VR Spotlight; The Guardian: 6x9

How did you approach and realise the brief for 6x9?

6x9 was a well-researched piece of journalistic filmmaking; a factual documentary that The Mill team translated and directed in VR as an immersive experience. Our brief was to build empathy through involvement in the story. To achieve this, it was paramount that we honoured the rules of authenticity - namely that the room you sit in is as real as possible and the experiences are factual. What threw an initial curve ball was the realization that in order for this to be interactive, we needed to build it in a game engine. This is a prime example of one of the counterintuitive aspects that sometimes occur with VR.

When you look at the game engine graphics on a traditional screen it can look fake but when you are in the scene, the more primal areas of your brain believe in the spatial nature of the room. This idea of respecting the reality of the room became a guiding principle for the direction of the experience.

When faced with the need for typography or user interface we chose to never break the first person perspective. For instance; when we needed to display stats, we chose to project them against the walls of the cell. When we viewed footage in the night time/flashback scenes, this again, was handled as a projection, where we dimmed the light of the room - without the need for cursors, prompts or any other UI design.

Much of the information in the experience is narrated to you by the voices from real ex- prisoners, which again was a way to build empathy. Part of our adaptation from traditional documentary was to build ‘hot spots’ into the scene to accommodate interactivity and associate narration to themes. For example, by looking at the toilet and sink you would activate a dialogue about how prisoners build routine by bathing and preparing for the day.

By assembling research material into both a chronological sense of a ‘day in the life of’, as well as a non-linear interactivity we wanted to educate the viewer by putting them in the space, and develop empathy by engagement as a result. Rather than simply being fed information, you can experience it as if you were actually there.

What were the challenges associated with the project?

VR was still relatively new when The Mill took this project on and one of the first learnings when directing in VR is abandoning some preconceived approaches to film direction. Elements like fixing the viewer’s attention to scenes is not possible when the viewer can look wherever they want. You can’t cut to a close-up that has symbolic or narrative meaning; instead you need to draw the viewer's attention through directional audio or visual movement. It may seem like a big leap, but actually it is closer to real life than it is to film direction. You notice things out of your sight though hearing them first or because they catch your attention through your peripheral vision.

On the design front, our challenge was to create a cell and an experience that was factual and not dramatized. This meant that every detail from the objects found in the cell to the hallucinations had to be backed up factually.

There were conceptual barriers too: we needed to create empathy within an incredibly contentious topic. How could we expect people to get beyond their preconceived opinions of criminals to see them as average people, in order to recognise the difference between punishment, rehabilitation and what the UN refers to as a form of torture? Yes, these people are criminals but solitary confinement creates sensory deprivation that has been proven to cause negative psychological effects. To achieve this, we had to keep everything in the first person; you are in the cell with peers and the prisoners speak to you as an equal. Our biggest ally was authenticity which would not have been possible without the rigorous journalistic research provided by the Guardian.


Having worked on this project, what are the implications for VR for the news sector as a whole?

360 video gives you access to the whole scene, transporting you closer to the story. Humans are such complex story viewers; we demand authenticity and a closer proximity to the story, distrusting much of the packaged info we receive.

The future possibilities of embedded 360 cameras and virtual transportation to the scene will remove much of the sense of detachment we naturally have when we are not physically there. In the same way that news as it happens is more compelling than old news, this ability to be in the scene could bring stories closer to home.

Game engine VR allows us to learn within a story, make choices and voice an opinion. It is no longer a stretch of the imagination to see how it is possible to be active socially within an immersive story.

Francesca Panetta, special projects editor, The Guardian

When did you first come up with the idea for 6x9?

At the Guardian, we’re always looking at new ways to innovate and share our journalism with our readers. Virtual reality was a form we had been thinking about for a while and wanted to experiment with as it obviously had huge potential. Simultaneously, solitary confinement is a topic that the Guardian has covered a lot in the past so the two things came together.

Why did it feel right to tell this particular story via the medium of virtual reality?

VR is a medium which is all about space. Solitary confinement is too – albeit a small and very undesirable space. It felt obvious that this would be a good story for the form.

What was the brief you gave to The Mill and what was your reaction to the finished work?

We asked The Mill to provide the visuals and technical aspects of the project. The process was iterative and we found them extremely sympathetic to our needs. They were also very understanding of the integrity that needed to be in the piece - this was a piece of journalism not a game and throughout the process we discussed what that meant.

Virtual reality journalism is a channel that’s being increasingly explored by media outlets, how important will it be for the future of journalism and what are the main issues/challenges that still need to be overcome?

Virtual reality is exciting for stories where it makes sense for you to be there, on location. Then it has a huge role. But not for all journalism. It’s a hugely exciting medium and over the next few years we’ll see experimentation in non-fiction, documentary and news and its role will become more clear.

The challenges are many: distribution, the technical complexities and specific skills. These will get easier as time goes on but setting up teams and a workflow system for VR is new to us all!

Are you planning any more virtual reality projects?

6x9 was an experiment - a proof of concept. It worked in terms of journalism and was an effective way to tell a story we care about. The Guardian has a history of being at the forefront of digital innovation and we regularly experiment with the different forms our journalism can take - including virtual reality. We're looking forward to investigating the potential for using this technology more in the future. Watch this space!