{"id":107695,"date":"2019-06-19T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/?p=107695"},"modified":"2019-09-09T14:11:58","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T18:11:58","slug":"from-all-angles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/107695-from-all-angles\/","title":{"rendered":"From All Angles: The Groundbreaking Volumetric Filmmaking of Scatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you look at any discipline through the lens of emerging technology, you\u2019ll find a group of people who are exploring what\u2019s next for that discipline,\u201d said James George, cofounder\/CEO of Scatter, sitting across from me in its Bushwick studios. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s filmmaking.\u201d George and his eventual Scatter cofounder and CPO, Alexander Porter, whose background is in photography and documentary film, began collaborating\u2014hacking and modifying cameras\u2014back in 2010. \u201cI reached this place of feeling constrained with those [conventional filmmaking] tools,\u201d Porter told me. The third cofounder and CMO, Yasmin Elayat, a trained computer scientist and artist, joined the team in 2016, and they formed Scatter. While many companies are hopping on the virtual and augmented reality train of late, Scatter is one looking to advance the art of filmmaking. With its volumetric filmmaking tool, Depthkit, the partners are now placing this advanced technology into the hands of other creators.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

George described volumetric filmmaking as \u201cthe love child of filmmaking and video games.\u201d It has the same experiential aspects of a game, he said, but with \u201creal people and places.\u201d In other words, a video game uses computer-generated imagery, while volumetric filmmaking uses imagery photographed from the real world, imagery that is then rendered into a 3D space in which the viewer can freely move.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During my visit to Scatter\u2019s office, the team walked me through how Depthkit, its volumetric downloadable software, actually works. Standing in the middle of their green screen setup, they live-recorded my movements and then dropped the footage into Depthkit. They removed the background in the space, refined the edges of my virtual image and exported it as an mp4 file. From there, I could edit the footage, add audio, color correct it and drop it into a pre-built landscape through software like Unity. Soon, I\u2019ll be able to easily share the finished project\u2014the company is building tools, including a recent collaboration with Vimeo, designed to enable anyone to access\\\uf87fthe project interactively on the web.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Depthkit workflow is familiar to anyone who knows film postproduction and friendly to those who aren\u2019t the most tech savvy (admittedly, me). \u201cIt\u2019s our incentive to educate people and to create the tools and share the tools,\u201d Porter said. Added George, \u201cSetting up the infrastructure is millions of dollars for the studio, and therefore, they have to charge thousands of dollars a minute to process the footage.\u201d But because Scatter is distributing software, the price point is much lower. \u201cAccessibility is baked into it for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

The software, currently in beta, is sold on a subscription basis. There\u2019s a free tier that doesn\u2019t allow footage export and then monthly $9.99 and $39.99 tiers. A Studio tier for larger teams and pro users will be announced in the future. And, of course, Depthkit is simply software; specialized hardware, such as Kinect, Structure Core or Intel RealSense, is required to shoot the footage.<\/p>\n

For Scatter\u2019s George, VR is the medium of the moment. He asked, \u201cHow do you tell the story of today?\u201d Acknowledging social media, the 2016 election and information warfare we\u2019re not even aware of, he says, \u201cWe are immersed in some kind of virtual reality even if we don\u2019t have a headset on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scatter began collaborating with filmmakers and other artists when Porter and George worked with filmmaker Alex Gibney on Zero Days, <\/i>his 2016 documentary about cyber warfare. They pitched Gibney the concept of retelling his story in virtual reality as a volumetric film. Using Depthkit, Zero Days VR, <\/i>directed by Elayat, showcased the digitally obscured testimony of an NSA whistleblower. It premiered at Sundance in 2017 and also won the team an Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary. Scatter followed Zero Days VR<\/i> with Blackout, <\/i>an ongoing, participatory, nonfiction experience that takes place in a New York City subway, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Most recently, Scatter collaborated with a team that included VR pioneer Nonny de la Pe\u00f1a on REACH<\/i>, an interactive installation that premiered in the 2019 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier section.<\/p>\n

At the Scatter offices, I was able to try out Blackout<\/i>. I put on a Vive headset while Porter explained, \u201cThe interactive mechanic is your gaze and your body location and hands.\u201d As I walked through the experience, I saw people standing in a subway car. When I moved close to people, they responded by telling me their story. \u201cIt\u2019s like Sleep No More <\/i>[Punchdrunk\u2019s immersive, site-specific telling of Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth<\/i>] meets Humans of New York <\/i>meets Choose Your Own Adventure,<\/i>\u201d I thought, where you can stay with one character the entire time or bounce to different ones. Elayat described Blackout <\/i>as \u201creal New Yorkers talking about what it means to be American in Trump\u2019s America.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After visiting Scatter and experiencing its work, I still wondered whether I, a filmmaker without a background in technology or VR, could handle Depthkit on my own. Then, I was invited to join one of the first Depthkit workshops. The attendees ranged from a creative technologist to a community college teacher to an installation artist. The class covered lighting best practices, the Z parameters, sensors that shoot depth (like Kinect for Windows V2 or RealSense depth cameras) and what to have subjects wear. As we each stepped into the green screen, shooting footage for our test projects, we experimented with movement, just to see how the technology would capture our likenesses. Cory Allen, one of the instructors, has been involved in Depthkit\u2019s beta program, and he\u2019s available for hire. For example, he came onto Illya Szilak\u2019s Queerskins<\/i>, a beautiful narrative VR film shot with Depthkit, to consult and shoot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With each production, Scatter continues to refine its technology. In a culture that moves swiftly and wants instant results, the VR\/AR landscape can seemingly move at a glacial pace. But Porter is patient. He said, \u201cWe do think that this is a long project. As a form, as a medium, as a genre, it is totally in its infancy right now.\u201d As for the community, sharing information and discoveries only helps to move the discipline forward. \u201cIt\u2019s a community that is trying to push the boundaries more than anything,\u201d Elayat added. Independent film, similarly, has always been at the forefront of challenging barriers, creating space for new voices. With Scatter\u2019s mission to bring technology tools into the hands of filmmakers, the two worlds coalesce. When asked about the future of volumetric and immersive filmmaking, Porter admitted that it\u2019s still unclear, and that\u2019s exactly what makes it thrilling. \u201cWe\u2019re still finding the medium. In doing so, it will come into its own maturity. It\u2019ll transcend comparisons to past media.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you look at any discipline through the lens of emerging technology, you\u2019ll find a group of people who are exploring what\u2019s next for that discipline,\u201d said James George, cofounder\/CEO of Scatter, sitting across from me in its Bushwick studios. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s filmmaking.\u201d George and his eventual Scatter cofounder and CPO, Alexander Porter, whose background is in photography and documentary film, began collaborating\u2014hacking and modifying cameras\u2014back in 2010. \u201cI reached this place of feeling constrained with those [conventional filmmaking] tools,\u201d Porter told me. The third cofounder and CMO, Yasmin Elayat, a trained computer scientist and artist, joined the team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19572,"featured_media":107696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_column":0},"categories":[4,3407,9278],"tags":[20216,20217,20218,20215,20214,20201,15135],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107695"}],"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\/19572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107697,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107695\/revisions\/107697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}