Credit: youtubeplannedparenthoodaction
After putting on virtual reality goggles and headphones, Across the Line transports you into the perspective of a visitor to a women’s health clinic. You find yourself surrounded everywhere you turn by angry abortion protesters, yelling in your face and condemning you to hellfire. The protesters are created with CGI, but the audio is all too real—recorded in the field at actual clinic protests. The short, described as a “documentary hybrid,” was a collaboration between Milwaukee companies 371 Productions and Custom Reality Services, Emblematic Group in Los Angeles, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Across the Line screened as part of the virtual reality programming at Sundance Film Festival and is now heading to South by Southwest later this month. Jeff Fitzsimmons, of Custom Reality Services, explains how the project came about.
How did this collaboration happen?
I had been tinkering with 360 video and film for VR [virtual reality] for a couple years. I met Brad Lichtenstein, who runs 371 Productions, and we started to realize the social-justice documentary work he’s been doing could be a good combination with this new medium that gives you more of an experience of being in an environment than a flat film. He had done some work in the past with Planned Parenthood and we started talking with them about Across the Line. We started working on that and met with Emblematic Group in Los Angeles. Nonny de la Peña runs that group and she is considered the godmother of VR. She’s been doing this a long time and has done impactful work using volumetric CG where you can walk around.
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You were able to show this at Sundance. What was the reception there?
It was really amazing to see how people react. It’s different from when you have people go into a film and people laugh or clap in the right place; you get that kind of feedback, but this was one on one, so we could talk to them ahead of time and afterwards. People were moved in a lot of different ways. There were people that would come out of it crying. A couple people just took it off—it was too intense. There’s something about having people yelling in your face, treating you that way, that makes you start to internalize this as a personal experience.
What’s next for the project?
We were just accepted to South by Southwest, so we’re heading there in a couple weeks. Right now we’re converting to Google Cardboard, a mobile platform that Google created where you take a piece of cardboard that you fold together; it has lenses in it and you stick your phone in it. It uses the motion-tracking function of the phone to give you head tracking. You won’t have the walk-around effect, but many more people with have access to that.
Is this someday going to replace movies and music videos? Is VR the future?
Yes, but I think it’ll coexist in the way that there are still books, there is still radio. I think this will become another distinct medium. We’re at the “Pong” version of this right now. It’s rudimentary, but people are pushing it forward. It’s going to affect education in profound ways; it’s going to give us ways to connect and learn we haven’t had before, and ways of telling stories that no one right now has a clue what the potential might be. Right now, we’re asking, “What can we really do with this?” I like to say it’s not comparable to the invention of television—it’s comparable to the invention of electricity.
You can find out more about Across the Line at 371productions.com.
