{"id":106426,"date":"2018-12-09T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/?p=106426"},"modified":"2018-12-08T18:20:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T23:20:51","slug":"if-the-content-is-sht-it-will-still-be-sht-in-vr-and-ar-virtual-reality-and-hard-truth-at-the-2018-filmgate-interactive-media-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/106426-if-the-content-is-sht-it-will-still-be-sht-in-vr-and-ar-virtual-reality-and-hard-truth-at-the-2018-filmgate-interactive-media-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"“If the Content is Sh*t, It Will Still be Sh*t in VR and AR”: Virtual Reality and Hard Truth at the 2018 FilmGate Interactive Media Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth\u2019s \u201cpsychedelic documentary\u201d Awavena<\/em>, an inner trip that I\u2019d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt\u2019s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres<\/em>, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the pieces represented. As I waited in line, watching a little boy who looked to be having a ball participating in this Darren Aronofsky-produced \u201csongs of the cosmos,\u201d I noticed an elderly woman in a wheelchair chatting amiably with the project\u2019s creator. (I later learned this was McNitt\u2019s 90-year-old grandmother, who\u2019d shown up to don a headset for the very first time and experience her granddaughter\u2019s Florida debut.) <\/p>\n

Several rooms at the Portal were dedicated to local creations. There were participant-stimulated installations like The Ghost, The Sphinx, and The Thief<\/em> from Kim Grinfeder, Juan Carlos Zald\u00edvar and Zeven Rodriguez \u2013 an interactive dance film, in which the viewer beats on a tribal drum and the accompanying video (\u201cinspired by the natural interdependence of the Ghost Orchid, the Sphinx Moth, and an environmental activist\u201d) responds accordingly; and Glades<\/em>, another Everglades-centric work from Nick Hardeman, whose whimsical Snakebird<\/em> I wrote about during last year\u2019s fest. In the sensor-based Glades<\/em> the participant, facing a white screen, moves about to \u201cform toxic blue algae on a simulated water surface.\u201d Once again an Anhinga (snakebird) also appears. And then there\u2019s the invasive python that slowly wraps around your silhouette. You become part of Hardeman\u2019s art simply by approaching it. With Glades<\/em> the dangers of human impact on a fragile ecosystem are creatively rendered clear.<\/p>\n

International surprises included Theodore Ushev\u2019s Blind Vaysha<\/em>, an NFB (and ARTE France) project that features medieval-drawing-inspired animation, and even incorporates the skewed vision of its story\u2019s doomed protagonist — a girl born with a left eye that can only see the past and a right eye only able to see the future. Innerspace VR\u2019s Gauguin<\/em> similarly employs evocative animation — and can best be described as akin to taking a Tahitian boat trip through one of the master\u2019s own vivid colorful paintings.<\/p>\n

And then there were the industry panels — all taking place just a few blocks away at the boutique Silverspot Cinema (where the leather recliner seating rivaled the Awavena<\/em> hammock for comfort). The first I attended, titled \u201cDisruptive Tech and the Art of Brand Storytelling,\u201d also unexpectedly proved the most disruptive to my peace of mind. Featuring a diverse slate (two white guys and two women, one of whom was African-American) of knowledgeable insiders, and moderated by Nelly Gocheva of The New York Times<\/em>\u2019 T Brand Studio, the fivesome engaged in an eye-opening, refreshingly candid conversation about \u201cthe search for emotion and authenticity in branded interactive content.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denise Burrell-Stinson of The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s WP BrandStudio got things off to an honest start by noting that the legendary paper\u2019s recent acquisition by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pushed the tech angle much further at the organization — that the storytellers are in \u201clockstep\u201d with the tech folks. AR, infographics, 360 imagery, and stories told through drones are all on the table now. That said, she also stressed that technology must always be tied to a narrative. Which prompted her former co-worker Gocheva (Burrell-Stinson had jumped ship at the Times<\/em> for the Post<\/em>) to wholeheartedly agree. Indeed, that tech should never get in the way of story seemed to be the panel\u2019s tenet.<\/p>\n

Armando Turco of Vox Creative then discussed how his company has built its own publishing platforms, and that the technology angle is being pushed much more with their tech-specific brands. He stressed that the biggest challenge is cost — as the massive adoption of most technologies \u201cjust isn\u2019t there yet.\u201d Heather Pieske, Group Creative Director and Head of Design at Virtue (VICE\u2019s creative agency) cautioned against a rush to AR and VR \u201cwithout understanding why.\u201d She added that the delivery of information should be part of the story itself. To start with the tech first is sometimes doable, she allowed, but \u201cif the content is shit it will still be shit in VR and AR.\u201d Chris Adamo, of Miami\u2019s WhereBy.Us and The New Tropic<\/em>, emphasized that art measured against business objectives was always at the forefront of his mind.<\/p>\n

Turco got a bit tech-y when it came to delving into the precise targeting that clients now demand. He discussed \u201ccreative intelligence\u201d (a tool that self-optimizes according to how people are interacting with content) and \u201cconversational intelligence\u201d (in which key words lead to data that\u2019s useful for targeted ads). This in turn led Burrell-Stinson to bring up the RED (research, experimentation and development) \u201cjourney\u201d of users. \u201cDo they like long-form narrative?\u201d for example. Then WP BrandStudio will use that knowledge to create an ad specifically for them. Through the company\u2019s \u201caudience insights\u201d team she\u2019s able to relay precise numbers to her clients. (And if you haven\u2019t figured it out by now, it\u2019s no longer possible to read an article without the article reading you.) <\/p>\n

Adamo noted that asking folks to join Facebook groups is a great way to find out exactly what people like — and then develop content for them. This prompted Turco to suggest another useful way to learn what the audience wants — by \u201cjust fucking asking.\u201d He spoke of putting a video up on his site, then urging viewers to take a survey about it. In general, video is a winning format for Vox because of the ubiquity of smartphones. Technologies like AR and VR — which can\u2019t be scaled for his clients\u2019s needs yet — are formats he tends to avoid. That said, Turco admitted he did recently create an immersive experience for MGM Grand, which had already proclaimed itself the \u201cfuture of entertainment.\u201d <\/p>\n

After Gocheva agreed that events are the \u201chot new thing\u201d Burrell-Stinson disclosed that she had once used AR for an oil and gas client. In that case the written piece was created first — the AR experience only delivered as a follow-up. (In other words, the article pushed the reader to go experience the tech.) Both Burrell-Stinson and Gocheva stressed the \u201cWhy us?\u201d (and not Cond\u00e9 Nast, for example) factor when taking on clients. This prompted Gocheva to reminisce about a Bosch campaign to which she added a \u201cTimes<\/em>-ian thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pieske noted that brands seek out VICE for their \u201cpunk rock roots,\u201d and because they want the \u201cshit scared out of them a bit.\u201d Adamo, on the other hand, said that he connects clients to mission-driven stories. For example, in one successful campaign he found local neighborhood tales for Lyft. \u201cHow do we measure success?\u201d Gocheva then queried the panel, especially when \u201caward-winning content doesn\u2019t necessarily equal performance.\u201d To which Burrell-Stinson replied that business comes first. She has to make the numbers. KPIs are important. (By now my head was spinning with tech talk, so naturally I used Google to find out that she was referring to \u201ckey performance indicators.\u201d) Turco theorized that a connection to the public is key: \u201cDid we provide a service to the audience?\u201d Adamo quickly concurred, adding that, \u201cIf they are happy then the brand is happy.\u201d Pieske nodded, saying that she doesn\u2019t want to \u201cbake pies that people spit out.\u201d <\/p>\n

Gocheva then closed with a subject that seemed a core belief of all the panel participants: it\u2019s important not to trick people. Branding, in other words, should always be transparent. Which got me thinking that what is so disturbing about that notion is that we\u2019re not disturbed. Media these days is forever about making the audience happy, full of desire. Online journalism has become about pleasing above pushing critical thinking. Call me old-fashioned, but attending \u201cDisruptive Tech\u201d proved to be one heck of an insightful, downright scary peek behind the curtain. And into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth\u2019s \u201cpsychedelic documentary\u201d Awavena, an inner trip that I\u2019d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt\u2019s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":106440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_column":0},"categories":[3,9278],"tags":[19632,19633,18498,13791,19634,18499,4695,13036,15861],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106439,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106426\/revisions\/106439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}