View Conference 2018: Baobab Studios talks about the development of “Crow: The Legend”

Yesterday I’ve listened to a talk by Kane Lee regarding the VR animated short movie “Crow: The Legend” that Baobab Studio is going to release. The plot of the movie is:

The carefree forest animals imagine spring will last forever. However, winter comes and the animals soon realize that their lives are in danger. What they need is a hero; what they need is Crow: The Legend.

I was very interested in this talk because Baobab studio is one of the best VR animation studios out there and it has already been able to release cool titles like Invasion! or Asteroids! . So I was really excited to listen to Kane’s pieces of advice regarding the development of VR storytelling experiences. Unluckily, the talk has been a bit underwhelming, because:

• It was not full of pieces of advice, because it was more a presentation of “Crow: The Legend”;
• Shooting photos and videos were forbidden, so I have no way to show you anything about this premiere.

Anyway, there was something here and there that was worth sharing and so in the spirit of this series of posts about the View Conference, I want to make you feel as if you were with me and I will share with you what I’ve learned during this session. So, here you are the most interesting parts of the session:

• Baobab’s motto is “Bring out your sense of wonder and inspire you to dream”;
• At Baobab, they think that “Animation is art in motion“. Animation movies are creative projects that can make the user feel in another world;
• Stories can modify the chemistry of our brain: during a story, when there is a situation that is always becoming more complicated, the body releases cortisol, that is the stress hormone. When there is the final happy ending, there is a release of oxytocin, that is the love hormone. This shows how stories are very powerful: the brain thinks that they are real, and causes the same reactions that it triggers when such situations happen in real life;
• In VR, there is an even improved realism: it has been demonstrated that our brain can recall our memories of experiences lived in virtual reality as if they were experiences of things that we have lived in real life. If we mix the two previous points, we can understand that stories lived inside virtual reality are very powerful and very close to real-life experiences. And that’s why Baobab is so passionate to experiment with them;
• Every experience that Baobab develops always starts from the “why”, to then find a “how” it can be implemented. So they at first write the story, what is the mission of the main character and so on, and then with lots and lots of trials and errors, they find a way to tell this story in VR. So, from the points of view of both the writer and of the user, it is always storytelling that drives interactivity and not the other way around;
• Baobab will release in the upcoming weeks “Crow: the legend”, a short animation movie of around 20 minutes featuring the voices of popular characters like John Legend and Oprah Winfrey. The peculiarity of this cartoon is that it is made both for VR and 2D standard screens. Most probably this choice has been taken to give this movie a wider audience since VR at this moment is struggling. This of course made the creation of the movie more complicated because they had to make two version, one that was immersive and experiential and another one that was passive and cinematic;

  

• Kane showed us a particular scene of the movie, at first in its VR version and then in 2D. The two scenes, of course, felt very similar, but also somewhat different. In VR, the user is the camera, so everything is seen from this “static” point of view. But there is more interactivity: the user can see his hands (that are two tree branches in the movie) and also feels part of the action. In 2D the user is not part of the story, he/she is just a random spectator. But in 2D the direction of the movie can be done in a smarter way, with camera movements, close-ups on important details, camera rolls and so on. There is not a best solution: VR and 2D have their pros and their cons and in the end, experimenting a lot, it is possible to offer a satisfying experience for both. They will feel the same, but different… they will be like the same story felt from different points of view. It is also interesting to notice that the two stories evolve at a different pace: the VR experience lasts around 22min, while the 2D version only 15. Kane said that at this time, usually, VR versions are always slower, because they require the participation of the user in the story, that should live them in a comfortable way (e.g. to avoid motion sickness). But there are of course similarities between the two versions: both are storytelling experiences that tell the same story, so the starting “why” is the same, but the “how” is different, and both have been developed using Unity;
• Regarding the use of the game engine Unity, I’ve noticed that this is a choice that many VR storytellers are doing. And this shows us how the line between games and movies is becoming always more blurred;
• In virtual reality, to increase the presence, it is very important to use “eye contact”. If the characters look at you, and especially if they are able to keep looking at you even if you move inside the scene, if they talk directly with you, you will feel really part of the story. This is for instance what happens with the little bunny of Invasion!

  The player must feel connected to the virtual world, must be acknowledged by the characters in real time and he/she must have a role. The story designer should make the user feel part of the story, give him a role and so inspire him/her to act;

• Every action can be divided into three parts:
  • A trigger: that is an invitation to do something;
  • The action itself: the user actually to that thing;
  • The end: the action has been accomplished correctly and it’s time to pass on.

  The UX should be designed to acknowledge the user of these three different parts using audio and visual feedbacks: sounds, lights, reaction of characters and so on should all be used as tricks to help the user in performing the action in the correct way without breaking the magic of presence;

  

• Kane made a guy try a little piece of the Crow experience live on stage to also talk about audio. All the audio of an experience has to be designed in a harmonic way. There is a scene where the user has to fly in space and while he flies, he triggers some asteroids that start singing. But this “asteroids chorus” only sings over an already existing background music, just highlighting some traits of the music in a very harmonic way… they don’t start singing another song. This makes the experience more pleasant.

Kane closed the presentation saying us that “with animation and virtual reality, everything is possible” and then showing us the latest trailer of “Crow: The legend”. It was nice and I can’t wait to watch the whole movie 🙂

(Header image by Baobab Studio)