Virtual reality is the 'ultimate empathy machine.' These experiences are more than documentaries. They're opportunities to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Virtual reality is a technology that could actually allow you to connect on a real human level, soul-to-soul, regardless of where you are in the world.
Virtual reality is already affecting people on an emotional level much more than any other media, and it has the potential to scale: all you need is an attachment for your cellphone, and you can have this experience.
In documentaries, you're confronted with reality; you can not manipulate or move it.
It connects humans to other humans in a profound way that I've never seen before in any other form of media. And it can change people's perception of each other. And that's how I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world.
My interest in Virtual Reality (VR) films began for me when I began a fellowship with MIT's Open Documentary Lab. It was a profound experience to be on MIT's campus one day a week and to enter a new world of storytelling where breaking convention and traditional methods were expected. This was deeply challenging and inspiring.
In virtual reality, it's more about capturing and creating worlds that people are inhabiting. You really are a creator in the way the audience lives within the world that you are building.
That's why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think.
In the past, before phones and the Internet, all communication was face-to-face. Now, most of it is digital, via emails and messaging services. If people were to start using virtual reality, it would almost come full circle.
The virtual world can never be a substitute for real world experience. And the more it takes over our lives, the more we forget to feel the sun on our skin, the more we forget that there is an entire universe to be discovered even during a 10 minute walk to work.
In virtual reality, we're placing the viewer inside a moment or a story... made possible by sound and visual technology that's actually tricking the brain into believing it's somewhere else.
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