Tech Special: Chris Milk

Chris Milk has worked with Kanye West, so an attraction to alternate realities must be his thing. Breaking into VR with the award-winning The Wilderness Downtown for Arcade Fire, the director has since thrown himself behind the medium, starting his own VR production companies. He tells Simon Wakelin he’s making sure he’ll always be at the cutting edge of this future gold standard of storytelling.

Chris Milk has created a bevy of truly unforgettable videos over the years for the likes of artists such as U2, Kanye West, Chemical Brothers and more – but it wasn’t until the veteran music video director released The Wilderness Downtown for Arcade Fire that he began to embrace fresh, new ways of storytelling that led him into a career in virtual reality.

This interactive multimedia promo used what were emerging technologies back in 2010 – HTML5 and Google Chrome – to take users on an interactive journey back to their childhood home. The video won a Grand Prix at Cannes and was celebrated as one of TIME magazine’s 30 best music videos of all time. It lit a fire under Milk, pushing him to experiment with new media and uncover new ways of storytelling that would affect the audience in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Wandering the corridors of the University of Southern California one day, Milk discovered a prototype virtual reality rig and he hasn’t looked back since, embracing virtual reality as the future of storytelling. In 2014 he opened virtual reality film company Vrse (now called Within) with technologist Aaron Koblin, and VR production shop Vrse.works (renamed Here Be Dragons), co-founded with award-winning producer Patrick Milling Smith.

He also went on to create a number of immersive VR films, including The Displaced for The New York Times’ VR app, a groundbreaking VR effort revealing the lives of three children from South Sudan, Syria and Ukraine who have been forced to flee their homes due to the ravages of war. The touching film collected an Entertainment Lions Grand Prix award at Cannes this year, as well as recognition at the AICP Next Awards Best in Show.

Another collaboration with the United Nations takes viewers into the life of a 12-year-old Syrian girl living in a Jordanian refugee camp, while yet another follows a survivor in an Ebola-plagued village. These are all powerful, life affirming projects created in the magical realm of VR.

One thing is certain, VR is here to stay. Headsets from major manufacturers such as Oculus Rift, Sony and Google are widespread and signify a healthy trend, allowing users to try out the technology on affordable mass-market platforms.

Meanwhile, directing in VR is incredibly difficult; nothing like film. The adventure lies outside the frame, requiring a choreography of action to ‘inform’ viewers where to look.

Milk is the first to admit that the medium is new and that it will take time to decipher its storytelling language. As he notes, in VR today we’re still learning the grammar rather than writing in the actual language.

So, as VR continues its monumental growth, we reached out to Milk to get his thoughts on where the technology is today, and where it will go in the future…

With the rebranding of Vrse to Within and Vrse.works to Here Be Dragons, will there be a change in the type of content you create?

The name changes match our philosophical thinking around VR, but we were evolving as thinkers and creators already. There will be longer stories and generally we hope to continue to produce and distribute the most extraordinary storytelling in VR that we can muster.

Outside of the work you have put out yourselves, what VR films or experiences have you seen that you feel have elevated this new medium?

Notes On Blindness is a pretty extraordinary piece of storytelling. The creators have broken a lot of rules in order to get to a place of individuality. The experience feels like a shared authorship between creator and audience. It’s really special.

We’re beginning to see more VR films with interactive elements. How difficult is this to implement, and do you have any interactive projects on the horizon?

It’s a challenge on the technical side, but also on the creative side. How do you tell a great story where more and more of the control is in the user’s hands? What are the future definitions of story that we haven’t explored yet? Interactive storytelling is the next level of VR and we’re thinking about it every day.

You are noted for your support for light field cameras, is there anything particular about that technology that excites you more than others?

What are your thoughts on [light field imaging platform] Lytro? We’re going to see a lot of new technologies emerge and refine as the industry develops. There’s an extraordinary opportunity in VR to create worlds that look and feel like the worlds we experience every day. A full working pipeline using the technology isn’t quite there yet, but companies such as Lytro are helping pave the way to making that a reality.

Talking VR camera rigs, is there one in particular you like to use? Are there any that you are excited about that are on the horizon?

There will always be a new camera rig, so I try to contain my excitement about the latest and greatest. Camera rigs are always in service to the elements of story, and there’s still a ton of ground to be broken in that department.

In your recent TED talk, you spoke of directing in VR as “a choreography of the viewer’s attention” with tools such as spatialised sound. Do the rules and tools change when working in volumetric VR [a system which allows fully-realised 360-degree representations of people and environments in VR]?

Absolutely. Every new territory we explore will inspire new creative reactions. Volumetric VR provides creators and audiences with new possibilities and hurdles alike. Obviously the tools for volumetric technology are still in the early stages for live-action shooting, but as the tech sharpens, so will our storytelling constructions. The ability to step inside a story and participate – to certain degrees – will feel like nothing we’ve experienced to date.

What are your thoughts on the future of virtual reality and augmented reality? Do you see them as competing technologies?

No. They’re both exciting in their own ways. Arming storytellers with more equipment is never a bad thing. I’m excited to see how AR shapes not only the stories we tell but the very flow of our everyday lives.