Carol Dalrymple - Launch Pad - Falling Prison Imagery VR/Spirit Run VR/LaMaestraPeace 21 AR/VR mural

[ic3sixtycarol]

WEEK 1 and Intro

Hello & thank you for reading this long post!  I will try to be more brief on future posts. Here is info about 1) a project I feel compelled to research for Launch Pad 2) the project I proposed to Launch Pad  3)  very brief intro to La MaestraPeace 21, an AR/VR project in development, born of Launch Pad.

I am interested in developing stories in VR that, while based on real-life captures, work with slippage of the user as protagonist, and play with VR’s potential for telling stories that evolve within the user’s personal reaction in order to expose the larger human experience. Real world plus gaming tools, hopefully one day haptics.

**The largest obstacle I am facing is access to a camera system, along with knowing best which camera would fit these projects. Please advise!!**

1) Spirit Run: First Nation Suicide Crisis VR Trailer/experience. 

Suicide among North America First Nation youth (Native American Nations in the US/Aboriginal Nations in Canada) has skyrocketed and is in places estimated to be as high as five to eight times the national average. These are often very small and rural communities. Most are kids who do not have drug or alcohol problems; it has become customary.  The impact is alarming and I am shocked by how routinely this is overlooked by mainstream media. In one community, the elders take turn patrolling the “jumping bridge”. I worry for kids and communities. It is urgent that this story be told, and it is one which can be effectively told through VR, from tribes- for tribes, and connecting elders to youth and youth to elders. This project interviews representative youth and elders from select tribes across the US and Canada about suicide, loss of culture, reclaiming culture, connecting to past and language, etc., and weaves the story line through their voices, as well as imagery from their historic or reservation lands.

Challenges: camera system, on-hand, for travel to often remote places. Travel/crew support. Time considerations? Possibly only time to complete a VR short of project for LaunchPad.

2) The project I proposed to Oculus Launch Pad is “Falling - The Importance of Nature for Human Existence”.  It is inspired by the work of Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, a world-renowned pioneer in forest canopy ecological research. Her project to bring nature imagery to inmates in solitary confinement was recognized by Time Magazine as “One of the Best Ideas of 2014.”  “The Nature Imagery Project” is  a trial program in two SuperMax prisons in the US. 

 The “Falling” VR experience is basically a triptych of Prison, Blue Room (nature projection cell), and Cloud Forest, where story evolves within the user’s personal reaction. The project is designed to go beyond just ‘creating immersion’. It’s about establishing immersion and using that to simulate something which audiences don't often see: limitations on freedom, under-stimulation, arbitrariness. The narrative arc of this project is crafted through the circular sensory experience.  The repetitive form of the story is used to create an identification between user and protagonist; this is also why virtual reality, game and immersive sound technologies are so important. More than about a prisoner walled away from nature, Falling has broader implications on humans facing a world of deforestation and climate change.

Live action shooting takes place at the Intensive Management Unit at Snake River Correctional Institution in Malheur County, Oregon, USA, the first test prison of the “Blue Room” in this program, and at the Monteverde Canopy, Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, the Rainforest, specifically the Monteverde Canopy in Costa Rica where this takes place, is just entering its rainy season, and it will be getting more foggy, rainy, and dangerous to climb. It is possible to perhaps develop the first two aspects of this experience, the prison solitary confinement and the blue room. 

The fun part of this project will also be to see how to move the user from cell to blue room to rainforest. There are many possibilities, from simple scene changes to putting the user on rails between guards and dragging them to another room. Please contact me if you have ideas!

Challenges: camera system. Travel/crew support. Weather obstacles, filming logistics. Movement  from prison to blue room.

3) La Maestrapiece 21 is an AR/VR art project  in development.  It is being developed by myself and Charity Everett after meeting at Launch Pad, along with AR artist Luska (who I met at SoCal VR film school). We will be using the mediums of augmented and virtual reality to bring attention to issues that affect women. It’s exciting, but probably won’t be ready for this launchpad so I won’t go into it completely here yet. Stay tuned for fun updates though!

MY GOALS THIS WEEK:

1) ** most importantly reach out for advice and potential sources of a camera for Spirit Run. 

2) conduct a first interview (traditional 2D unfortunately lol) on the suicide epidemic among the Shoshone tribes of Nevada/Utah/Idaho.

3) explore my options for “Falling” with Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, see what might be possible to achieve with logistical and weather constraints etc. 

As with everyone in launchpad, I am sure time is a big obstacle but I find strength in everyone’s ability to be creative.  Thank you for reading, and for any advice you might have!!

[DrSzilak]

I showed my sister, Maya, Altspace VR and gave her a Gear. She thinks this is going to be great for prisons. Even though the U.S. system is more punitive than rehabilitative, education, arts, group therapy, travel all have potential and low cost (because people dont need to leave the cell) to change how people come out of prison...Keep up the good work and please stay in touch. I really want to see what you do! 

[ic3sixtycarol]

Week 12

Video and audio week.

I’ve been in self imposed technical workshop on editing/exporting to different formats in VR. I found a GREAT article from the Purple Pill VR. They say it best: ‘One of the most time consuming and frustrating tasks we encountered during our first 360 3D video productions was finding the optimal encoding settings for each of the currently available VR headsets. Each platform supports different resolutions, frame rates, codecs, and bitrates. This article explains the settings we started with, what we learned from analyzing some of the legends in the field (like Chris Milk and Felix & Paul), and finally we’ll share a simple yet powerful free tool we built to help you encode your VR video content with the best possible settings.” This article is definitely worth checking out. 

http://www.purplepillvr.com/best-encoding-settings-resolution-for-4k-360-3d-vr-videos/

Decisions/progress on Indigenous suicide:

I cut together a trailer from the interview of Arnold Thomas that we did early on during this mentorship (with a Theta and traditional camera). Arnold is a Shoshone healer and survivor of a suicide attempt, blind as a result. He also suffered the suicide of his father, and even recently and many others in his community. He travels throughout North America to counsel tribes and other organizations. With the footage I played with mixing flat and 360 elements in Premiere. Without enough compelling 360 elements, set up on location, I don’t think this is strong enough for a demo. Because the reservation is in a very remote location and quite far to get to, it’s just not possible to set something up with Arnold to get that B-Roll. Using a bunch of traditionally sized footage in the 360 space just seems not worth the time, as the point is to develop ideas in minimally 360, if not VR. I will be going back out there in October, so that will be the next shoot for the trailer.

It’s fun working with a HMD editing. There is a lot of weirdness and clunkiness to workout with the premiere VR viewers I’ve tried (Mettle and Dashboard). Lots of problem solving. Lot’s of going back and forth with files to the phone for the Gear VR, which is so time consuming, and I’m continually having to throw everything off my phone to make room for new files. I’ve basically deleted all my personal photos and video to get more room. Loving it though. 🙂

Falling:

How to make the most of the time left? Though I thought it not possible to even start this project at first, and still true, it has been really enlightening to use the time and the mentorship as a way to explore the concepts in a demo. 

Audio: Looking for pro tools chops I met with an interested sound engineer and we began to investigate different approaches to spatial audio. Though we had some productive sessions, for the FB Spatial Audio workstation we have to work in a studio with Pro Tools HD (and their hardware). Normally the studio I work with to do documentary work is very accommodating of projects, but when I contacted them there was a lot of concern of how the plugin or workflow would affect the room. Since I could not definitively tell them how it worked, we had to scrap this plan. So frustrating. In case my hardware dreams come true, I’m adding Pro Tools HD to the list.  Audio is a HUGE part of this experience, and spatial audio production is something I really want to do. 

Video: Cutting sequences together of scenes shot in the prison. Exploring whether or not I can get these into Unity in spheres. Lots of technical hurdles. All very interesting. My resources of time and favors are dwindling.

[ic3sixtycarol]

Week 13

This is my final Launch Pad post! It has been, to say the least, an interesting and enlightening process. When I look back at these three projects I have been talking about, and the two demos that I mocked up, it becomes obvious to me that my overriding interest is to find ways to bring real world contextual spaces into VR; to create tangibility in the VR experiences.

Although I had turned away from my original proposal for lack of resources, an unexpected turn for me came half way through with the re-focus on a demo build. Being able to focus on the demo allowed me to broaden my toolset as a director - to experiment with non-cinematic story telling techniques (i.e. building a scene in CGI, and also by using photogrammetry, etc.), and to delve deeper into the techniques of VR: Unity, Spatial audio, etc. I certainly I wish I had gone into LaunchPad knowing this, and able to start right away with demo production. While it has been rough on my personal critical self to turn in less than “perfect” work, I do think it’s a good reflection of my process, and good for me to let go of previous conceptions of art, to experiment and to focus on vision. And it has also been a lot of fun. I really enjoy working in this space and it has been great to experiment with tech and tools. It has been inspiring and educational to be in the middle of this cross-section of the VR development community: game designers to interactive artists and everything in between. Regardless of the outcome of my application I have greatly valued this opportunity and its challenges. I look forward to sharing what I have learned with the communities I work with.

THANK YOU OCULUS, AMY, LAIRD, and my fellow Launch Pad group for this amazing experience which has only reinforced by love for this medium. 

-----------------------------------

What did I wish for? Number one funding wish list for funding was for project hardware: camera systems for VR and photogrammetry.

A short break down of the final two demos:

Demo 1: The demo for Falling: The Importance of Nature for Human Existence is a test of  the tryptic spaces, designed to explore the user’s reaction to each.  What it shows is a natural evolution of color space and the intensity of the scenes. It was shot in a closed-down Juvenile detention facility. Access was very limited, and we only had use of one cell and the hallway and we had to quickly asses the space on first view, and work with available light etc.  Because of the limitations of time and resources we were not able to color correct or paint out stands and shadows etc., or create a spatialized audio experience.  The demo build is also constructed using simple dissolves between scenes, with no dolly movement down the hallway or in any scenes. The eventual project will add movement:  around the cell, restricted “on rails” movement in the hallway, etc. The nature scenes were shot to give an example of color space; the eventual nature scenes will be in the appropriate location and more detailed according to the script. 

Exploring mediums: in planning the demo, we also shot the cell with DSLRs in order to try to make a model using photogrammetry. Because of all the variations of white and grays, this was not successful,. We also recreated the cell-hallway-blue room scene in CGI in Unity, but found that the result was sterile. Surprisingly the 360 video turned out to be the better model.

Demo 2: Though crudely shown in Unity, with my novice Unity skills and built for a DK2,  this demo shows the vision of a very exciting project: La MaestraPeace 21 VR . This project transforms the MaestraPeace, mural found on the Women’s Building in San Francisco, into a Virtual public artwork. A demo model of the building was built through photogrammetry, and was very helpful to see what issues, including physical obstacles /post production workflow would be faced when producing the final model. The demo reflects the basic layer of the future VR experience, the ability to walk around and experience the mural in a 3D space. The VR mural, even with the aberrations and dripping textures found in our GPS-less capture, is captivating. 

Exploring mediums: the photogrammetry capture gave more flexibility and detail then did a test 360 camera shoot, reinforcing this path as the best medium for the experience. 

[aleemhossain]

So great that you got access to that facility!