Baobab Studios talks about the development of “Crow: The Legend”, a movie that deserves to be watched in virtual reality

What gave you the idea of Crow? It seems different from your previous works…

When I was a boy my grandfather was a cattle rancher in the Flint Hills of southeastern Kansas. He was always interested in the history of the region and the indigenous people that lived there before him. He passed his interests to his daughter, my mother. Consequently, I grew up surrounded by Native American paintings, rugs, books and artifacts and my family’s enthusiasm for Native American culture managed to rub off on me.

When, as an adult, I came across the legend about Crow (sometimes called Raven) I was struck by what a great story it was and surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. Its themes of sacrifice and community are timeless but somehow particularly relevant today. It was one of the first stories that Baobab wanted to take on, but it was simply too ambitious in its scope at the time.

Finally, in mid-2017 we decided we were ready to embrace the challenge. We brought on Native American advisors to make sure we remained true to the story’s roots. Randy Edmonds, the narrator, is an 84-year-old Kiowa-Caddo tribal elder who is a crusader for Native American rights and founder of the National Urban Indian Council. Sarah Eagle Heart, who plays Luna, is the CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy. In addition, Baobab partnered with Native Americans in Philanthropy to create a Native American Indigenous Youth Fellowship to shine a light on indigenous storytellers.

We learned from Randy and Sarah that in the 19th and early 20th centuries Native American children were forced into re-education camps, taught that their culture was “pagan” and were even punished for telling their stories. This made us feel even stronger about bringing the story of Crow to light.

How have you applied the lessons learned with Invasion and Asteroids into Crow?

Baobab’s first VR story, INVASION!, was created before there were hand controllers for VR. Still, we wanted to create an interactive character-driven experience, so we focused on what we could do without hand controllers. You begin on a frozen lake. You have the body of a white bunny. Another bunny hops over to you and looks you right in the eye. Because everything you see is calculated in real time – just milliseconds per frame. The bunny can adjust to your location. That is, if you move, the bunny will follow you and maintain eye contact. We were surprised by the audience reaction. Viewers spoke to the bunny, tried to reach out and touch her and even mimicked the bunny’s playful hops. This is not the usual way an audience reacts to a character on a movie screen. We realized that there was something unique and powerful in VR that comes from being able to communicate naturally with virtual characters and interact with them and their worlds.

With our next project, ASTEROIDS!, hand controllers had arrived and we eagerly integrated them into the experience. This opened things up for much more interactivity. You can move around inside a spaceship, using your hand controllers to activate the ship’s components, or even to toss a ball for the ship’s robot mascot. Most importantly, the choices you make regarding how and when to interact matter. Your actions may not necessarily change the arc of the story, but they do change the way the other characters feel about you, and, consequently, how you feel about the other characters and yourself. We thought of our approach not in terms of the interactivity triggering branching narratives but in terms of triggering branching emotions.

Interaction that involves pressing buttons and activating gadgets makes sense for ASTEROIDS!, but CROW: THE LEGEND was going to need a different approach. VR hand controllers are loaded with buttons and triggers. I didn’t want the viewer to be concerned about button-pushing mechanics – mechanics that have the potential to distract the viewer from the story and characters. We needed a solution for interactivity that felt effortless and magical. So, our team came up with a gestural approach – no buttons needed.

Describe me some key points of the experience from a direction standpoint

My job as a director is the same as it always is, to tell a great story well with characters that audiences can care deeply about. It doesn’t matter how cool the tech is or how pretty the images are, if you have a lousy story and unlikable characters.

One of many ways I try to accomplish my overarching goals in VR specifically is to inspire audiences to make the completely free choice to look where I want them to look when I want them to look there. Explicit control of what the viewer is seeing comes for free with cinema. There is a rectangle in front of the viewer and the filmmaker can put exactly what they want in that rectangle. In VR, there is no rectangle. There is no screen – no “fourth wall”. The viewer can choose to look wherever they want. But if there is something going on that I want the viewer to see, then I need to do what I can to make sure the viewer isn’t going to choose to look at something else instead, like the pretty clouds rolling by.

Of course, I could simply wait for the viewer to look in the “right” place, but then I must sacrifice other aspects of storytelling, like rhythm and pacing. If I can, in effect, trick the viewer, like the magician tricks an audience, to look at the thing I want them to look at then I can maintain a degree of control over pacing as I can be confident that the viewer is not missing important moments in the story.

What are the lessons learned while developing Crow? How did you create both a VR and 2D version? And how are the versions different?

When talking to Randy and Sarah, we learned that Native Americans who were forced into re-education camps were told not to tell these stories. We felt it was even more important to bring these wonderful stories to light. We also felt it was important to tell this story in both 2D and in VR. In virtual reality, we could make you a character in the experience, making you feel even more connected to “the 2-legged, the 4-legged, the winged, the Sun and the Moon”, as Sarah Eagle Heart described her experience. We also recognized that its mythic scope, scale, and universal themes were a perfect fit for classic cinema and that by simultaneously animating this project in both mediums audiences would have more opportunities to experience this timeless Native American tale. Audiences can choose how they want to experience the story: as an active participant in VR, or as a film goer, where they can simply sit back and let the story wash over them.

In VR, the viewer plays the role of “The Spirit of the Seasons” who has come to Earth for the first time. The other characters cannot see The Spirit of the Seasons, but they can see what the spirit does. With a simple wave of your hands, you can make the flowers grow, the snows fall, and the winds blow. You can even play the “music of the universe” in much the same way that a conductor conducts an orchestra. Not only does this feel powerful, intuitive and effortless, but it also helps the viewer focus on what really matters — – the story, the characters and the fact that what the viewer does really matters to the animals’ lives.

A big challenge for us was the overall look of CROW. We were going for an illustrative, storybook feel. For us, this meant a look that was organic and “soft”. But it is difficult to have the complexity of an organic environment when you are rendering 90 images a second in real time, twice, once for each eye.

We could not simply slap a post process on the images like you might do in a 2D film, because the world must look great and consistent from any angle or distance. Our artists and engineers worked side-by-side to create the soft feel we were going for and be able to render the images on the fly.

We used Unity to render the 2D version, too. But since those images didn’t have to be created in real-time, we could add detail that you expect to see in a film, like the depth of field. And, of course, we could use the language of cinema to cut from different camera angles.

What would you advise to people wanting to do storytelling in VR? John Gaeta says that the error that many VR storytellers are doing is trying to take cinema grammar into VR, but these are two different technologies and VR should find its grammar. What’s your stance on this?

I agree that there is a great deal to discover in VR. It’s like we have landed on the beach of an undiscovered country and beyond this beach is a vast jungle waiting to be explored. Who knows what we may find in there?

I don’t think that this is the time to advise anyone about what NOT to do. I don’t think anyone knows the best way to explore this jungle. Mistakes are inevitable and are only problems if we don’t learn from them. I certainly brought my knowledge of cinema with me to this medium and I have tried many things that I thought would work and was proven wrong. But this is the process.

Is it possible for a company to survive doing storytelling VR content at this moment?

Well, we are here as well as others like our friends at Felix & Paul.

Are you also doing AR content? And what?

We are an immersive animation studio so you can expect AR to be a part of that.

What will be your next project?

I can’t get into details of our next project yet. But you can be sure we will always try something new with each project we do.

Something more you want to add to this interview?

It’s important in both animation and VR that we have talent of diverse backgrounds and that we tell stories from different perspectives. There are very few stories told from indigenous worldview, which is focused on the community vs Western worldview which tends to focus on the individual. We purposely cast minorities and advocates of underrepresented communities in media because representation in media is so powerful.

We enjoyed working in Unity to create both the VR and 2D in real-time.

Here’s a link to the 2D movie: http://bit.ly/2RX73ZP

Here’s a link to the VR Oculus Rift experience: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1939359989460713/