In this special guest episode, award-winning director Elijah Allan-Blitz talks about the transformative power of Virtual Reality storytelling.
Photo by Michael Muller
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Special Guest: Elijah Allan-Blitz
Story Direction: Aaron Calafato
Audio Production: Ken Wendt
Music Contributor: thomas j. duke
Vocals and Coordination: Cori Birce
VRStorytellingwithElijahAllan-Blitz.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Ideally, this entire project, the goal for it from the beginning is to be an empathy curriculum, where this can live on, and this can be in schools, and this can be in museum, and this can be all over the world potentially, where you can just put on the headset and scroll through someone else's experience that is not your own and see through someone else's eyes. Because another thing that you don't get to see when you see it on your phone that we've created in the headset is we use this new hand tracking technology. It was even before Oculus. Now, all Oculus quests have it.
But in the beginning, they didn't when we were first making these episodes. But the hand-tracking is so essential because you look down and you see your own hands. It's tracking your hands. You see your hands, and your arms, and your torso, and you're moving your fingers, except your hands are either of a different race or a different gender. You are completely embodied in someone else's shoes.
Hey, everybody, it's Aaron, and Elijah Allan-Blitz is the gentleman you just heard. Elijah has become known for directing award-winning virtual reality experiences. In fact, he was one of the first VR directors for Time Magazine. And he was referring to the Emmy-winning Messy Truth VR Experience, a series he co-created with Van Jones, and that features actors Winston Duke from Black Panther and Academy Award winner Brie Larson.
Now, just to clarify, these episodes are based on true stories, and they're designed to be viewed through a VR headset, where you're looking through the eyes of a character. You're in the scene, right? For example, being a young African-American boy in the passenger seat while his father is being pulled over and intimidated by police, you're witnessing this. Or a waitress during a performance review while her boss harasses and wields power.
Now, the series was released in 2019. Because of COVID, these in-person VR experiences were limited. But I think Elijah and his team are on the cutting edge and continue to be of transformative storytelling. Now, prior to COVID, Elijah and his team took the Messy Truth Experience to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. But before we get to what happened there, I wanted to ask Elijah when his VR journey started.
There's been a few different waves of VR. There was, in the early, like you're saying in the late '80s, early '90s, there was a guy named Jaron Lanier who was one of the pioneers. There was these like, "Oh, VR is the next thing," but it didn't really happen. Then there was another wave in about 2015, 2016, which is when I re-entered, I guess, entered from myself the space. I was at the TED conference, and I saw this VR experience.
It wasn't like it was the perfect epitome of what VR needs to be, but I saw the potential. I understood exponential growth and exponential technology just how this is only going to get better and better and better. It was like, okay. To me, if I can distill my mission, what I want to do down into a sentence, it would be to use technology to elevate consciousness.
I just saw this as an opportunity. It wasn't like, "Oh, I wanted to make my whole life about this thing," but that ended up being what happened for at least for the following five years. It was just like, "Okay, everything that I can do." I was lucky enough later that year, in 2015, to work on a project in Haiti. We shot a little 360 piece with some friends.
Then the next year after that, it was like this snowball effect. I then worked with Ken Burns for his documentary about the Holocaust. That was released by Time Magazine. That was the first VR experience that they did working with their incredible team over there. It just was a snowball effect.
Actually, I had already known Van for a while, but it was after that piece that he and I connected because that was right around the time that Trump got elected. We were talking about doing a separate project about something completely different. A week after the election, he and I got on the phone, and we're like, "You know what? I think we need to pivot. I think we need to just see if we can use the power of this medium to try and bring everybody closer together."
Directing TV or film is one thing, but I asked Elijah to try and pinpoint the difference between those traditional disciplines and directing virtual reality.
You have to take into account that you don't know at any moment where the viewer is going to be looking. You have 360 degrees. So your job, instead of crafting a frame like you would in traditional television and film, you are actually creating a world for the viewer to explore. I see myself even less as a director and more as a facilitator, because I'm just taking these real experiences and using my knowledge of this medium to help facilitate all of these different pieces to come together so that the viewer can experience this thing.
But it's not a director in the traditional sense, because you're creating an environment to then someone will then be able to get to live in this world.
Part of facilitating really impactful VR storytelling is taking that experience to spaces that, on the surface, may not have a friendly audience, so to speak. But as Elijah told me, it's in those spaces where people actually shed tears and experience transformative moments.
When we had the opportunity to take the first episode to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, there were guys wearing MAGA hats and NRA hats and taking off their hats and putting on the visors and having these experiences. Police officers were watching it. It was just like, this is what it's about. This is about creating these conversations and being able to engage with people on a human level and being past politics, past whatever thoughts, the preconceived notions you might have, and just being like, as a human to human, what are you feeling? What are you experiencing?
And to me, that's the goal. I helped fund that CPAC trip myself because I was like, "This is what we built this for. We didn't build this just to show people that have already had this experience and agree with us already or agree with this specific perspective." It's like, "No, this is to create a conversation and bring more people together," not to just create more divisive content where it's like, "Oh, F this guy or F that guy. This is my side, and that's your side." It's like, "No, let's come together because fundamentally, we are humans."
That is the heart of all this stuff, man. When you say you got to go and speak with people and share your stories and bring that connection to people, that is the same thing. That is that empathy. People, when they're engaged with you, I'm sure they're experiencing that same shift, where they're hearing your story and they're identifying what parts of it as themselves. Eventually, when these headsets are ubiquitous, we can send these headsets everywhere in the world and be like, "Hey, take three to five minutes, look at someone else's perspective and see what you think."
All I could think about during our conversation was, man, I can't wait till the pandemic winds down so that some of you can put on the goggles and experience these Messy Truth episodes. Elijah said there's actually potential for a third and fourth installment featuring actors Josh Brolin and Zoe Saldana, which would be awesome. Well, I couldn't get off this Zoom call with him without randomly talking about NBA basketball, especially since I saw Elijah on TV shaking hands with a guy from my hometown, LeBron James, at a recent Lakers game.
I was so happy when he came back from Miami and won that Championship in Cleveland. I remember watching that game 7. I actually posted, I think at that time, whenever year that was, 2017. I don't know, somewhere in there. Anyway, I remember posting on Facebook and just being like, "I think LeBron is the greatest ever." People lost their minds like, "Are you kidding? Michael Jordan?" I was just like, "That's just my opinion. That guy, to me, is such an inspiration."
I got to say, using VR to create your own corner of empathy in the emerging metaverse is pretty inspiring, too. To connect with Elijah, make sure and visit his website at elijah-ab.com.
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Audio production by Ken Went. You can connect with Ken or inquire about his audio production services at media216.com. Original artwork by Pete Whitehead. Find out more about Pete's work at petewhitehead.com. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcast.
Lastly, I'm Cori Birce. Make sure you tune in next week for another story.
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