![]() ![]() I am the writer-director of Spheres, Songs of Space-Time, which is making its premiere here at the Sundance Film Festival. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. So this interview with Eliza happened on Saturday, Januat the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. ![]() So this, to me, I think is a really interesting beginning of a conversation of scientific visualizations matched with storytelling and turning that journey into a black hole and to kind of like a metaphoric hero's journey. And then what it might feel like is something that requires a lot of artistic interpretation. This is something that nobody's actually ever seen what a black hole looks like, but this is kind of like what the physicists and the scientists say that this is what it might look like, at least. So for me, what's really interesting is that you have this collaboration between science and art, and you have this kind of poetic interpretation of what it might feel like to be able to actually go into a black hole. And I could see why you'd want to do one of either way. I enjoyed it a lot because, you know, how many times do you get to have an opportunity to see what a black hole looks like, but also to have this journey inside of one? So you could either listen to the rest of this podcast, there's going to be some descriptions of the experience, or you could wait to see it. This is an experience that was really quite compelling. And I'm not quite sure exactly what that means exactly, because I know that it's going to be released on Oculus, and so it was in partnership with both Intel and Oculus, it's going to be released on Oculus, and I'm not sure if that means it's going to be licensed to be appearing in different museums, or what else that means beyond the distribution channel of Oculus. And that includes both this Sphere's Song of Spacetime, as well as two additional chapters that Eliza talks about. That wasn't specified, although VRScout is reporting that the number was around $1.4 million. It was acquired by City Lights for over a million dollars. And this piece made news as one of the first big acquisitions to come out of Sundance. ![]() Now, Eliza collaborated with a number of different people on this piece, including Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures. She did Spheres, Songs of Spacetime, which is a journey into a black hole. So I'm going to kick things off with Liza McNitt. So I just got back from the Sundance Film Festival last week and was able to see all of the 24 different experiences that were in the Sundance New Frontier, and I did about 22 interviews totaling about 12 hours that I'm going to be unpacking here on the Voices of VR podcast that's really exploring the future of immersive and interactive storytelling. Hello, my name is Kent Bai, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. This is a listener supported podcast, considering making a donation to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreonįacebook Twitter Reddit Email Rough Transcript Here’s a promo for SPHERES produced by Sundance. The acquisition deal by CityLights was secured on Kaleidoscope’s funding platform, and includes this first chapter shown at Sundance as well as two additional chapters yet to be produced, and will be released later this year by Oculus. I had a chance to sit down with McNitt at Sundance in order to talk about the inspiration for this project, her journey into creative explorations of science, the challenges of depicting gravitational lensing in Unity, what’s known and not known about black holes, how listening to gravitational waves for the first time inspired the sound design, and crafting an embodied hero’s journey story in collaboration with Protozoa Pictures. There were a number of scientific collaborators including the National Academy of Sciences and physicists who study black holes, and so the VR producers had to come up with creative interpretations of mathematical descriptions of the edges of spacetime that push the frontiers of our scientific knowledge. SPHERES made news for being acquired for a 7-figure deal, and it represents a unique collaboration between science and art. It’s a hero’s journey that provides an embodied experience of the evolution of a star from birth to death with a poetic story written and directed by Eliza McNitt, narrated by Jessica Chastain, and produced by Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures. Sundance New Frontier had a solid line-up of VR experiences this year with a number of immersive storytelling innovations including SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime, which takes you on a journey into the center of a black hole. ![]()
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