Two weeks ago at the SXSW ECO conference in Austin, I had a revolutionary experience with filmmaking: Waves of Grace. The film is a collaboration of the United Nations and virtual reality (VR) studio Vrse and harnesses the latest in VR technology to put the viewer on the ground with an ebola survivor in Liberia.
The version of the film above will give you a taste, but you actually have to put on the still-clunky headset to get the experience. It is unbelievable. I felt as if my feet were in the sand as I stood next to Decontee Davis on the beach in Africa. When she was hospitalized, I felt like I was sitting on her bed, looking up at what seemed like a giant doctor in a space suit, hoping he could save her life. At her children’s school, I felt like I could reach out and touch the heads of the little ones looking up at me as I entered their classroom. The experience is so deep that the sensation that you have actually been there stays with you long after the goggles come off. Just amazing. It is no surprise that it is inspiring the individuals that the UN Foundation is actually able to outfit with the equipment to give and to get involved.
There are a couple of other elements from this film that you can apply to your own work without the need of VR equipment.
- It was filmed in a very personal way. Davis was humanized, through her voice and the video. You get that just-like-me feeling. She is a woman, a mother, a person trying to be happy just like me. She is elevated from a statistic that we can easily ignore.
- The narrative was carried by a prayer. It was just beautiful and very moving.
VR filmmaking is the next wave. Facebook just integrated 360-degree films into its News Feed. Other social media platforms and news sites are bound to follow suit, especially as VR headsets like Oculus Rift hit retail stores at the start of 2016. Granted, VR filmmaking is neither affordable nor widely practical to distribute at this point, but the quality of the empathy it is able to evoke is so profound that it’s worth keeping an eye on.