The CannesXR Showcase features over 50 different immersive narrative experiences in the Museum of Other Realities from June 24 to July 3rd, with showcases featuring 12 experiences from Tribeca Film Festival, 12 360 video curated by VeeR, 6 experiences for the Positron chair, and over 20 projects in development curated by Kaleidoscope VR. Usually these types of narrative experiences are shown at film festivals, but with the global pandemic, then there’s an opportunity to actually see some of the content from the film festival circuit that’s normally not widely available.
I had a chance to see all of the content, and then talk with VR critic Pola Weiß, who writes the VRStories.blog focusing on the evolution of immersive narrative. We talk about all 12 of the 6DoF experiences form Tribeca, and then our highlights from the rest of the showcases. I’d recommend checking out as much as you can before it ends on Friday, July 3rd, and then have a listen to this episode where we unpack our takeaways from CannesXR.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Here’s a thread with more context information about the festival, where to download the content, and some of the logistical feedback on the social dynamics and experience of using the MOR.
The @CannesXR will take place in @MuseumOR June 24-26.
12 projects from @Tribeca Immersive:https://t.co/YwM8h4QMHr
13 360 videos in @letsveer:https://t.co/MbcgYfL6x8
23 projects in development curated by @KaleidoVR: https://t.co/Ps7Esmxt9Y
21 talks:https://t.co/WnxO2jD0u0 pic.twitter.com/5w2WqxI43O
— Kent Bye (Voices of VR) (@kentbye) June 11, 2020
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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 immersive stories are something that have typically been shown on film festivals, but since the COVID-19, a lot of the film festivals have been canceled. And so there's been some new emerging ways for how some of these different experiences are going to be distributed through a virtual online festival. The Museum of Other Realities is shaping up to be one of the top ways of distributing a lot of these immersive film festivals. It's already like this art museum that allows you to go in and look at immersive art, but they've been in collaboration with Kaleidoscope VR for three events now. They did a developer showcase a number of months ago, and then they collaborated with the VR virtual reality Hamburg festival. earlier in june and then from june 24th to july 3rd they've actually been collaborating with con xr as well as with tribeca veer and kaleidoscope and positron to be able to curate a selection of over 50 different experiences they were first made available on june 24th and it's like a 64 gigabyte download if you download it all at once if you go into the beta channel you can see the con all files or you can download each of the four different DLCs if you want to just look at the Tribeca selection, the Kaleidoscope development showcase, the VR VR 360 videos or the six pieces from Positron. So I had a chance to see all the different experiences and I wanted to sit down with another VR critic who is Paula Weiss. She's from Berlin and she's got a blog called VRstories.blog and she's been going to different film festivals over the last three years and watching a lot of different experiences and just writing about some of these immersive stories. And so we both saw all the different experiences and so we talk about all the different Tribeca experiences and the selection from Kaleidoscope, VIR, and Positron selections as well. So before we dive in, I just wanted to say that it's my recommendation for people to, as much as you can, see as many of these experiences as you can. This is going to be running in the Museum of Other Realities until July 3rd, so you just have a few more days to be able to see some of these experiences. And so if you do have a chance to see them, it's preferred to be able to watch them first and be able to listen. And we'll try to keep some spoilers to a minimum, but just the nature of talking about stories, sometimes you kind of have to talk about a piece in terms of what the story is and what it's about in order to really have much to say about it. So my recommendation is to try to see as much as you can over the next few days and then have listened to this podcast. Or if it's already over, I think there's still just a lot of things that are worth listening to, and hopefully you'll be able to catch it at some point as the distribution channels for some of these immersive experiences just gets a little bit more fleshed out. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Ways of VR Podcast. So this interview with Paula happened on Sunday, June 28th, 2020, while she was in Berlin and I was in Portland, Oregon. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:04.573] Pola Weiss: Hello, my name is Paula. I'm coming from Berlin, Germany. You might recognize the accent. And originally I've been working as commissioning editor at Big Broadcasting Networks in Germany. But I think three years ago already, I founded my VRstories.blog. a blog that is a passion project. I'm doing this side work, which I really love because I want to find out what storytelling in virtual reality really means, like not in a very broad sense, like we have to engage the user, of course, that, but also with very small details. How can we do presence in virtual reality? How can we really make somebody feel emotions like we can do it with a traditional 2D film? questions like that. And I'm doing that for three years. I meet a lot of wonderful creators, have the chance to see a lot of works. And yeah, it's like a passion project, like I said.
[00:03:56.547] Kent Bye: Great. This is actually our third conversation that we've recorded. This will probably be the first one that I air. And just to give a little bit of context as to why is that I find it very challenging sometimes to be a journalist in terms of covering immersive stories at film festivals, because Those experiences often are not available for people to see. However, part of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you right now, and to get this out as soon as I could, is that the ConXR in collaboration with Tribeca, KaleidoscopeVR is showing like over 50 different experiences at the Museum of Other Realities. So KaleidoscopeVR is having a whole development showcase that they help to curate. There's the Vier, there's a number of 360 videos, Tribeca, a lot of the experiences that would have been mirrored at Tribeca of 2020 are showing here in the Museum of Other Realities. And then the Positron, which is a chair that kind of automatically moves around, had a number of experiences here as well. So about 50 experiences in that we're just going to kind of go through starting with Tribeca and then going through the other highlights from the festival as well. But just to give a little bit more context, because you said you've been going to these different conferences, you've been watching these different experiences, you're very focused on the story aspect. Whereas my center of gravity tends to start with the technical aspects of the VR, you're very focused on the story aspect and immersive story. So maybe just give a bit more context as to your journey into why you became so interested in immersive story.
[00:05:24.277] Pola Weiss: Well, when I was working at one of the broadcaster networks, I was responsible for transmedia projects, for documentary transmedia projects. Of course, that already had to do something with interaction, but I never, unfortunately, never had the chance to really be editor of a virtual reality or 360 degrees film or documentary. So when I left that position, I had a little bit of free time and I could finally ask these questions. And being a commissioning editor, I think it enables me to have, of course, one, the very traditional way of looking at a story, like a very narrative linear way, but also the openness and the curiosity to ask more about the subjectivity and interactivity of the virtual reality medium. So I can really dive in and look a little bit for details, not so much for the technical aspect, but for the story aspect. At the same time, I can step back and compare a bit what creators have found out so far. Are there any rules? If so, can they be broken? They have to. And this is something I'm really, really focused on, really the story aspect. I think in virtual reality, one of the biggest challenges we have in narrative experiences is the emotion. I see so many virtual reality experiences where sometimes I should be touched but I don't feel it. Well, you know, there's a little, little bit that still is missing and I'm wondering how we can get that.
[00:06:52.655] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know there's being in the experience and what your experience of being there, whether or not you feel like your avatar representation is there, you feel like you're interacting with your body in some ways, the environment makes you feel immersive. There's the story that's happening. And I think the story has aspects of larger context that you're within the characters, the character development and the story. And then sometimes it's just sort of like a data visualization, a mental stimulation or social interaction. And sometimes they're more focused on the different interactions that you're doing. And so to bring all those things together, I think is a great challenge. And for me, I think probably the most successful experience that ties as many of those things together was the book of distance. And I think for me, that's one of the favorite experiences that I saw at Sundance this past year. But I don't know if you agree or concur or if what you think of the book of distance.
[00:07:42.402] Pola Weiss: It was, well, from all the experience I've seen at CanixR with all the different sessions you just told us, it's really on top of my list. Because I don't cry very often, but with the Book of Distance, I did. I did it two times because I watched it two times to focus a bit more on the story and how they made it. And yeah, I think, honestly, they made a brilliant move by putting the narrator, well, Rendell, who's telling his family story, into the story itself. So he's at the same time, he's kind of a director. He stages you, he stages the characters, his family members. And at the same time, he's giving you explanations and giving you the background you need and telling you about how to understand things, where he failed with the research, how he found out things, but he's always present. And that's something I haven't seen in this intensity.
[00:08:34.132] Kent Bye: Yeah, in terms of really tying so many different things together, I think A Book of Distance is on the top of my list in terms of one of the best immersive narratives that I've seen. I think part of what makes it so interesting is because they're really playing with your embodiment within the story, because you kind of become a character in some way, because they're immigrants from Japan, they move to Canada, and they're asking you to help build their farm that they're making. And when the farm gets taken away through this kind of forced internment from Canada, then you actually feel like that loss, I think more. I felt it more than I would have had I just been watching it passively. I felt like more invested into the story because I was able to interact with it in a certain way. And so that use of embodiment interactivity actually deepening the story was really interesting to me.
[00:09:21.820] Pola Weiss: Yeah, definitely. I always say interaction is nice, but it should have a sense to fit in the story, not because you want to have interaction, but because it has to do something with you as a user. And I think the Book of Distance does exactly that. For example, there's one example, you sit at the family's table and they ask you to hand you over the plates or the strawberries. So this makes you feeling part of the family and this is directly before the catastrophe happens, kind of, if I can say that. I don't want to spoil the experience so much. But it makes it being part of a family. Also, yeah, you see the strawberries with them. You build the house with them. And these kind of interactions give you really the feeling of being there, of helping them. But at the same time, you're still following Randall, who guides you through the story. So you have at the same time being part of that family and being part of his story. But at the other time, you know exactly his story, he's showing you what he wants you to see, what he found out. So you're at the same time inside and outside, which is really, really, that works really well. I think also they integrate some very interesting perspectives, because sometimes you're overwhelmed by something that's coming above you, and they are literally doing that. So you really not only get the feeling through the interactions, but also the feeling through the perspective and the scale they are using, which is also very fine. And something who plays so much with room is gravity, I thought. I loved gravity. Gravity VR. It's a story about two brothers who live in a world that flies around with a lot of things that fly around them. And the brothers are very different. They discover the world very differently. It has two different endings, I think. And this, for me, is one example of a film that uses very simple means in terms of staging or in terms of what they are showing, but they have a brilliant narrator who is telling the story very nicely. And also the story is quiet or the story idea is so creative and so nice.
[00:11:30.609] Kent Bye: Yeah. When I read the description they have, they say ordinary life in a chaotic world where there's no ground untethering. So that description of that, when I read that, I was like, actually, that's kind of what's happening right now.
[00:11:42.920] Pola Weiss: Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:44.970] Kent Bye: it feels like we're in a world without gravity. And so when I watched it, I didn't necessarily make the connection because there's so much of the story that is the tabletop scale. It's like small and it's very character driven story, which I think is unique within VR. You don't see a lot of character driven narratives, but the two brothers and their sort of dynamic is very interested in the different temperamental differences between them and how they reacting to it. And you do make a choice at some point to see what ending you want to see, but then they give you an opportunity to see the other ending. And so I did both endings. And so there is a choice that you make within this experience. But I ended up watching both of them anyway. So it was sort of like, you know, the question of like, did I need to make that choice? Or could they have just sort of shown what happened to each one?
[00:12:29.432] Pola Weiss: Yeah, probably it's not necessary to give you the choice, but I think it should make you think which perspective you want to choose. I think that's the purpose of the interaction. Not giving you an interaction in the terms of the story, but giving you a choice because I think that we can say it's the choice between science and belief and choosing not to know so much of the world. And I think that's a very crucial decision we have in our life, we have each day, we have to make. And I think one big interaction in the piece is doing exactly that, forcing you to think about which person you are as you yourself. And of course, they give you the other ending, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense to give you the other contrast of what you are not. So I thought that was on point, to be honest.
[00:13:21.347] Kent Bye: Interesting. Yeah, that's always fascinating to hear your perspectives because you are diving deep into the story. For me, I was very much paying attention to a lot of technical aspects, which reminds me of this tabletop scale of the small characters of the gloomy eyes, or Alumet, or some of these other ones that have the small characters that you're looking down. So you are scale wise, you're a lot larger, and you can kind of fly around a little bit there at the end. Yeah, it was a piece that you're kind of transported into this surrealistic world as well, which if I would make a connection to some of the other pieces here, it reminds me of Minimum Mass, which also is in this, what they call a speculative world of black holes and also has a similar tabletop scale, but covering a topic that is much more around grief of miscarriage. And for me, that experience does a brilliant job of using the spatial affordances of the medium to really convey the darkness and depression and the grief of loss. And also there's being in the world of black holes is metaphorically your world being shattered and in this fragmentation or dissociative state that it's a subtle kind of like experiential design. And I look forward to talking to the directors here later today to kind of unpack it some more. But just curious to hear some of your thoughts on the minimum mass.
[00:14:42.445] Pola Weiss: Well, I liked the beginning of the story very much. I was very curious what might come and the voice acting is really well done. There were a couple of questions I had in mind after watching it. First, I didn't really understand the ending, but that's something you might want to discuss with them. I don't know. But at the same time, I was a little bit distracted by the interaction at the beginning because we see the whole world, which is really nicely done. You see every detail. It's very lively. but we see it in this dollhouse style. We can watch into the world, but we are really outside, so literally outside on a very big scale. And we have to pull this whole little world, this miniature world, we have to pull it so that we can see inside, which reminds us again that we are outside. And I had the feeling Well, this interaction for me wasn't really necessary. And at the same time, I had the feeling that I wanted more to be in the story and not so much outside. And pulling these levels all the time really reminded me constantly that I'm not there, that I'm outside, that I'm not with the couple. that I can't really share their grief. So for me, it didn't touch me so much, but I wanted to be touched. So I was always sticking my head inside the model and wanted to be more part of it, but I couldn't because I had to stand outside and watch it from the outside. And maybe that's also a feeling they wanted to create. That would be something I wanted to ask them. So that was the biggest question I had in mind. Why did I have to be so outside?
[00:16:17.840] Kent Bye: That's interesting. Yeah, if you look at the scale of the experience and use the metaphor of film of like the wide shot that sort of establishes something from the large context and then you kind of have the normal shots and then the close-up shots to really establish the deep emotional intensity of the experience. This feels like an experience that is covering a topic where you really do want to see some of those close-ups or at least be in the same scale as what's happening. But because it is at the smaller scale, it does feel like you are on the outside in some sense. And just to kind of describe the mechanic a little bit more is at the very beginning, they have a box that you lift up and then you lift down. And so you're essentially using your controllers to rotate this sort of tabletop world. And for me, I felt like, okay, I'm the center photographer and like, what shot would I choose in order to like see the scene that's playing out. And some cases they let you choose, like, are you going to be in this room or in this room? And you really kind of want to be in one room or the other because there's nothing happening. And so there's a bit of needing to use that agency of the person to be able to see what's happening. But if you make the wrong choice, then it's, you're going to miss a lot of the what's happening. And so it's sort of the question of when you give agency over to the viewer, you want to make sure that whatever choices they make are making the experience better, not worse. And I think in some cases, those choices can lead to a path that actually lead to a worse experience. I will say that the very beginning of that experience, you're kind of like thrown down and they really force you to learn this mechanic right away. But it's interesting to hear you say that you felt like on the outside, because it's kind of the equivalent of like watching a movie. from entirely establishing shots with no sort of closeups.
[00:18:00.791] Pola Weiss: Yeah, exactly. And that's maybe why I try to stick my head into the rooms, which felt a little bit weird, to be honest. Maybe. But if you compare it with the line, Alenia, there, because we were looking onto really a dull scene, they are all dull. So it makes really sense why I'm standing in front of them and look upon them. And they also small and they all have their things to do. So it really makes sense. And I can understand that. compared to minimal mess. It was really nice film. I really enjoyed seeing it. But I constantly kept asking, why can't I be with them? Why can't I be going with them? So for me, I didn't feel like a cinematographer. It felt more like being forced, maybe creating a distance not to feel so much because the story is quite hard and the story is quite serious. Sometimes I had the feeling that the creators are protecting me, or wanted to protect me, which I didn't want, because I wanted to be there. And in Alinea, it makes sense to be on the outside, and they are breaking that rule also. But Jan Minimamaas, it's interesting how that differs.
[00:19:09.040] Kent Bye: Yeah, and both Alenia as well as Mary and the Monster, which uses maybe medium scale, I'd say it's not like real life scale, but it's also not tabletop scale. It's sort of in between in some ways, but Alenia, you're watching the mechanical routines of Alenia play out. And so by having it on a machine, it reinforces that idea that you get so trapped into a rut that you want to give off that rut and into a new modality of reality. But at the very end of Alenia, you have this shift between seeing this world from afar, and then you transition into being the real-life scale, which I thought was really an interesting effect because you really get a sense of the whole place. By making it the tabletop scale, you actually are able to connect to the character of the city more so that when you transition into being into like a real life scale at the very end, I felt more connected to the environment around me because I had this whole history of these different routines and the patterns, but also the character of the city of what happens in those different locations relative to the main characters and how the city was connected to the individual. And so it's, for me, an interesting exploration for establishing a larger context, but to use that scale to zoom in and to make me feel more connected to that context.
[00:20:29.986] Pola Weiss: Yeah, and I mean, Alinea, it's already released. So also you have the chance to see it outside of Canixar. It's all about leaving the track of your life. It's all about being courageous to do something that's not your normal way of living. And at the beginning, the characters and the experience are really stuck in their everyday routine. So they have to do what they have to do. And they're doing it all the day, all the time, the same way. But you as a user, as a spectator, you have to do the same because you have to help them. You have to press these dots. So you are in the same routine and you have to do that twice, by the way. And you feel the second run, you feel like a bit like, come on, I know how that works. Don't let me do that again. So you're at the same time are in the same routine and you have to do that. And you feel the frustration of being in the routine. So it makes perfect sense, this interaction and also being bigger than the characters. And yeah, being at the same scale at the end, is it a point where you already know each other and where you both had the courage to do something that you're not supposed to do? So you have this relationship with each other. And so I think maybe that's why it touched you so much, because you already did the adventure, you already knew each other, and you did the adventure in the same way. You both had the courage to do something. So you have this connection with characters.
[00:21:58.549] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a chance to first see it at Venice and do an interview with the director Ricardo. And, you know, one of the things he said that I thought was interesting was that they talked to dancers who talked about how in dance you have where your head is in terms of, like, if you're on the floor or crouched down or up high, you know, you can use that to convey a sort of narrative tension in some ways. In this piece, they took that idea and said, okay, if you go up in the tabletop, that's like a peak experience. And then when the character is facing adversity, you are underneath in the belly of the whole machine of the experience. And so they're using the actual elevation to be a metaphoric representation of the character's arc and their journey, which I thought was interesting. But you're right in terms of using the interactions. I first saw it in Venice. I'm curious, have you had a chance to see it on the quest yet? Yes, hand tracking. I thought that the interactions actually with using your hands worked perfectly and actually is a great way to feel like you're going through that routine. Because like you said, it's all about being in a routine and the second time you have to do the same sort of interactions, you get like, okay, where is this leading? But for me, it sets up this kind of like in fairy tales, you go into threes. And so, you know, you have the first time, the second time, and then so you have the original what happens in the second time, you already know what's going to happen. And then it sort of like, creates this tension of like, you already know what to expect. And so when you deviate from that, then it creates this building and releasing of that tension of like, okay, the tension, the frustration, and then the release that leads into a novelty that I think that this is an example where using those interactions actually allows you to have an embodied experience of the thing that they're actually talking about in the story, which I think is actually a pretty rare thing to be able to have interactions have that level of symbolic meaning, which I thought was a brilliant way of really having you invest into the story.
[00:23:55.284] Pola Weiss: Yeah, there only are a few other VR experiences are doing that. And we also back at the book of distance, maybe the key was in the walls who also plays with this movement of the users. And Alinea is doing that in a very, very simple way. And I had to do it two, three times to understand fully the potential of that and why it was creating that emotion I had. So because it looks simple on the outside, but it's so well designed and so well done.
[00:24:23.789] Kent Bye: I just wanted to comment because usually when we go to festivals, you're lucky enough to be able to see all of the experiences. But now you're able to watch things like multiple times. And I've had a similar experience where the first time I'm just sort of trying to understand the experience. But then as I was preparing to be able to talk to you, I was like, I have to actually go and see this again to know what the story is, because I just have kind of like a vague recollection of what this was even about. And then sometimes when I go back, I get additional layers of the story. I mean, the book of distance, I feel like I didn't need to do that again, because I felt like I really got a lot out of it. But I do actually want to do it again, just to see the more nuances for how they're doing all these different aspects of experiential design. But this is a unique opportunity for us as people who are fans of immersive story, because there are so many things that are happening in these experiences. And up to this point, it's been so scarce to even get a chance to see them. But now we have the opportunity to kind of go back and really revisit it and unpack it. It sounds like you've been doing that.
[00:25:24.039] Pola Weiss: Yes, I've been doing that, especially also for the Book of Distance, because at the first run, I always try to find out what emotion does the experience create? Am I in the story? How do I feel? And at the second run, if I'm able to do that, I try to do that at festivals as well, even though it's pretty difficult. But when I know I want to write about that, I try to do it at least the beginning, like the first five minutes again. for the book of distance the second time i found out that they are playing so much with theater lighting so the whole experience is theater of course you see that the first run but they use spotlights in a very in a theater way that's very artificial. So they don't want the light to integrate naturally in the story. They're using it as theater light as it is, but you don't notice it because the whole staging of the experience is a theater experience or is a theater staging. So you see the spotlight as part of the story, even though it has nothing natural on it. And for that, I had to run it twice. And Alinea as well, because I needed to figure out why they let me to do these interactions like all the time at the beginning. And yeah, yeah, I try always to do that. But at festivals it's so hard, especially when you want to speak to the creators and you don't remember all the details. And that's something you want to find out or speak about. So you have to, normally you have, if you read a book, you can go to the pages and see how they are writing it, you know.
[00:26:55.006] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, no, there's things like that, like the sound and the lighting that sometimes, you know, I've found that the more that I try to think about creating experiences and so use flat shaders and no lighting, and then you start to really see the effect of lighting in the experience, something like Half-Life Alyx, that was something that was like, really obvious in terms of the way that they use lighting there. And there's a number of experiences that were here that also were using a lot of really good lighting. I can't think of some of them off the top of my head. It's one of those things that I have to sort of remember which ones and maybe watch them again to see which ones. But there are some that like having good lighting can make a huge difference. Well, let's keep going through some of these, try to hit all the different ones. So, the virtual becomes reality. That's a Stanford VR experience that I feel like that for me was one of the best ways of trying to encapsulate what's essentially 20 years of VR research that Jeremy Bailenson has been doing at Stanford. you go into the Stanford Research Lab, and then you actually get to go through some of the interactions of the experiment, like the pit, and having a third arm, and the Superman. There's all these famous experiments that they've done over the years, but you actually get to see what the actual interaction was. I thought that was a brilliant way to be able to communicate immersive research of virtual reality. And I would hope to eventually see what's it mean to publish VR research using the medium of VR itself, What a great and brilliant way to be able to communicate what is known about the affordances of the medium over time if you're able to actually have an interactive experience to be able to sort of learn about some of this research that's been happening.
[00:28:33.910] Pola Weiss: Yeah, I loved it as well, because if somebody tells you, okay, you get a third arm in virtual reality and it's hard to use it, but your mind can adapt super, super easily, or your brain knows like in a few seconds what to do, you don't believe it. But when you do it actually, and you can move that third arm, like if it were always part of your body, it's clear that virtual reality has some impacts. And to try that, well, it wasn't the real experiment, but it gave you a little, little glimpse into this experiment and how those researchers have done it. So I loved it. I thought, why haven't they done it like five years ago or three years ago or two years ago? I would have understood so much.
[00:29:17.471] Kent Bye: Yeah, no, and you know, it's actually sort of talk about the virtual body ownership illusion to say, okay, if you do this for long enough, you feel like you're actually embodied as a character, which on the opening day, they had three days of different discussions. And one of the discussions that happened right before the party was Lauren Hammond's talking to a number of different people who had creating experiences exploring racial equality, racial justice. One was Courtney. She was the director of the Thousand Cut Journey, which premiered at Tribeca two years ago, which also uses the virtual body ownership illusion to be able to have you embodied as a black man and going through different times in his life to be able to give you this direct experience of racism. There's Traveling While Black that premiered at Sundance 2019 that goes into the Green Book and also to put you into a context and an environment to hear conversations that you may not be privy to because of a certain context of the Chili Bowl restaurant in Washington, D.C. And then the other person that was there at this discussion was the director of violence, talking about violence and his experience that's premiering here at CanXR. which is exploring this issue of systemic racism and the ethics of violence connected to protest and what's it take to bring about larger change and revolution. Is violence a necessary part of that? Sort of asking that question, but you're embodied in this experience and they're actually asking you questions in the beginning and the end. And so this was an interesting experience where The questionnaire makes me evaluate my experience in a way that reflect upon it, that maybe realize different things that I didn't think about. It sort of changed certain aspects of the experience after I saw the questionnaire. I don't know if you had a similar experience, but maybe you could sort of talk about your experience of violence.
[00:31:04.128] Pola Weiss: Well, I studied psychology, so I knew exactly what they were going to ask me afterwards, to be honest. I knew that they would ask me the same question again to see if I changed my opinion. But yeah, it left me a little bit... At the same time, it made me question myself, of course, that happened. But in the experience itself, I was very frightened, to be honest, it scared me more than it created the wish to help or to maybe don't do anything. It was like, I constantly asked myself, what, what is my role here? What do I have to do? And knowing that it's an experiment, and that's probably the goal of it, make me question those questions. Yeah, I don't know how you felt in the experience, but it was a brilliant way again to demonstrate how science is made and how science can work using virtual reality as an instrument. And integrating this questions for me as well was like a way to show me how these experiments can happen and how they do it. And that virtually probably has an effect on those questions. But during the experience myself, I was so full of questions and they didn't answer those. So I hope that they do publish something about that experiment or the study. So
[00:32:19.316] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I hope to at some point talk to the director to be able to have a conversation because there's a lot about this experience that I want to sort of hear more about the design processes, just hear more and be in conversation. But in the wake of all that's been happening in the Black Lives Matter protest, you know, there was a video by Trevor Noah that he was talking about this social contract within society, how that contract forever has been broken to the point where black men here in the United States, when they travel around, they could encounter a police officer and just be killed and murdered on the spot with no sort of accountability or justice. And that there's this systemic violence that's coming from the state. And so how do you actually respond to that? And in this experience, there's an embodied expression of this frustration and this violence and this metaphoric breaking out of a prison. What were you going to say?
[00:33:14.846] Pola Weiss: No, that worked pretty well. You could understand by. his movements, by the cage that's surrounding you, how, I can't understand it, of course, but how somebody must feel in such a, well, that was a really strong feeling that came by the scenery. So, yes, it was. I also think that it's really up to date, of course, that it's really telling something that's going on right now. And that was very strong.
[00:33:45.119] Kent Bye: Yeah, my play space was a lot smaller than the room that was featured in this VR experience. And so there's an opportunity to potentially interact and participate. And when I first did it, usually when I do experiences like this, when there's animation happening, I'm more focused on what the story is happening rather than trying to explore the extent of my agency. And so in this experience, I never thought to even try to explore that. And you're, you're kind of asked at the end if you helped and why and why not. So I didn't. And then I was like, wow, okay. Was that a reflection of something that needed to be in the experiential design or as part of the point where you could just do it without being asked? And so that's part of the reason why I want to just talk to the director to be able to get a little bit more about that, because there's this There could be opportunities to be designed to invite you to be able to participate or know what the extent of your agency may or may not be. But maybe that's part of the point of keeping that hidden and for you to figure out that on your own.
[00:34:47.667] Pola Weiss: But then your agency isn't based on wanting to help him or wanting to break down these walls. You're doing it because you want to try, can I do it? That was my motivation. And I think if I do that again, I probably do that with another motivation and break these walls down.
[00:35:08.015] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, it's good. Yeah. I actually did it twice and, and, and sort of went through and broke things down and just to see, you know, if, if things change and yeah, it's a provocative experience that I think that being asked in the questionnaire made me sort of evaluate. And I just think it's sort of an interesting conceit to see, like, how could you put people into these experiences? You know, the thing that I'd sort of take away is like, how can I take more action in the world as well? So.
[00:35:34.562] Pola Weiss: Yes, it lets you think. Also, the fact that we are talking about it now for this long time shows that there's so much going on during that experience, because it really gives you a lot to think about.
[00:35:47.820] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, let's keep going through each of the experiences. I know that Queer Skins, it's just, this is going to be a second iteration of Queer Skins. The first iteration, just as a recap, it's available on the Oculus, but you have two, what you presume to be pretty conservative parents of a child who has died from AIDS. And you're left there with the box of the belongings of this person. You're kind of sift through them. And so Queer Skins is available on Oculus. I highly recommend people check it out. It's an amazing experience. The second version, And I talked to Brandon, one of the choreographers, he said that the size of the data would have been larger than the entire download size of this experience. And so there's a limitation in terms of this being a virtual festival, them not being able to actually show the full six degree of freedom experience. And so they were forced to kind of like create a 360 video cinematic trailer, which is actually very small in terms of if you just watch it with no other context, it's kind of hard to know what's even happening. In reading the description, it says that a mother is reading her son's diary to be able to imagine what his life was like. And so it seems like it's kind of a continuation of the first chapter where you learn and you meet the parents. And then when you walk in, you see the installation. And so this is an instance where you see a bunch of like tilt brush written text, which is presumably the diary. And so you're reading the diary and getting the memories, but it's so difficult to connect the dots in terms of what the overall story is, because it's essentially like a teaser trailer where there's not much more context that's really even given. aside from what I could sort of extrapolate, it sounds like the mother's going to be reading the diary and going back into the son's memories. And so it's really exploring a part of her son's life that maybe she didn't know about or learn about. And so it's using a lot of choreography and Intel's Capture Studio to be able to do like a point cloud representation of this volumetric capture to then sort of explore the relationship and it's seen through the mother's eyes, learning about her son, or maybe she had some other disagreements, but you're tapping into the deeper aspect of, you know, relationship and humanity. That is sort of my extrapolation of hearing very little information about what this experience is. And I'm hesitant to even say anything more until I actually see the final experience.
[00:38:04.292] Pola Weiss: Yeah, me too. I can't really talk about it, but the teaser made me wanting to see the whole experience and experience everything.
[00:38:13.452] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so in that line, there's another experience that I think had to do a little bit of the same thing, which was the Alexa call mom, which was, again, it felt like a little bit of a trailer rather than the full interactive experience, because the conceit here is like using Alexa as like a a supernatural medium that can contact people who have died and so your mother has died and you walk up and the thing that was really striking was that there's this beyond life skills a new feature within Alexa that has the capability to communicate with the afterlife, but also it's like this creepy surveillance capitalism, inferring that your mother's dead without you telling the technology. And they start to kind of go into this whole thing. Well, you can buy your dead mother all these different gifts, which I thought like, that's even more creepy to think about, like how capitalism would go into the afterlife. So there's a lot of provocative things. But again, the actual experience is sort of like conveying that idea, but not necessarily having much interaction, or it felt like a little bit of a teaser trailer, and you're kind of left with this concept and idea without really being able to see what the full immersive experience is.
[00:39:23.831] Pola Weiss: It gives you an idea of the story's idea, but nothing more. I really wanted to give the mother a five-star rating, the conversation with the mother, but I didn't have it. I wasn't sure if it was as short or if the app crashed or if something happened, but I did it twice just to try. And yeah, maybe we'll see a five-star conversation with our dead mom.
[00:39:48.300] Kent Bye: Well, actually, I got to a certain point and it stopped. And so I don't know if it was it didn't seem to have an ending. It just sort of left me hanging a little bit and then restarted.
[00:39:57.286] Pola Weiss: So you didn't see the mom. Or you didn't hear the mom.
[00:40:01.590] Kent Bye: No, I didn't. Did you know.
[00:40:03.191] Pola Weiss: No, no, no, no. Okay, stop before. Okay.
[00:40:06.537] Kent Bye: So yeah, it feels like, I don't know if that's it, if that's just sort of the concept and idea, or if there's more to it, because it's using Alexa. And so I didn't know if there was going to be interactivity to it that was intended to it, if it was actual and reality.
[00:40:19.022] Pola Weiss: I mean, a lot of these experiences that are exhibited right now at Cannes, they should have been finished probably, but they couldn't because of COVID. So I think there's more coming. That's just my guess.
[00:40:32.968] Kent Bye: Right. So let's keep on marching through the experiences, starting with the stuff from Tribeca, and then we'll dive into some of our highlights from the rest of the show. So Merry and the Monster, I first saw it at SIGGRAPH back in 2019, and it was actually on the Magic Leap. My feedback at the time was like, why is this in AR? This should be a way better VR experience. And what was premiering here at Tribeca was a much more fleshed out, longer version of what I saw. And I think it actually does work a lot better in VR than what I saw in AR. This was interesting because it's a bit of a story within a story. And so you're kind of like learning about the characters who is writing it and then the context of her kind of going into the actual story as well. So I thought that was kind of an interesting conceit, but also very much like a theater like production that was using lighting and a lot of ways to kind of reveal and to give you the sense of these two major different locations that you're kind of going back and from, but just curious to hear from your perspective of what you kind of take away from the story side of things.
[00:41:31.831] Pola Weiss: Well, I liked the experience very much, but that was one of the stories where, well, I thought it's nice to have it in virtual reality, but it wouldn't have been necessary. It could have worked on a screen, I think, but it worked also in VR. So this was kind of story-wise something that was nice to see in virtual reality, but there wasn't there wasn't the point where I thought, okay, this is why I have to have the headset and why I have to be here in that world. But I think it made the story a bit stronger. I liked especially the beginning and the ending where in Mary's world, not in her fantasy, but in her real life world, it was brilliantly acted, even though it's animated, they really did well. And it was just fun to watch and fun to see her going into her own fantasy, like you said, a story in a story. That for me was just an experience that I liked watching, that was just wonderful to see, like having fun in virtual reality. I was a bit afraid that this is going to be really, really frightening or a horror story or something, but it wasn't. So those of you who can't see horror, it's fine.
[00:42:40.125] Kent Bye: Yeah, this was a case where I feel like this is some of the best character animation that I've seen in terms of like the motion capture and animation and the stylized version. So, and again, a little bit more of a character driven story where you're really focusing on these characters in these different situations and different aspects of character development as you go through, I mean, leading up to it. And then as you go in, you kind of dive into the story of Frankenstein. But yeah, I agree that it did feel like, I mean, it is a little bit longer than a lot of the VR experiences. And so like, why is it that you're in VR? For me, I had a different experience because I first saw it in AR, which was even more of a like, okay, why is this in AR at all? And then it actually works better in VR. So I was seeing it through the lens of like, okay, this is working better than in the AR version I saw. But not thinking as much as like, why is this in VR? Because I do think that there's actually a part where being transported in between the different locations with the lighting, it becomes more of like trying to recreate this as if it was like a theater production, but being able to do a little bit more things than you would do at a theater production with some of the special effects and with maybe the monster being able to do different aspects of a disfigured character that's walking around that maybe you wouldn't be able to do as well. But it's a fair question, I guess, to ask, okay, would this work as well as a 2D version? You could certainly cut a cinematic version of it and maybe get the same gist, but I don't know. I think there's aspects of feeling like I'm kind of being transported into these different worlds that I felt like it was justified, especially because the character animation that they're doing, I think is important enough to say, okay, I'm going to see this more in other pieces. And maybe in a piece that maybe is switching locations more because maybe use the affordances of being able to take me to all sorts of places that I wouldn't be able to be taken without being in VR.
[00:44:28.529] Pola Weiss: Yeah, you're totally right. The thing that fascinated me the most in that experience is the body language of the characters. Because even though you never really change your perspective, you're always looking at a stage, like in a theater thing. Of course, the light around you moves a bit and changes, but you're always in this in this position, being in your seat, looking at the theater stage, a little bit like that. And I never felt bored for a second, which I usually do when I have this setting. And this experience was so well in having its own rhythm and driving the character, especially Mary forward and giving her this task she has to fulfill that you never felt bored, even though you couldn't do anything. And this is something that's so hard to achieve, I think. And that's why I'm saying it could have worked, in my opinion, also in a flat version, even though it probably works better in virtual reality, because this rhythm they have, I think it's part of the story and how they made and how they acted.
[00:45:31.590] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think it would probably work better as a theater piece, because it's kind of set as a theater piece. And so I would question whether or not if it was cut as a film, you would think it was too slow or too boring, or, yeah, I don't know.
[00:45:43.353] Pola Weiss: You would have needed a little bit more cutting and editing, of course, but I think it would have worked. But it's nice being there in virtual reality with her. And they do something that's also pretty hard. They bring you into a fantasy world without being so obvious about it. In classic film, you have always this zoom at a face and then you know you have a backflash or you have memories or something. And in virtual reality, you can't do that. And at the same time, you have in virtual reality the chance to bring also the people, the spectators, the users with you into that memory. And sometimes it's a little bit too obvious. And this experience, it isn't because it feels natural, but at the same time, you still feel being there in her fantasy because it feels real. And this is the balance I don't see so often.
[00:46:35.270] Kent Bye: So the last two experiences here Icarus and fly. So let's start with Icarus. So covering the myth of Icarus, the one who flies too close to the sun. And so what were some of your thoughts on Icarus.
[00:46:47.082] Pola Weiss: It's a bit hard for me to talk about because I feel that it says work in progress. I feel that we haven't seen the whole experience, how it was meant to be. And I think it was also meant as a multiplayer, so the description said something about it, I remember. So I feel like it was more than a teaser, of course, but still not the whole experience. So I really have trouble to speak about it. You need to see it in an installation.
[00:47:12.260] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is one where it said in the description that you were supposed to have full body tracking, which I was surprised because I don't know if there was sort of interactions that I was thinking, okay, this needed, I needed to have a full body here. So to actually be fully embodied as Icarus and maybe you're flying. And, but the thing that was striking to me about this experience, cause I overall, I agree with your assessment. As I finished it, there's not like a huge takeaway that I have in terms of what was really standing out. But one thing that did stand out for me was. the way that they were using contrast between color, because starting with in space and very blue, and then they cut to red, being in a forest that is burning. And so you have this contrast between being in what is cool and to something that's very hot. And so because it's trying to invoke this myth of flying into the sun, I felt like the way that they were using color and contrasting between those two were helping to create that contrast that some really amazing, you know, scenes of actually feeling like I was in a burning forest and stuff like that. But yeah, you know, I have to watch it maybe a few more times to be able to have any more nuanced things to say about it. And fly, I felt like was an experience that you're going through time and being able to fly these different planes and You have the ability to control the planes. Sometimes the control was a little bit of like you pull a lever and that's it. And the extent of the interaction was so minimal. It's sort of like, okay, why even have me do anything at all? If that's all I'm going to do is like flip a switch essentially. But other times you're actually kind of like steering and flying around. I actually felt like flying the airplane in the Wright brothers, you know, it was actually really powerful. The most powerful part for me in that experience was be able to actually like fly for about the amount of time of how long the first Wright Brothers flight was and to kind of actually kind of have a bit of agency to fly around. But it was also nice to go in between different eras and to see the different cockpits. And for me, it felt a little bit more educational rather than trying to convey a specific story, but time travel through history, giving me an opportunity to sit in the cockpit of all these different planes.
[00:49:18.472] Pola Weiss: Yes, exactly. This is more teaching me the history of flying than giving me a story, which is totally fine. This is an experience. I also enjoyed the first three flying scenes as well. When it comes to these very modern big airplanes, you can't really do anything. It doesn't react to your movements or to your interaction, but the first three scenes were really, really nice. And I would recommend this experience to everybody who's quite new to virtual reality, because it shows you a little bit what virtual reality can do with you and which shoes it can put you and what it can teach you about the world and history. So it was really fun playing those things. And yeah, I think if you've never done virtual reality, it can create this wow effect we are all looking for. it's fantastic that you're finally able to do that. And everybody says virtual reality is there to do things that you couldn't do in real life. And yeah, it does that. The idea is simple and it's more an educational experience, like you said.
[00:50:20.025] Kent Bye: And the installation, so each of these experiences have a virtual installation that you go into. This installation actually mimics an actual installation that they had built where when you go into it, it has all sorts of like haptics and wind. And so going, I saw that, I was like, Oh wow, I wish I would have been able to see this. with the whole haptic installation because I feel like I would have had like a completely different experience of flying around when the wind was blowing in my face and whatnot. So this is an example where it would have been a lot better to actually see the installation at Tribeca when it was supposed to premiere back when Tribeca was in April. But I'm fortunate that we can't have the haptic aspect of this experience, but I feel like there's a whole other element of the design that we weren't able to see in this virtual display.
[00:51:02.392] Pola Weiss: Yeah, my window was open when I did that and there came some wind exactly in the perfect moment. So I had a little bit of Tribeca feeling there.
[00:51:10.754] Kent Bye: Oh, we forgot to talk about one of the pieces, which was in the event of a moon disaster, which was like a sort of recreation. I don't know if you had any thoughts on that piece.
[00:51:19.276] Pola Weiss: Oh, it was just amazing to see what's possible and a bit frightening. Um, well, it's, it's not a virtual experience if I saw that correctly, right. They changed the footage with deep fake. So, um, yeah.
[00:51:31.507] Kent Bye: is if a doc lab that it premiered and I saw it there. And yeah, they take the premise of being that if the Apollo 11 moon mission had failed, then there was a speech that Nixon was going to give and this speech was available. And so they use the deep fake technologies to not only do the audio, but also the video lip sync to be able to create this fake news video. that is an imaginal speculative past that never actually happened, but what if it did happen, what would it be like? And so then they create this beautiful speech and use all these deepfake technologies to be able to create it. So it brings up all these issues around the ethics, around information dissemination and AI technologies and what can you trust and not trust. And so I think it's a very provocative piece in that sense. But also when I saw it at the doc lab, the installation was like you're in a whole living room. And so I would have liked to seen the installation maybe built out a little bit more, like really take you back to like the 60s. Because you are you are watching on the TV screen, and maybe the TV screen a little bit bigger, just to see a little bit better. But you know, aside from that, it's a, an amazing piece that I recommend people check out as well.
[00:52:35.312] Pola Weiss: Yes, absolutely. Maybe also the installations. If you go in real life to one of the festivals, you have all these installations. They decorate the cubes and they bring you in a mood before they give you the VR headset. And they try to recreate it also in the Museum of Other Realities, especially in the Trebek section and the Kaleidoscope section. where you went into one of the cubes and they decorated it very nicely or they gave you one of the characters who was standing there and so I thought that was really nicely done and that might be an idea for future digital or virtual exhibitions to do it this way. Not having like teachers at a grid and then just watch the experience but actually see something of the experience if you want to really see it. That's nice. And they did it nicely at the Moon Experience too, I think. But yeah, you're right. The TV could have been bigger. When I was watching it, I was like, I would have preferred it to see it on my screen in 3D. But after having watched it, I was like, okay, good that I didn't put it on the internet. Who knows what would have happened.
[00:53:44.533] Kent Bye: Right, right. Cool. Well, those are the 12 Tribeca experiences. Again, you can go watch all these up until July 3rd. Actually, there's DLC that you can download individually, or you can go into the beta channel and download all of the experiences if you want to experience everything. So let's go through the other three sections and kind of quickly go over the kaleidoscope. So this is a development showcase that had over 20 different experiences. Some of them were just 2D trailers. Some of them had different experiences. Some I couldn't tell were broken or if they were just unfinished or just didn't have audio or There's a lot of frustration that I had just because when I was exiting the experiences, then sometimes you would have to like force quit it and do a hard reboot. And technically it was like a little frustrating to get through them. But for me, the highlight was the Power of You, which was a bit of a cinematic trailer that is taking me on this locomoting through this space of this world of the existing consumer reality of the environment, overconsumption, and then eventually going into like this imaginal future that has a lot of technology, a solar punk inspired kind of like, let's see what technology could do to be able to create a whole nother world. And for me, I feel like this is a real power of VR to kind of go away from just dystopic depictions of the future, but actually to build out a vision of what could be possible using technology to be able to be more in harmony with nature. And I felt like this felt like the beginnings of a much larger experience, but still, in terms of all the experiences that I saw at Kaleidoscope, it was kind of like the most self-contained experience that felt like the most finished experience that I could imagine seeing at a film festival. But I imagine there's still more that they're going to do. But for me, that was like one of my highlights from the Kaleidoscope showcase at ConXR.
[00:55:27.515] Pola Weiss: Yes, same. I mean, the prototypes, they had like a lot of pictures at the Kaleidoscope Development Showcases, and not all the pictures had prototypes or were represented in the Cannes XR Art Museum of Other Realities. So those who had, who were there, it was pretty interesting to see some pictures of how they are going to imagine in somewhere. They had already developed a bit more, others just had a 2D trailer, and I had the same impression. The Power of Few was really nice. It was really, oh wow, now I have an impression what they are going to do. And at the same time, this creating that future and an enjoyable future of our planet is something I see right now quite often in virtual reality or it continues. Some experiences like that continue to come out because I think it's so obvious to use virtual reality because Yeah, it can change behavior and it can give you a vision in virtual reality. And the power of view is doing that. It gives you a goal or it gives you a future that it doesn't have to be like that. And that's pretty nice. I think it's using the potential of virtual reality well. And it was really nice seeing this contrast of this now world and the future world.
[00:56:40.843] Kent Bye: Yeah, for anybody that's interested in actually creating immersive stories, the Showcase does a brilliant job of showing the different ways of either imagining what this experience might be like if you don't have enough resources to build it out and to really flesh it out. But the great thing about The Power of You is that I watched that experience. I'm like, I have a pretty good idea of what this experience is going to be like. I want to see more. And that's a great example. Sometimes I would see like temporary art or it would be temporary art that was more just trying to show the concept. The example that comes to mind is the power of X showing like the different infographics, but in a way that's like much lower resolution of what you would actually want to see in the final version. But it sort of gives me the idea. Some of we're using like some storyboards that were there where you actually kind of like see like an animated version. And so the challenge of trying to not have enough resources, but still give a sense of what the story is going to be, whether it's like with temporary graphics that's very low resolution or like drawn out and animated. The thing that I didn't like as much as if they just shot a 2D film and said, this is what our VR experience is. I'm sort of left with like, okay, I have no, absolutely no idea what this VR experience is going to be like, or any sort of sense of it. And so as I'm looking and evaluating different VR experiences, I preference ones that actually have an immersive experience, but also give me the closest taste of what their experience is going to be. Something like the Rhythm of the Universe gives me an idea of what production quality is going to be, even if it's just like a 360 video and give me a small taste of what this actually is.
[00:58:12.400] Pola Weiss: I mean, we shouldn't forget that Cannes is also a very big marketplace. So all these projects were there to find investors and distributors and co-production partners and so on. And I was asking when I was wandering around the development showcase, why didn't we do that? Well, maybe somebody did, but I wasn't there to see it. If you plan a virtual reality project and you already have a little bit of funding to do a prototype in virtual reality or 360, it's so obvious to show that to the people and not just telling about it because virtual reality is so hard to grasp. It's so hard to understand which interactions are there. So I felt like you, the 2D trailers, didn't give me so much of an impression I would have preferred to hear the pitch and speak with the creators and ask them questions. But as soon as you had something in 360 or in virtual reality even, it helped to see the project and to see the vision behind the project they were telling. For example, I have an example, it's Remembrance. it's supposed to be a sixth of experience at the end where they have as inspiration the cabinet of dr caligari this famous film and they wanted to have like this whole look a bit like in the film and yeah we know the film we know the vision we know how it looked like but In the prototype, they just had one scene. Nothing happened in that scene, but you were there in the streets and you had these optics of the film and it was all black and white and very, very interesting. And just being there for a minute or so helped me to understand the vision of the virtual reality experience, just because I was in virtual reality and didn't see it on a 2D trailer. And yeah, it's so important, but that helped me to understand how important this prototyping is also in terms of funding a project. Again, I knew that, but feeling it myself is something different.
[01:00:03.027] Kent Bye: Yeah. Remembrance, I think, was one that stuck out for me as well in terms of actually being in the scene and actually taking a guided tour. But I think you're right in the sense of it'd be helpful to either have the pitch deck or they actually did record pitches that they gave. And so this was a part of the live version that happened over the first three days where Kaleidoscope would have a schedule with 21 different times where they were giving different pitches and talks and talking about different topics. So they were giving a pitch. And so it'd be nice to be able to actually see that next to some of these to be able to see what the pitch was, to get a little bit more context, because sometimes you would see something and you would have like no context. Like there was one thing it was called Godwalla, where it was just a an immersive installation, but it was like, okay, I have no idea what this is about or anything else. So if you were to only go through the VR experience, then you wouldn't have as much information. But I know that kaleidoscopevr.fund is a website where all of this information is there, where there's pitches and trailers and the pitch decks. And there's a whole social network that is designed to have a lot of that discussion to happen. But in terms of the showcase, just kind of going in, I felt like it was a little bit lacking of some deeper context with some of these and hard to get a sense of where things are going.
[01:01:17.667] Pola Weiss: Yeah, if you're just audience, I agree. If you might be an investor potential, that helps you in addition to the pitch probably a little bit more. But if you're just the audience, yeah, true. But again, I'm looking forward to seeing all those projects. There were some that I'm really, really excited and I press all my fingers.
[01:01:39.302] Kent Bye: Very cool. Yeah, it's difficult to dive in too much more into a lot of these because they're so early phases. So maybe we'll move on to the last two sections here. So the Positron, they had six different experiences, and there's actually a Positron award. And so some of these I had seen before, but the Positron just for a bit more context is this egg shaped thing that you're able to give a little bit more of a cinematic take of something that is a 360 video. So, sometimes when you're in a 360 video, you can look around, but you may not be looking at the thing that they want you to be looking at. The Positron is an opportunity to do a location-based entertainment type of experience where you have a little bit more of a direct territorial oversight where you take away the agency of the viewer but give more control over to the creator to be able to have them show you exactly what you want to see. And there's haptics that give a little bit more additional thing as well. So the piece that actually won the Positron Award was the Great Sea, which actually came out a few years ago, but this is actually the first time that I had a chance to see it. And I'm really curious to see this in the Positron because I found myself, when I watched the Great Sea, almost being penalized for looking around. Because as soon as I would look around, there would be a cut and it would be like something different. So I found it difficult sometimes to really feel grounded in a location because it was a very cinematic take of VR with a lot of cuts. But this is probably an instance where it would probably be better to watch this in Positron because it would allow you to maybe get a sense of the world and have a little bit more of a synchrony between a shot that goes on and lingers for a lot of time. And then you're like, you look around and then all of a sudden there's a cut and then it sort of ruins your sense of being there. But that was actually a pretty involved story of artificial intelligence in the future. And there's once a year a person has to go there and it's based upon a Philip K. Dick novel. And so it's sort of an adaptation of an existing story. But I don't know if you had any thoughts on The Great Sea.
[01:03:33.572] Pola Weiss: Well, I saw it, I think two years ago at Venice Festival, one year ago, it premiered there. And I'd have to say that for me, yes, you know, we are used to do virtual reality. We want to discover a bit by ourselves, but if you're not used to do that, it helps you actually to follow the story that you're a little bit over guided, I'd say, with all the cuts and that they really take good care of you, that you look exactly in the same direction they want. But saying that, I really, really love The Great Sea. I wrote a long article about it. And I think what makes it so strong is that the creators took the time and courage to experiment, but really experiment. They cut like crazy. They have camera movements like crazy, like nobody has ever had the courage to do before. And some of those work brilliantly and others don't. So I felt also a little bit overguided but again that's me being used to virtual reality and want to discover a bit myself but being somebody new to virtual reality or even sit in a positron chair I think as well that it works very good if you want to have a cinematic film, if you want to have a virtual reality film, not a game. The great sea is so strong because they leave the original story So the original story is very, very different. So they not only experiment on the making of the experience, but also on the story. But being so courageous just to try some cuts, they have a parallel cut at the end, which I've never seen before in virtual reality. They just do it. They just say, let's try. So they're using all these very, very traditional filmmaking techniques and just put them into virtual reality. And that is something that has to be tried out. It just needs this experimentation. I also feel that over the years, I'm getting more used to cuts. I think if I had seen The Great Sea four years ago, well, the movements apart, we probably would have felt sick. But if I had seen it four years ago or three years ago, I would have been overwhelmed because they cut so much. Now that bit more use of cuts and perspective changes and scaling in virtual reality feels a bit more natural. And yeah, I think we need more of this experimentation because for me it's a showcase of which cuts work, which don't, which throw me out of the story, which don't, how to use music. It's very, very strong in using music in a very, very, again, traditional, filmic, cinematic way. And all those things give The Great Sea such a value, I think, for virtual reality filmmakers.
[01:06:09.128] Kent Bye: So a couple more highlights from this section for me was the tank.
[01:06:14.011] Pola Weiss: And how long, how do you say it? I don't know. I pronounce it very German.
[01:06:20.324] Kent Bye: Tutankhamun, it's the Egyptian, the Great Tut. It's essentially, for me, this was a piece that did a great job of, again, like a little bit more of an educational piece, but taking me to a place and giving me this architectural digestion and exploration of this tomb of the Great Tut. And it felt like cultural anthropology and exploration of death rituals in a way that was fascinating. But again, a little bit more didactic in the sense of like more educational in the sense. But really, I think using aspects of the medium of VR to great effect. It felt like this is a piece that really belonged in VR. And I felt like I'll never get to go there and see all this stuff. And so this is a great way to be able to actually take me to this place and be able to learn a little bit more about some of these death rituals from ancient Egypt.
[01:07:07.250] Pola Weiss: I mean, the interesting thing with that VR experience is that you can visit the grave, but it's empty. You can't see anything really there. So it's better to visit the other graves where you can see everything and where it's much more interesting because the grave itself is very small and it was hidden for thousands of years. And the actual value of it, like the mask or the whole ingredients they put into the grave, that is in Cairo in the Museum of Archaeology, in the Egyptian Museum. So you'd never get to see how it was in the original grave or how it was in the original tomb. which was for me very interesting. I've been in Egypt just before COVID. So we decided not to visit that grave because you couldn't see anything. But I saw all these artifacts in reality in the museum and seeing now how they were found was really interesting for me. And a good addition to all this museum stuff you have.
[01:08:06.285] Kent Bye: Yeah, it does feel like a field trip to like a museum quality field trip. I really quite enjoyed it. And it's like, wow, this is a great use of VR as a medium. And I loved how they were showing like cutaways sometimes to see like the tombs within a tomb within a tomb. And then they kind of like do a cross section and let you zoom in and see all the different architectural elements and all the different things that were inside of it. So yeah, just an amazing use of cultural anthropology and the use of VR to be able to transmit some of that history. Another big highlight, I know this came out maybe a couple of weeks ago, the Everest VR. It's like a 40 minute documentary and I had a chance to watch it here. Really quite enjoyed it. And again, it's a bit long, you know, maybe it could have been shorter, but also I think it's taking me to a place and taking me on a journey that I will never do. I can tell you now. I'm not going to climb Everest. So I enjoyed being able to sort of go through this journey through someone who's done it many times. But I guess what I was really impressed with this piece was just the skill in order to even produce a piece like this. I mean, the climbing skill to be able to set up the cameras and get some of the shots they have is just quite mind-blowing that this experience even exists in the first place.
[01:09:17.040] Pola Weiss: In such a quality. In such a quality. It's really astonishing.
[01:09:21.142] Kent Bye: Because they're climbing Everest without using oxygen and also documenting it with all this 360 video. So you're, I mean, there's parts where I was watching it. It was like, well, they had to set up the shot. There's a part of me that wants to know a little bit more of like how this was produced and like how they sort of negotiated this key moment, like as they're like climbing up. But overall, like, to be able to use VR to be able to take me to a place to give me the sense of scale that I wouldn't normally get. I thought, you know, this was a brilliant use of VR and I quite enjoyed going on this journey with them.
[01:09:52.078] Pola Weiss: Yes, it's a very classic use of virtual reality and it works pretty well. I love this experience exactly for the same reason. I could never go to the Everest, so for me it was fine. But you said it's a little bit long. I totally agree. I think it's a very classic documentary, even though it's in 360, but you can judge it, I think, in a very classic documentary view, like as if it were a 2D documentary. And the problem is a little bit why it feels so long for me is that the story while climbing the Mount Everest, which is such a strong story and so appealing and so wonderful to follow and it has so much adventure and you really are with the protagonist, you want to go with them, you want to help them. But before they're telling that, they're presenting you all the friends and all the professional climbers and skiers of the filmmaker. And there are, I think, four or five men who are doing amazing things, who have stories to tell of their own, but they're not part of the story of the film, you know, not part of the climbing Mount Everest challenge. And so that I think those characters In the story I know there are a lot of reasons probably because of budget and I don't know what else but all of those guys who are presented in the film at the beginning should have their own episode. That was my feeling and cut them out of the Everest episode because you don't need them to tell the story and you kind of lose the story a bit out of view and you feel a bit lost when you meet all these amazing people and amazing climbers. I would have loved to know more about them, but at the same time I prefer having the story in one place. So I think that's why it felt a little bit long.
[01:11:27.839] Kent Bye: Right. Yeah, I agree. And I think if you look at those individuals, those people as characters, then they don't actually do much at the end. It's like, why are they in there? But if you look at the character in terms of the world and these locations, and just the process of rock climbing, then you could make an argument that like, okay, you're showing these different worlds, but yeah, you're right in the sense that in terms of the story that's moving forward, they're not really a part of it. So maybe you could afford to chop out some of those extra characters and make it a little bit shorter and maybe a stronger experience overall.
[01:11:58.699] Pola Weiss: Give them their own episode.
[01:12:00.280] Kent Bye: Yeah.
[01:12:00.841] Pola Weiss: That would be really great. I would have loved to follow more of that climbing because you'll see all these spectacular mountain views and yeah.
[01:12:09.563] Kent Bye: Cool. So let's move on to the final section here. So there was a number of different 360 videos here. The challenge for me is that I've seen a lot of them before. And so I went back and re-watched some of them, but maybe you could sort of start with some of your highlights from the VR selection of 360 videos here at ConXR.
[01:12:27.578] Pola Weiss: Well, I was pretty amazed by the selection because it has everything in it. It has animation, it has acting, it has funny things, it has serious things. They put so many things into the selection that I thought, as an exhibition on its own, it was pretty interesting to see. Me too, I also knew most of the films. But still, of course, I love Battlescar. I wrote also an article about it. I think it's a masterpiece. You only saw the first chapter, I think, and I think you normally need to see all three.
[01:13:02.409] Kent Bye: I've seen the 6DOF version of this before and I just popped my head in briefly and it is a little bit different to see like a 360 version of this. definitely worth checking out still, because I think there's a lot of stylistic innovations, probably one of the most innovative pieces that I've seen in Immersive Story, a lot of different things that they're playing with. And it's, I've seen all the episodes that have been released so far. And so it's hard for me to know exactly what was in what, but definitely it's a highlight for people to go check out just to see like the different types of ways that you could use the cinematic language of VR and the different volumetric aspects and the lighting in this one is amazing as well.
[01:13:40.947] Pola Weiss: And the scaling, and the scaling. I did an interview with the two directors and it was just interesting how they came up with all the things. Well, but other story, I think. Well, I'd like to speak about Rainfruits. What do you think about that?
[01:13:54.790] Kent Bye: Yeah, the Rainfruits, it's about immigrants and it's using a lot of volumetric point cloud representations. And so it's For me, there's a lot of different volumetric solutions that are out there. And so it sort of speaks to a lot of this alienation and what's it like to live in a capitalist world. So it's talking about a lot of issues about this larger context and kind of giving you a little bit of an insight of the immigrant experience. And so, yeah, stylistically, I think it's using different ways of trying to give you a sense of place through what feels like this dreamlike fragmented point cloud representation. So yeah, that's sort of some of my impressions of it. But I enjoyed it as an experience as well. And I don't know, what were some of your thoughts and takeaways from it?
[01:14:38.636] Pola Weiss: Yeah, I enjoyed it too. And it gave me a really nice insight. It's told by the main protagonist from the off, which is also a very classic way of telling a story right now in virtual reality, because then you can concentrate on the picture. But what I thought is really good in Rainfruits and Some of the other films in the VIA selection is that Rainfruit actually has a really ending. So the story is quite round and quite, the story arc is very finished. And I don't know how you feel about it, but I see sometimes in virtual reality or actually quite often, I see that the ending isn't, it doesn't feel like an ending. It feels more like the story isn't told yet. There has to be something to come. And Rainfruits does that. It tells the story until the end. And that's why I like so much of the experience. Even though it's not so long, they achieve giving you all these emotions, but at the same time having a finished story arc.
[01:15:33.088] Kent Bye: Yeah, just to even produce a VR piece is a bit of a miracle. So you're sort of filtering out for people who have to know how to navigate all the technical limitations to even create the immersive experience in the first place. And so I feel like the aspect of that story is something that, as we have more storytellers and people that are coming from existing traditions of storytelling, then They're able to play with that a little bit more. That's what I love about battle scars because they come from like an animation background. And so they're using a lot of the things that they learned from the animation background and storytelling and actually do a lot of like telling a story in 30 seconds. And so like they've done a lot of ads. So how do you tell a visual story in 30 seconds and then translating a lot of those insights into like a very visual style? within VR. So I feel like there's lots of different disciplines, like whether if it's architecture, industrial design, theater, filmmaking, video game design, internet web interaction design, literature or writing, and then coming in and doing that as well. So like all these different disciplines, all these design disciplines that are all having to come together And I feel like the common thread is story and how do you tell a story amongst all these different mediums? And what are the new affordances that become available once you start to do the virtual reality aspect of it? So people that are already strong in different mediums and then coming in and doing that as well. I think we're seeing more of this and I've seen a lot more of this coming from the festival circuit, but you're right in the sense that sometimes you get things that are maybe focused a little bit more on the technical side rather than the story or character side.
[01:17:05.683] Pola Weiss: Yeah, true. Yeah, I think the view selection is very strong on that side, because most of them were very classic storytelling, most of the experiences there. For example, if you take Look at Me, where there were two films, who had actors that was a 360 movie. I liked them both and Look at Me was, quality-wise, it was very nicely done. And at the same time, it had the challenge of telling a story. It's about a young man who has a girlfriend and the girlfriend doesn't want really to, well, she's more in the digital world than with him and she doesn't look him in the eye. when she speaks with him and that frustrates him a lot. So he's trying to find something else that compensates him and they managed to have an end that's not a real ending in terms of it doesn't answer your questions, but it still is an open end and it still helps you. So they did a very classic short movie out of it and I really enjoyed watching it.
[01:18:04.785] Kent Bye: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. For me, some of the highlights that I have from the selection is First Step and Daughters of Chibok, which I saw Daughters of Chibok at Venice and First Step at Tribeca. And so First Step takes you to the moon and all the different trips to the moon. The thing that was fascinating about that was that they had lots of like photogrammetry recreations of this. It's a 360 video, but it felt like some of the scenes felt like archival footage. And it was like, wait, how did they create this? Because it's like, you're in VR. So obviously there wasn't a VR camera back in the 60s. And so a really high quality level of recreation of a lot of these photorealistic like depictions, but fusing in actors and recreating the trip of the moon and I thought the narration of it was good to be able to kind of tie the story together as well. And the Daughters of Chibok was this amazingly well-told story, not an amazing story, because the story is actually like horrible of Boko Haram coming into Chibok in Nigeria to like kidnap over 273 of the daughters. And this follows one of the mothers of the daughter and really takes you to this place and, you know, and talking to the Director Joel, he was saying, you know, this is an issue that actually was cast off as like fake news within Nigeria itself. And so for him to actually go there and investigate it and tell the story, I was like, no, this actually happened and here are the people. And then to see how that piece was able to be taken to the United Nations and be able to bring about support for a lot of these families and mothers and to get them more mental health support. So it's a film that's gone on to do lots of amazing things, but just, you know, when I first saw it and In Venice, I was in tears at the end of it. So, but for me, first step in Daughters of Chibok were highlights in terms of the pieces and definitely recommendations for me for people to go check out those pieces.
[01:19:51.188] Pola Weiss: Yes, Daughters of Chibok, definitely. The story is really, really touching and it's something where you feel also the power of virtual reality because you watch the mother in the eyes. You are sitting in front of her and she's telling you that her daughter is still missing. So that's something very strong to achieve in virtual reality or in 360 in that case. And I really, I have no doubt that this moved people so much that they hopefully give more money to rescue the missing girls. But First step, yes. I love that experience too. And because it's, yeah, it feels so real because I think they also had these pictures we all know from the news and all these missions to the moon where we have these pictures in mind and they kind of used that and made it a 3D experience out of it. So it felt so at the same time, very, very strange being there. And at the other time, very known because you've seen probably your whole youth and your whole life, all these pictures and the news and again and again. And I don't know if you've seen it, the second step, it's by the same company and they're taking it a bit further and go also to the Mars and to deep space. And I have to say, I like the second step more because it not only tells you what was, but it tells you, it gives you a vision of what can be or what will be, who knows. And therefore I see them in a series. They are made in a series for me. I would need both.
[01:21:16.325] Kent Bye: They actually made second stuff first, which is weird.
[01:21:21.951] Pola Weiss: Yes, but they did.
[01:21:23.440] Kent Bye: Yeah, I mean, I saw the second step when it was playing in VRoom and VRChat, and I was able to see that and then saw the first step. So yeah, I like the photogrammetry aspect, the sort of recreation, which I thought was interesting. Well, a lot of the other pieces of 360 video actually are animation pieces as I look through them. Kaiju Confidential, Upstander, there's the MOWB, which is actually like a 2D drawn animation. Battlescar we talked about, Doctor Who is another animation. You're within the TARDIS and I previously saw that in a sixth DOF experience, I think at Tribeca.
[01:21:54.587] Pola Weiss: Oh, maybe something about Dr. Hu. I saw it at Tribeca, I think. And originally it was interactive. So you helped somehow. And I have to say, normally I'm always for interaction, but in that case, the interaction distracted me so much that I didn't really get the story right. Especially being a non-English speaker, I always have to maybe concentrate a little bit more than other. But this 360 version gave me finally the chance to really concentrate on the story, which I appreciated in that case very much. And it was really fun for me, not having to deal with all the interaction at the same time, because the story is quite tense. And well, when I saw it, I thought, okay, I didn't really get the story when I did it at Tribeca.
[01:22:39.222] Kent Bye: Yeah. And you know, for me, the MOWB was interesting. It's sort of like womb spelled in a different way. But for me, what was interesting is that in the description, it says that the director was using a tool that was like actually drawing on a sphere. So like actually drawing on a sphere. But it had like a different quality of experience, I'd say, than most of the different types of experiences that I've seen within VR, because they're able to maybe take me into a little bit more of a surrealistic world that maybe didn't require a lot of 3D modeling, for example, but it's able to sort of maybe do some stuff that is a little bit more interesting stylistically that you couldn't do in, you know, a game engine, but can only sort of happen within the animation world. So I thought that was a little bit interesting just to see that piece. Kaiju Confidential for me is like this comedy piece I saw at Sundance a few years ago. Upstander, I was at Tribeca this past year and exploring bullying and, you know, the extent that you can use animation to be able to convey emotions and these kind of backpack characters. And Battlescar was, uh, Also using, you know, animation in a way. So, you know, I don't have other things to say beyond that at this point, just as we're kind of like wrapping up here. But so any other pieces that you wanted to talk about from the 360 video.
[01:23:52.412] Pola Weiss: I'm pretty happy with the experience talked about Like I said, I really enjoyed this selection we did. And of course, via being a 360 platform, they always look for stories that work without interaction. So I don't think that they could adapt the book of distance because it just wouldn't work without interactions. All this experience where it was entertaining. And sometimes I miss with all these serious stories, I miss the entertaining aspect sometimes in these narrative virtual reality film genre. And I really appreciate that they had this big selection.
[01:24:25.133] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, this is a unique opportunity for people to get a chance to see some of these experiences that you and I have been seeing for a number of years. And I hope to see a continued evolution of kind of working out some of the technical glitches of making it easier to be able to see some of these experiences for people. A lot of people were asking, can I see this on my Quest? And the answer is most often, no, you can't. You have to use a PC at this point. But a lot of these location-based experiences, we're using PC anyway. And actually, we're using a lot of VR technologies that are not on the consumer scale anyway. And so I kind of miss out some of the innovation that's happening. But I feel like with this coronavirus, it's a time to be able to maybe take a step back and to really work out some of these distribution challenges and to see if there's some of these ephemeral ways of distributing some of this content for people to be able to check out and to have access to and to maybe flesh out some of the distribution channels either through Oculus or Steam or other ways to help build the audience for this type of work. And I know it's been a challenge for the journalists covering this space to build an audience for people who have been able to not only see the piece, but also read the critique and analysis. And so I know we've both been on the festival circuit and doing this and a bit of a bubble in the vacuum. So it's just nice to be able to have a conversation and share it out there and to have more folks get involved. Yeah, I don't know if you have any sort of final thoughts or final words here.
[01:25:49.039] Pola Weiss: Well, for the feature, I really loved it. For me, it was the second festival where I could have the chance to see works in 6DOF, not only 3DOF. And like I said, we are at the beginning doing that. It could be a big challenge for distribution. What I noticed is that although it's all there online, the obstacles are pretty high. You need to have a gaming-ready PC. you need to have a pc virtual reality headset so it's not working on the quest or something because it's just too heavy it's 70 gigabyte so the challenge is still quite hard it's not very accessible and i wish for this future i don't have a proposition because it's actually quite contradictory to have it accessible and good quality at the same time, like Michel Riac said in one of the conference talks at the Marché du Film. But yes, maybe there will be a solution for the future so that more people can see these wonderful experiences in a festival circuit.
[01:26:45.926] Kent Bye: Great. And the final question that I have is, what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[01:26:57.113] Pola Weiss: I think it gives us the chance to experiment as storytellers in a way that we would have never dreamt of 10 years ago. That's the ultimate potential to grow as storytellers and to give the audiences a way of transporting them to different worlds, also in a way that they haven't experienced before.
[01:27:18.567] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Paula, thank you so much for joining me. It was a lot of fun for me to go through the experiences and to hear your story lens and all these different experiences. And yeah, I just love to kind of like chat and unpack it and talk about it. So thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.
[01:27:31.757] Pola Weiss: It was really nice.
[01:27:33.899] Kent Bye: So that was Paula Weiss and she's a writer and a VR critic for her blog called VR stories.blog. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, Well, I really think that Paula and I complement each other in different ways in terms of, you know, I'm really focused on the experiential design and the technology aspects first and foremost, and I think Paula is really looking at the emotional impact and the stories first and foremost. And so I just really appreciate a lot of her perspectives on some of the more story sides and to clarify some of the things where, you know, I may have had some impression of something like the Mount Everest and then for her to identify that, you know, it's not necessarily anything that's wrong with the technical production of it, but it's just more in terms of the story of making it feel like it's really tight as it can be and to really tell the story and to tell the story completely because I do think that's actually an issue where you may see a lot of different immersive experiences where at the end you don't feel like the full story had been told and so that's certainly something that you still face with a lot of these different experiences and You know, with this particular selection, the Tribeca VR is actually probably one of the closest ways that you'll get in terms of seeing the types of experiences that are typically curated at a festival like Tribeca. And the VR360 VR program, this is a Chinese 360 video application where they're distributing lots of 360 video content to not only throughout China, but also the United States. There's an app on a lot of the different platforms. And so VeeR VR, they're actually sponsoring a premium distribution package. And so I'm not sure if we mentioned this, but there was a couple of awards. The one that won the VeeR award was the First Step, and then the one that won the Positron award was the Great Sea. And the Positron, like I said, wasn't able to see any of these experiences in the Positron chair. And so I'm just watching it as a 360 video. So it's hard for me to really evaluate the quality of the Positron integrations for some of these. And something like the wing walker is a 360 video of somebody walking on the wings of airplanes. I'd love to see what the Positron was able to do and if it was able to help to move around and maybe make it even a more immersive experience. So most of these festivals, they're using lots of technology that's not available to consumers. And so there may be other things that are maybe intended to be a part of these projects that weren't also included into this showing as well. And overall, I'm just super impressed with the Museum of Other Realities. I mean, there's still a number of different technical glitches and details that are still yet to be worked out. But over time, I expect a lot of different types of stuff will continue to be worked out. And You know, I think this is just a good model for being able to have ephemeral distribution to be able to actually have access to some of these different experiences. And so we'll see how things continue to develop. I know that Venice, I hear rumored, is maybe using something else other than the Museum of Other Realities. And so we'll wait to see what the official announcements are for there. Yeah, I look forward to seeing more of these different virtual conferences, be able to show some of these experiences, and then hopefully over the long term, just start to cultivate more of an audience and to have more people be able to not only watch some of these experiences, but to be able to listen to an opportunity to kind of unpack it. to talk to the different creators and their design processes. And like I said in this podcast, the Book of Dissonance is one of my favorite experiences that I've seen of all of the different immersive stories that I've seen. So if you do have a chance to get the Museum of Other Realities and download it, then I highly recommend checking that out. And, you know, we'll see over time how many of these become available to see beyond this short premiere period from June 24th to July 3rd. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listed supporter podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So, you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
