who found storytelling and arts and is just a really weird combination of creative abilities. Anyway, him and Charlotte met at the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. And so she had this documentary idea and he brought his own way into the world. And together they decided that this could be reimagined as a story for VR.
[00:08:11.107] Luke Ruminski: I guess for me, the introduction to this project was in 2020, I believe. I was asked to work on the prototype version. So I got my feet wet at that time, and it was really exciting to hear that I'll also be working on the production version of the project. So when Rain and Dominic reached out, I definitely jumped on board as quick as I could. Yeah.
[00:08:32.765] Rayne Zukerman: And what was incredible about being able to do a prototype, it's like one of the things that I feel like all storytellers have to learn about production and process. We learned so, so, so much from that experience. So at the heart of the idea, it was a story about domestic workers. Originally, our approach was much more a realistic way into the world. We always wanted to explore it from a child's point of view. And we always knew that we wanted her to be playing with her dolls. But I feel like after doing the prototype, there was this real breakthrough that happened where we were able to move away from a more realistic way into the world and do something slightly more abstract. And so that was where this idea of we are in a child's perspective. Why don't we explore that world more creatively and get rid of any sense of realism that And just have some fun with how kids play and how kids imagine things. And so that's where this aesthetic of developing a paper world of papier-mâché and found objects really came into place. And I feel like it really created an opportunity to have some fun in imagining what the world could look like. And so Luke has a daughter, I have a daughter, you know, I think all of us went away and crafted a bit with our kids to try and inspire ourselves in terms of what the world could look like.
[00:10:06.212] Luke Ruminski: Definitely.
[00:10:08.379] Kent Bye: Yeah. And Luke, maybe you could talk about, you know, how you first started to get on to this project and what were some of the first questions that you were starting to explore while you're working on it?
[00:10:19.302] Luke Ruminski: I mean, the first question for me was scale because we were trying to figure out, you know, how big is this dollhouse? How small are the dolls? So right into it, I feel like because we're working in a spatial environment, figuring out the scale is kind of a big thing. So definitely when we started working on this, that was one of the big questions. And also lighting. I mean, for me, whether to try to go with real-time lighting or whether we want like dramatic shadows baked into the light maps and textures and things like that. You know, I just wanted to figure out what kind of world we're creating, whether it's going to be very kind of intimate or more realistic. And this is kind of the style that we ended up on.
[00:11:01.892] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so it seems like that's very much drawing in from this kind of tabletop scale, you know, other pieces in the VR space that have used this scale to be able to have, you know, this dollhouse scale, as it were, because you're using literally a dollhouse to tell the story through this metaphor. And so were there other pieces that provided an inspiration for seeing how others have used this tabletop scale in order to tell stories? And Yeah, just curious to hear if there are any specific inspirations for this aesthetic.
[00:11:33.265] Luke Ruminski: Nothing comes to mind. Rain, I'll let you go ahead.
[00:11:36.932] Rayne Zukerman: I wish that Dom and Charlotte were here to give... They had so many inspirations and they're so deep into the world. I guess one project that I experienced that I loved that was a touchstone for me was Allumette, where it really also had this tiny world of characters with a story that unfolded in front of your eyes that was all around you. I mean, I think in terms of the spatial environment, it was very different, but I feel like... That project, just the immersiveness and the magic that it had in terms of bringing you into this world that unfolded around you was one that I kept coming back to in terms of the top of the top of what we would like to reach for. Yeah.
[00:12:19.218] Kent Bye: And I think with all interactive and immersive stories, there's a question of interactivity and agency. And so I feel like that this piece, there's a way that the beginning, you're kind of interacting with the doll, playing with it. And then you kind of sit back and watch the story unfold where there's some other interactive moments that are coming in that are basically kind of gating for the story that is unfolding. So there's no real narrative agency where you're making choices to change the story. It's just more of to participate and to progress the story through those interactions. And so just curious to hear a little bit of the discussions that were happening in terms of the ways to engage the user as they're watching a piece like this to have them interact with this world.
[00:13:05.717] Rayne Zukerman: Yeah, I mean, I think that that was a conversation that was happening a lot with all of us. I think Dom said it really well in one of his quotes in our press kit, but it's really about finding that fine line between building relationships a narrative with a linear structure and also giving an opportunity for the user to play and explore the world. I think it was important for us to create something that was accessible, that even someone with no VR experience would be able to interact and also be able to go from the beginning to the end of the story and of the journey that is the emotional journey of the story. There's a little bit of build your own narrative, but very, very limited at the very end. So, you know, just to give you a bit of context about what happens in the experience. This is about a little girl who is playing with her dolls, who has some kind of an icky feeling inside, you know, is unsettled by what happened in her home. And so the dolls become animated in front of the user and they tell a story of what happened in her home. So a domestic worker, Magnolia, came to live with them. And at first, Juniper is just so happy to have a friend and someone to play with. But as the story unfolds, as the dollhouse grows, little Juniper starts to copy the behaviors of her parents, who are not unloving people, but do not consider Magnolia, the domestic worker, as part of their family and so treat her differently. And so over the course of the story, Little Juniper also starts to treat Maggie as someone who is just really there to serve her needs. And so there's a button in this experience that is a real metaphor for whatever you want to make of it. It can be a passport. It can be humanity or humanity, your freedom. But essentially, at the end of the experience, the user is given a choice as to whether or not they're going to give the button back to Magnolia or if they're going to keep it to themselves. And that was so fun. It can to see what people do. I mean, I think most people right away, you know, want to give back the button. But there were a few people that intentionally didn't. I don't know if they're pessimistic about the role humans play in this world, or they were just curious to see what happened. But if you don't give back the button, you know, there's this stain that grows in the experience that's supposed to be a manifestation of your guilt. And so if you don't give back the button, that guilt just kind of stays there as a texture that you have to live with. And if you do give back the button, then it does kind of clear up. Did you give back the button?
[00:15:51.095] Kent Bye: I'm trying to think if I believe that I did, because it does, the stain does happen regardless, right?
[00:15:58.218] Luke Ruminski: The stain exists regardless, but dissipates once you give back the button. Okay. Yeah.
[00:16:04.318] Kent Bye: Yeah, I have to go back and see it again just to see that moment. One of the interesting conceits of this piece is that it's a bit of a fractal spatial context where you're looking at the dollhouse, but you're also within the context of the dollhouse. And that's made clear when... there's all these stars that are projected onto the walls, encouraging you to turn around to watch this kind of shadow puppet scenes. And so can you speak a bit to the deeper narrative context? Like you are watching this story, but yet you are also on the scale of one of the dollhouse. It's kind of like a dollhouse within a dollhouse and you're watching the
[00:16:41.966] Rayne Zukerman: smallest dollhouse but you're also in the context of a dollhouse and you're able to see the other people behind you so just curious to hear a little bit about playing with that spatial context within the context of the story i'm so happy that you picked up on that and i would just say that if you were to have done the experience in the immersive competition in can you would have been also in another paper world so it would have been even more meta of a room within a room within a room So this comes back to one of the main themes in this experience that we were exploring, which is about power dynamics. And we really wanted to bring home the point of we learn power, and the place that we learn it first is really in the confines of our home. with our parents. And then we take that learned behavior and then we take it out into the world and outside of our house. And we use it in, you know, an exponentially huge amount of different circumstances in life. And so that's really how we were playing with that concept of you learn it in this one space, but then you take it out into all these other spaces. And that's one thing that I love about the world of VR. And I love about our directors who I just think are storytellers, but also poets. And I feel like VR is just such a fun space for being able to play with metaphor. And so this was one of the metaphors that we were going after. Yeah.
[00:18:11.308] Kent Bye: Yeah, Luke, you had mentioned the lighting was something that you're particularly interested in. And I think some of those scenes are certainly using light to great effect. You know, there's also like, you know, flashlights and other ways where the button is kind of projecting a big red beam. And so maybe you could just speak to some of the ways that you're using light to tell the story through these different beats and sounds. Sometimes it's to draw your attention to turn around, but then you're still kind of watching a light puppet show that is kind of reflecting these different characters at yet another different scale. So yeah, but I'd love to hear some of your reflections on using light throughout the course of this piece.
[00:18:48.772] Luke Ruminski: Sure. So I mean, in the script, I had kind of lighting scenarios. So I know like the director's vision was always to kind of start very low light and kind of, you can't really see the details of what's around you. So it kind of remains a mystery. And then as you experience the experience, more of the world around you gets illuminated and really just putting the spotlights on where the action is. So you'll notice that the light kind of switches from Wherever the action is taking place, so where the initial dollhouse folds up and then trying to get your attention to turn around was also kind of a difficult concept, I guess, to do. But I think we've succeeded for the most part with particle effects kind of going around you. On the technical side, I can tell you more about the technical difficulties we've had with lighting because Doing lighting transitions that we did via light map changes is not something that Unity by default is able to do. So we used the package called Magic Light Map Switcher, which allowed us to blend between the different light maps, which allowed us to have more than one or two directional lights, which real-time lighting would have supported. We were able to have up to as many lights as we needed for the scene to be illuminated correctly. And that had a lot of requirements that made it much more difficult to create the project than it would be done with just regular real timelines.
[00:20:15.168] Rayne Zukerman: And I just want to add to what you're saying, Luke, in terms of how we used lighting as well, just in the shadow world, to hopefully build an experience that the user can use their imagination to imagine what the people look like. So, you know, the dolls are made out of papier-mâché. And then when we play with the real world, what's happening around the user and the And the little girl juniper, it's all in shadows. So it's just kind of the shadow of a figure. And what we really wanted to do was to create an experience where anybody in the world from South America to Southeast Asia, when they watch this experience or when they experience it, that they're able to see themselves in it. And so we wanted to try and get rid of as much cultural bias as we could, because we think that we're really exploring a very universal theme in how we treat others. And so we wanted everyone to bring their own cultural baggage to it and see themselves in the experience.
[00:21:24.881] Kent Bye: You'd said that part of the discussion to telling a story was exploring more photorealistic ways of telling the story. And were there other mediums that you had considered like beyond VR, like telling it as a short film or talk a bit about the decision making process to tell the story in VR and VR? Yeah, I'm just curious to hear a little bit more around the choice of the spatial medium to be able to tell this and what were some of the other affordances that you're really trying to emphasize by telling the story in VR?
[00:21:56.681] Rayne Zukerman: That's a really good question. And I think it's a hard one to answer. I think that Charlotte, this was her idea, and she was exploring it as a documentary and kind of a more conventional interview. You know, this is like a current events. This is an issue that happens all around the world with higher stakes in some countries more than others where, you know, passports are actually taken away and there is more of a real threat of actually losing your freedom. And so that's something that she still might go off and do. This is her second VR project. She had just finished another project called The Assembly and was really excited about the medium. And as I was saying, Dom, who's our Canadian director, also had been dabbling in a You know, the fact that it was at the Human Rights Museum, I think, is where they really landed on this strong idea of a story about human rights. And then they just sort of started having fun because they were both already in the VR world and in the VR space of trying to imagine how to take that, transform it and flip it on its head to be from a child's perspective. And I think it was important for it to be from a child's perspective because it shows, you know, I think with all stories, you want to show character growth and transformation. And I think that this child in that story really has a big transformation in terms of making mistakes and starting off so open and then feeling very, very bad about her behavior. And so that was all really exciting stuff story-wise that they wanted to explore. And then adding to that the interactive elements where all of the interactions in this experience are child's play, right? You play hopscotch with her. You fly paper planes. You get to listen in to what's happening in the different rooms. by putting a cup to your ear and spying on the parents and what they're talking about. And so I think it was just a meeting of really fun ideas and fun interactions where they thought that there was real potential. It kind of just checked off all of these things that were really important for them and what they wanted to create in the VR space, which is a powerful message with some interactivity that's from a child's perspective. And also, I think just the world of crafting as well, which I really, really enjoyed as someone who loves to craft and felt and do papier-mâché and trying to take something that's very tactile And that we associate so much with touch and trying to recreate those sensations in a virtual space. Hmm.
[00:24:38.393] Kent Bye: Yeah, just to elaborate a little bit on the context of the deeper story that Charlotte's been looking at this as an issue. Is she a journalist or how did she come across this as a story? Because it sounds like that there are these domestic workers who are, I don't know if it's going as far as like being enslaved or being held against their will or what the context is that they are in these situations. And so, yeah, I'm just trying to get a bit more context as to the story and Charlotte's relationship to wanting to tell this specific story.
[00:25:09.204] Rayne Zukerman: Charlotte is a journalist, and that was one of our big challenges during the creation of this project is that she was based in Ukraine during the war. She was based in Lebanon when there were huge manifestation, sorry, that's a French word, des manifestations, but huge protests happening. You know, she was based in a number of different countries. And so she had a lot of things going on at once as we were working on this project. And not to name countries, because I think that domestic workers are in a very vulnerable situation everywhere, because often it's hard to legislate what people do in the confines of their own home. And so I think that there are lots of really good people that treat their help with lots of love and humanity. But I think that there are also lots of people that don't give it much thought and that do abuse power like in any other space. But I think that really there are some countries where there are certain norms that really increase how vulnerable those domestic workers are. So, for example, in certain countries, you have the right to take their passport away. And that was really where the grain of the idea for taking the button away came from, because it just really limits what you're able to do when someone holds that much power over you.
[00:26:25.788] Kent Bye: Okay. And Luke, as you're working on this piece, I'm just curious to hear some of the other challenges or things that you were excited to really, you know, work on in terms of the different types of ways that this story is being told in this multiple scales, you know, there's the environments, there's the textures, there's the way that it's kind of like. The worlds are created by almost like an unfolding of those papers, like, you know, origami style, like creation of these worlds. So yeah, I just love to hear you kind of elaborate on more of the technical side and some of the things that you were really focused on or excited about as you're working on this project.
[00:27:01.920] Luke Ruminski: Yeah, I mean, you don't really know what you're getting into when you're putting on the headset. So I think this whole idea of like a darker subject matter and a more playful way to tell it, I think works well because I think if it was all dark, people wouldn't put it on. So the idea of kind of having this playfulness and paper world, paper hands, and kind of just slowly letting you take it all in, I think was always kind of the magical formula to tell the story. the idea of the 180 videos because they're kind of fixed perspectives. So you're kind of also forced into this fixed perspective for watching the projections, the shadow world, which is also, I think, was the right direction in terms of the technical approach to tell the story. And yeah, I mean, exploring all the shaders, trying to make it feel like a paper world underneath it all. So from the material selection to how the shader code works under specific circumstances, it was all figured out through exploration. So, I mean, you were asking about the prototype. The prototype didn't have everything paper. It kind of almost looked all plasticky and more, it definitely felt different versus this story was, I think the way it is because we chose, we made the decisions we did. Technically.
[00:28:20.327] Rayne Zukerman: And we did it to have some fun in exploring how to bring to life the dolls. So our process was we worked with... This is a co-production with Luxembourg, and they did the animation on the Luxembourg side. So we had this really talented young artistic director in Toronto that came up with kind of the look of the dolls and the world. And then they 3D modeled it at this incredible studio in Luxembourg. And then it was like, how are we going to make these dolls move? And so... We initially actually hired a puppet company to create a puppet for us. And then we took our little pucks from our mocap accent suit and attached it to the puppet and then moved the puppet to see if we could get kind of more of a puppet doll feel to the movements. But the limbs and the size of the limbs, it just didn't quite give us the lifelike. feel that we were going after. It was just reading a little too weird. And I think that, you know, as a next project somewhere down the line to be able to explore the world of puppetry and VR is a really exciting one that I would like to explore, but it's, it's, it's a long tunnel. And so we decided to hire actors in Toronto and have them do all the movements of our dolls. And then we sent that to our animators in Luxembourg who were able to clean up the mocap and And it did, like we could tell right as we were doing it with the actors that it was the right decision because the dolls just completely came to life and made us super emotional as we were watching them do some of the dances that they do at the end of the experience. And it ended up just working, I think, really, really effectively. Yeah.
[00:30:06.158] Kent Bye: Yeah. And as I was watching it, they definitely felt like they had more of that motion capture aliveness of people behind the animations rather than something that was like animated with numbers. So that spirit of the humanity definitely comes through. As you were telling the story, there's like different rooms and the rooms and the world gets constructed over time. And it gave me a lot of like feeling of like, this feels like a very theatrical piece because you're moving into different scenes, but the scenes are just kind of getting stacked on top of each other. So you're able to have what is essentially a very theatrically staged piece, but it's those points of focus are moving relative to an accurate spatial context. So it feels like a very, very interesting blend of the forms of theater, but also within a context of a spatial architecture. So just curious to hear a little bit more around the decision to create that slowly unfolding of the world as if we were in a theater and we only get a new part of that room once there's a scene in that room.
[00:31:08.928] Rayne Zukerman: I think you did such a beautiful job of explaining that. I would really just bring that back to, I think, Dominique Desjardins' talent as a director and visionary and co-writer of this project. He comes from a theatre background. He trained as an actor and worked in the theatre for years and just learned so many of the basics of storytelling from that point of view. But I do think it was an effective way of helping to... have a visual cue to the user of the story unfolding. And so, as Luke was saying earlier, when you put on that headset and the world starts, you don't really know what to expect. And I think that that's part of the challenge in VR is that every experience can be so different. And so to give some tools and some references that already exist, I think is helpful to the medium. And so, you know, there were little details as well with the fourth wall of the room in the dollhouse folding down and then folding up to tell you that the scene will begin. But I think it was really just using some mechanisms that already exist to help the user anticipate how the story was going to move forward to let them sit back and enjoy the experience.
[00:32:24.414] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's some other fourth wall elements there where I'm watching the piece, but I'm also like a doll character in this piece. You know, in the context of the story, there's a way in which that my character is within the spatial context, another dollhouse that's in the middle scale where there's a smaller scale that I'm watching this unfold. And so there's certain moments where... the daughter is in a smallest context and she's like throwing these paper airplanes and they're hitting the wall and they're getting paint everywhere. And then you're asked to also throw these paper planes and they fly into the wall and they splash paint everywhere. And so Magnolia is the domestic worker who is maybe being held there under a situation that's maybe not under her full consent. But she is coming in and you see the power dynamics of her not being able to just play and make a mess of everything, but she actually is responsible for keeping things clean. We're learning that in the moment, but also simultaneously we're somehow implicated in that moment because we've also been throwing paper airplanes and causing all of this extra work that maybe at another scale needs to be cleaned up by another domestic worker. So that's an instance of a piece like this where if I'm just watching it, I'm not implicated in that same way. So love to hear any reflections of that work. narrative moment where the breaking of the fourth wall where me as a viewer are participating in the narrative in this more subtle way, I'd say, but it's something that is reflecting these power dynamics that are also being explored within the piece.
[00:34:00.509] Rayne Zukerman: You are like the perfect audience. I mean, this is amazing. I'm so happy you were able to pick up on that. I think that that's exactly what the intent was, you know, in terms of Charlotte and Dominique's vision of the experience. We're hoping that you are able to understand that you yourself are an agent in this. the power dynamics that evolve around you and in your life. And that, you know, I think that the story we tried to tell was still infused in a family that had love and the abuse of power is somewhat subtle, right? It's like, she's not invited to sit with you at the table and eat a meal with you. That's not a crime, but it is sending a clear message to this person that they are apart from your family. And so hopefully the user comes out of this experience and is looking at their own behaviors and how they treat people and some of those subtle messages that they are sending to those around them. and none of us are perfect. I mean, I think that even in the making of this project, you know, it's a lot of pressure and there's a lot of money and there's, you know, but I think that I constantly was trying to check on myself and going, you know, do I have integrity? Am I being hypocritical in creating a project about abuses of power? And am I using my power wisely? So I think that really, we were just trying to engage in this conversation around how we treat others has an impact. And it's important to try and create those checks and balances in ourselves. And I think that's a way of trying to make this world a better place.
[00:35:40.970] Kent Bye: Nice. Luke, I don't know if you have any comments on that. I mean, it's sort of like you're in the power hierarchy in this piece.
[00:35:47.834] Luke Ruminski: Yeah, I'm the Magnolia. No, I'm just kidding. It was a pleasure to work with Rain and Dom and Charlotte and everyone else involved in this project. It was nice to bring the vision to life. And I'm really glad I was a part of it.
[00:36:04.407] Rayne Zukerman: Sorry, just one thing to add. I think we have so much to learn from programmers in general. Luke continued to inspire me. You know, there were so many moments where we just couldn't get something working and it was just like, how are we going to fix it? And the patience and just the deep well thought. of belief and different tools available to him to be able to troubleshoot and find solutions where I could see no hope. I just have so much to learn from you, Luke, in terms of how you deal with technical problems and just problems in life like I feel like as producers of projects you know we have to constantly be reimagining be reinventing and finding solutions and I find that I pride myself on being somewhat good at it but honestly as a programmer you take it to a whole other level with an energy that is calm and quiet and kind and anyway I feel like hopefully I've
[00:37:11.579] Luke Ruminski: learned a bit from you and i'm going to take it and use it in all my future projects thanks right yeah it was annoying when chad gpt was giving us the right answers chad gpt doesn't know what to do but we figured it out
[00:37:30.660] Kent Bye: Nice. And so there's one other moment that is a fourth wall moment where you have this telephone game cups with a string where you ask to kind of eavesdrop on different conversations that are happening within the context of the house. And the culmination of that interaction is that we learn that Magnolia is in her room crying and we have that information, but it's unclear as to whether or not these other characters are even aware or if they care about what Magnolia's emotional state is. And so wondering if you could elaborate on that moment, because also another interesting Use of like a mechanic of you overhearing what's happening as kind of an indirect way of listening and engaging, but also perhaps having information that other characters within this piece don't have. And you as audience are maybe more aware of where she's at than the people that she's living with.
[00:38:28.580] Rayne Zukerman: I mean, I think that's the real turning point in the story. So you listen to what's happening in the different rooms. And, you know, it's kind of this idea that as children, you are taking stuff in subconsciously without really being aware of what you're hearing. So I think that part of that was interesting. taking in that Juniper is hearing her parents talk badly about Maggie and is starting to take on some of that behavior. But that flashlight scene, so after that scene, the fourth wall rolls up and you're in Maggie's room and you see her and she has her flashlight and she's going to try and get her button back. And Juniper, having the little girl, having heard what her parents said about not trusting Maggie, that she's going through their things and stealing from them and is making some really bad choices and doesn't have enough context to really understand that the button is Maggie's and it should never have been taken away in the first place. Juniper finds it and then takes it away from her. And that's really the moment of her being responsible and doing something that is harmful to Magnolia. But what I love about that scene is actually that you have the dad downstairs reading the newspaper. and i thought just in terms of light it was an interesting choice because the light is on downstairs and so part of your attention wants to go towards looking at the dad reading the newspaper where there's really nothing active happening but that's where the light is whereas on the second floor there are no lights but except for the flashlight that's your cue that something's happening but you really have to lean in and notice what's happening up there as the story evolves as maggie goes to try and find her button And then the dad hears noise downstairs. So as all this is happening upstairs, he goes upstairs to see what's happening and then turns on the light and doesn't see anything. And so I feel like there's a lot of story happening there in visual storytelling that is just about what happens in your own house and that there are things happening. around you that might be so powerful and emotional for some and others just be completely unaware of it all.
[00:40:41.863] Kent Bye: And I'd love to have you elaborate on a scene where Juniper is outside playing with Magnolia with the hopscotch. And as the viewer, you're helping to progress Magnolia through these different stages of the hopscotch. And with the last hold, she disappears in the portal. She goes away. Juniper's mom comes outside and Juniper basically lies and blames everything on Magnolia and And it's just like, wow, that was a really terrible thing to do. Why did she do that? And so also Magnolia has disappeared in the portal and just goes away for that scene. And so just wondering if you could elaborate on that spatial metaphor in terms of the deeper narrative part of what was being erased in that moment or why is she disappearing and kind of like... an opportunity for you to see a scene that Juniper is clearly not telling the truth of the matter, but she's also, there's also this kind of magical realism in that that has some other kind of spatial metaphors that I just love to hear you elaborate on a little bit of the story bits that were being communicated in that. It feels like a little bit of a dream logic where there's like this dream logic that's unfolding and you kind of feel the emotion of that moment, but just love to hear you unpack the symbolism of that dream, of that scene.
[00:42:00.441] Rayne Zukerman: It's so wonderful to hear you describe it. I think that that is such a turning point as well in the story. In some ways, it's child's play, right? Like they're playing hopscotch. And really, Juniper just wants to play with Magnolia. And it seems like I think that so much of what we're trying to get at is this idea of the innocence that juniper the little girl has at the beginning of the story and then the loss of that innocence and so this is a moment where she is very innocent in wanting to play a game with maggie but this is also a turning point where she's starting to use some of the behaviors that she's learning around her and so maggie doesn't actually want to play with her but juniper now just thinks of Maggie as being under her control and that she needs to do what she wants her to do. And so there's this coercion that starts to happen in this innocent game of hopscotch. And then Maggie hurts herself and falls. And so in terms of how the directors wanted to convey that moment, And make it dramatic and make you really feel it. You know, they made some artistic choices around how to make that moment really hit in a way that conveyed the emotional weight of that moment. And so instead of just having her fall to the ground and you see her cry, you know, there were some artistic liberties that were taken in terms of showing her go into a black hole and just disappear and have a change in atmosphere. And there's lightning and and sound effects to really help bring that moment home. So that was really an artistic choice that was made in the storytelling to make that moment have the gravitas that we wanted to have. And then, yeah, just that little extra scene at the end where it just kind of lays it on where Juniper doesn't even take responsibility for her actions but she just blames it on Maggie who's the scapegoat when she knows that she's responsible so what we're doing in that moment in terms of the storytelling is really building up this is the beginning of this guilt that we're trying to make the audience feel that is starting to change the color of how she sees things and the weight of what she's carrying in the world and her loss of innocence So that's what was trying to be done. It sounds quite ambitious and complex now that I talk about it, but it is so simple in how you experience it in the experience.
[00:44:38.243] Kent Bye: Yeah, and as I've watched through a lot of different pieces in VR, I do think that dreams and dream logic is something that I think has impacted the way that film has developed. But I think in VR, you're able to take it to another level where you're having these different spatial metaphors. And this is a piece that I feel like is kind of in the middle where most of the spatial metaphors are distinct in the sense of you kind of get the sense of the arc of the story without... without needing to have every single like symbol unpacked. But I do think that the button is an interesting dream logic component there where knowing that it's representing like a passport changes a bit of like, oh, this is actually a symbol that's not only just a part of her identity of like the aesthetics of a button and that looks nice, but it's actually like something that is More of a key to a prison where you're able to escape your prison or to leave the country. And there's this moment where you're asking the audience to decide whether or not you're going to return this key or this button, this metaphoric and symbolic passport. And so I'm curious to hear around the development of that specific moment. symbol, but also the decision to allow the audience from a narrative perspective as to whether or not they're going to return this prized object back to Magnolia, not knowing the full context as to what it may mean or what it implies. But yeah, I'd just love to hear any elaboration on that specific turning point involving the audience to have some light branching within the context of the story and allowing them to kind of make that decision.
[00:46:17.918] Rayne Zukerman: Yeah. I mean, this is where there's really so much thought that goes into the storytelling before we get to the product that you're seeing. So there were lots of creative conversations around just even coming up with the button. It took us a while to get there. And then it is what does the button actually represent? And I feel like, you know, we've mentioned the passport because that was something that we talked about a lot. But I think that what was fun was that it could mean so many different things to so many different people and that you can kind of interpret it to be whatever you want it to be. It can be, you know, as I said, a person's freedom, but it can also be their humanity. And if you just see them as a person who has value and who is deserving of respect. So there are so many different ways that you can interpret it. I mean, I think you're really getting at what I love and why I'm so passionate about this project is just that we explored so much and I just am really proud of how we ended up coming up with something that seems so simple and has such a clear essence. But it took us a lot of roads, traveled, conversations had in order to land in that place. And then I think that one of the things that's really about the power of VR has to do with it being like you really do feel a part of the story. It does feel like personal cinema that is speaking to you. And so I think giving the user the choice at the end is really about... giving them the agency and making them a part of the story and having them having them be able to participate in the story and so hopefully it helped create that sense of agency in the storytelling
[00:48:15.566] Kent Bye: And Luke, I'd love to have you elaborate on the kind of culminating moment of the button where you end up having this red light that shot out and projected onto the wall. And, you know, I guess some of the more direction that you're getting from the directors in terms of the types of effects that they wanted to have in terms of the Again, translating some of this symbolic meaning of the button through these next layers of the spatial metaphors of the light that is flashing out. It reminded me of kind of like a bat signal of like being sent out and projected on the wall. But love to hear you elaborate on kind of the development of the culmination of the of that button and that button scene.
[00:48:54.656] Luke Ruminski: Well, I think it really helped Jennifer understand the meaningfulness of the button. It's more than just a button. There's so many memories that it holds and allows Magnolia to return back to her family, which I think brings it back to the family where she was an outsider. So yeah, button holds so much power, even though it's just a little object that you wouldn't think twice about.
[00:49:24.301] Kent Bye: Awesome. I just noticed the time. I do have to jump off into another call. So just to have a final thought here. So yeah, I guess for me, this is a piece that is kind of exploring a lot of these different spatial metaphors in a very interesting way. And yeah, Rainn and Luke, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help share a little bit more around this story and how it came about. And yeah, I look forward for other folks to be able to check it out. So thanks again here for joining me.
[00:49:48.985] Rayne Zukerman: Thanks so much for being interested, Kent. Take care. Great questions.
[00:49:53.305] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
