The story begins on a cold winter morning in New York where a small group of people are meeting in a windowless room in an unremarkable corner of UN headquarters. It is the job of these people to communicate humanitarian issues, and in a world on fire, they have their work cut out for them. They have gathered to watch a Virtual Reality film called Clouds Over Sidra about a Syrian refugee camp. It is February 2014.
Like everyone else in the room I have heard a lot about Virtual Reality (VR), but this is the first time I have watched a VR film. I am a journalist turned filmmaker and have been telling humanitarian stories in words, pictures and film for 20 years. I have worked and filmed in the Zaāatari refugee camp before and have made, or helped to make, several films about the plight of Syrian refugees. I know what to expect. Or so I think.
Six minutes later I lay the headset back on the table and take a deep breath. Iām stunned by the way Gabo Aroraās film has dragged me into the heart of his story and Iām daring to think that this could be the storytelling tool that Iāve been waiting for. It feels like both the end and beginning of a journey. It feels like a glimpse of the future.
Fast forward 18 months and Iām sitting in an airless refugee tent in Lebanonās Bekaa Valley. On one side of me sits Nokiaās beautiful Ozo VR camera and my long term cameraman and friend Thomas, and on the other side, former Iraqi refugee-turned-aid-worker Warda and half a dozen young Syrian refugee girls. We are passing round a Samsung Gear headset loaded with a short animated film about dinosaurs to try and explain VR to them.
Click play to see what happened when they watched VR for the first timeĀ ā¦
A long time before Iād ever heard of VR I read somewhere that āthe evolution of storytelling is inseparable from the evolution of technology.ā I made a note of it at the time and promptly forgot about it, but it was a thought that kept coming back to me during the shoot of our VR film, Life in the Time of Refuge.
I had been warned by friends who had been in the VR game for a while already that shooting in VR meant throwing out pretty much everything you think you know about filmmaking and starting over. āYou have to hide to be out of shotĀ ā¦ You canāt follow the actionĀ ā¦ You canāt frame the shot because everything is in shotĀ ā¦ And whatever you do, be very careful of movement, because even the slightest movement can make the viewer feel sea sickĀ ā¦ā
So when Thomas suggested one morning while we were filming by a lake in Finland that we set up the camera in a boat and āget a shot in the middle of the lake,ā that sounded like trouble to me.
Click play to see what happened when we triedĀ ā¦
For sure, itās way more difficult and time consuming to shoot documentary stories in VR, and the run ānā gun style of observational documentary is nigh on impossible (at least for now).
Not to mention the challenges of shooting in areas where insecurity is high and people are suspicious of strange people, doing strange things with strange looking bits of kit.
Click play below to see what it was like shooting a VR scene close to the Lebanon/Syria borderĀ ā¦
A s it turns outāāāand, as I had been warnedāāāmuch of shooting VR is about jettisoning the things you love about filmmaking and embracing the things you thought you didnāt like. Things like voice over.
Remember Robert McKeeās words of warning to a paranoid Nicholas Cage in Charlie Kaufmannās Adaptation?: āGod help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you! Thatās flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of the character.ā
I thought that too many of the humanitarian VR films that I had seen to date were too reliant on voice over, and that the story needed a chance to develop alongside its characters. With my snooty filmmaker hat on, I saw voice over as the last refuge of the scoundrel so when we started the project I was adamant that we should avoid it.
But as we found out, the bottom line is that in VR so much of the directorās ability to let the narrative take its own course is taken out of the equation by the fact that the director and cinematographer are hiding behind a grave at the crucial moment. So in the end we bit the bullet and embraced some āflaccid, sloppy writing.ā
But you know what, we think it worked out pretty wellĀ ā¦
Click play to watch the 360 version of our film on FacebookĀ ā¦
ends