Future of documentary 1:
VR documentary, Possibility of
new experience method
KANG Hee-jeong Editor
John Grierson, the founder of documentary film theory, defines documentary as a creative work of approaching facts. Controversially, <Nanook Of The North, 1922> by Robert Joseph Flaherty, known as the starting point of a full-fledged documentary film, remained a problematic film that contained manipulated directing and fiction. The name of the hero was also false and his wife in the movie was not his real wife as a result of playing it back in a more uncivilized method than a real method, the movie was a hit, but it broke the principle of pursuing the truth that documentary should keep.
Still, we still call <Nanook Of The North, 1922> which is the work about a century ago documentary, the belief in the genre of documentary is firm. Sadly, this is a boring result of indifference. Only the concept of reminding us of the word documentary has survived like mythology but, it has become a unpopular religion interested by only a few people. This has to do with the attitude of the public consuming the facts. People do not go to theater to see news. The reason for not looking for a movie to see documentary is similar. Outside the theater, things are not be better. People with equipment like a smart phone went beyond the apathy of non-fiction videos to a state of insensitivity.
The intervention came in the process of finding alternatives to journalism. It was an approach reminiscent of Brother Lumiere’s <The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, 1895> rather than <Nanook Of The North, 1922>. When people who had run out of the theater saw the movement of the train on the big screen, they had a sensory experience.
<Hunger in Los Angeles, 2013)
<Hunger in Los Angeles, 2013> published in 2013 by Emblematic which is an American VR documentary production company is a computer-generated VR documentary that allows viewers to experience the horrors of the poor in the United States. When a viewer uses a head-mounted display(HMD) for VR, he/she will experience a visual experience that directly faces the scene. This gave a new impression to people, Emblematic continued to publish <Project Syria>, and proved the possibility of VR documentary.<Project Syria> is a work to recreate a scene where a rocket ship fell to civilians in Aleppo Syria. It was easy to get through news usually, but the work created a turning point that transforms the viewer’s role from that of observer to participant through a completely different sensory expression.
Though there are a lot of technical challenges to solve, the genre of VR documentary has begun to include various narrative beyond journalism. Director Kathryn Ann Bigelow, who won the Academy Award for Best Director for <The Hurt Locker, 2008> published <The Protectors : Walk in the Ranger’s Shoes>(2017) which he shot the stories of elephant ivory poachers and sheriffs in Congo, Africa with VR through Tribeca Film Festival, Paul McCartney recorded the performance in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 14, 2014 with VR and created it so that fans can experience the performance with smartphone application. Discovery Channel also offers VR application, you can experience the natural spaces of all over the world at 360 degrees anytime, anywhere. As the supply of VR contents increase, Amsterdam, the Netherlands opened the world’s first VR movie theater. It has over 50 VR stations in a spacious space like a cafe so that anyone can enjoy VR contents freely. VR videos have become popular at a high speed.
<The Protectors : Walk in the Ranger’s Shoes>(2017)
If the shock that Brother Lumiere’s <The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, 1895> gave the audience was the result of a kind of illusion caused by inexperience, VR documentary has brought about the expansion of time and space to experience reality. People were not actually there at that time but it is the core of possible digital reality, they can experience this in the most similar sense. Of course, VR is not exclusive to documentary. Its active use of value is realized in the field of games, the same goes for movies and animation. The key is how documentary filmmakers respond to the arrival of new video grammar.
The fact that VR documentary adds elements of sensual experience does not mean that it is not free from the worry about the selection of existing materials and the way of production. It is no exaggeration to say that the production process has become more difficult, including the limitation of the shooting method and the complexity of the post-production process. First of all, people will start to watch documentaries on their smartphones, and be more interested in what they can experience rather than the message itself.
Back to the beginning of the article, looking back at the definition of John Grierson’s documentary, from the word ‘creative work’ approaching ‘fact’, it seems important to focus on where to focus. The fact to be revealed in the world of digital reality will come closer to hyper reality[1], the creative work will be placed in a situation where people need to lean more on the power of technology than on human power. If so, then perhaps the question of how to approach the ‘fact’ and the ‘creative work’ is more important, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing how documentarists are going to lead on the possibility of VR documentary.
[note 1] The phenomenon virtual reality controls, replaces and reproduce reality and the relationship of reality is reversed. Concepts from the book 《Simulacre and Simulation》 by Jean Baudrillard