Filmmaker Chris Milk is showing how the use of VR film for news coverage can be a powerful storytelling medium that connects people to each other

“With virtual reality, I’m not interested in the novelty factor,” says digital artist and filmmaker Chris Milk. “I’m interested in the foundations for a medium that could be more powerful than cinema, than theatre, than literature, than any other medium we’ve had before to connect one human being to another.”

Milk’s career has a strong thread running through it: he often uses new technology in an inventive way, but human stories and connections are always at the core of his work.

That’s true of his acclaimed Wilderness Downtown interactive music video for Arcade Fire; the crowdsourced animations that made up The Johnny Cash Project; and the collaborative storytelling experiment This Exquisite Forest.

It also applies to his latest work using virtual reality technology, with a new company (VRSE) and a smartphone app of the same name for Android and for iOS delivering VR documentary films exploring the recent Millions March protest in New York and the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan.

“These are the stories that we connect to as humans: the thing we care about is other people in situations that we relate to, or situations that are extreme,” says Milk. “What’s going to be powerful is using new technologies to tell those kinds of stories in ways they could never be told before.

“Why have we not had a more powerful storytelling vessel than cinema for 100 years? It’s not because nobody’s thought of a different storytelling structure. We need the next medium, and that medium is inevitably going to be birthed because of technological advances.”

The Millions March film – Vice News VR: Millions March – was created with filmmaker Spike Jonze and backed by Vice, which has also taken a stake in VRSE with plans to produce more VR documentaries together.

Its announcement came with ambitious claims for VR’s potential for documentaries and news coverage. Is the idea of strapping on a VR headset to watch a documentary or news report really going to be mainstream, though? Milk sees it as a natural step forward.

Chris Milk: ‘Here, you’re existing without ego...’ Photographer: Spike Jonze

“So much of journalism is conveying a place and time that existed, to someone at a later date: giving a person the context and trying to make them feel as informed as if they were actually there,” he says. “Fundamentally, this is taking out the middle man in that process, and making you feel as if you were actually there.”

The Millions March, which was organised as a protest against the deaths of several black men killed by police, took place in New York on 13 December. Milk and Jonze took a Steadicam and a 360-degree camera along, and filmed Vice News’ reporter Alice Speri as she explored the protest. One month later, the VR film was released, although Milk is keen to reduce that time-lag for future documentaries of this type.

“Ultimately, what we want to have is a fast-enough turnaround that an event happens, and close to immediately thereafter, you are able to put on a virtual reality headset and witness it first-hand,” he says. “That could be a protest, an earthquake, or the melting of the polar icecaps. Being able to put people in the place gives them not just a better sense of it, but gives them more empathy and a deeper emotional connection to the people that were actually there.

“That’s where the true power of virtual reality lies in regards to journalism: connecting human beings to other human beings in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

As an example, Milk cites a section in the Millions March film where the camera gets up close with a man protesting in Washington Square Park. “You as the viewer are standing way inside his personal space, but you feel safe within the virtual reality world – you understand that this is not reality, it’s a recording of an event that happened. He’s not going to grab hold of you,” he says.

“You’re this invisible being, and what’s fascinating about that is that while in real life, you’d keep a tentative distance away from a person emoting this strongly in a public space, here you’re getting as close as the intimacy you feel with the people – your friends and family and loved ones – who you hug.

“You never get that close to someone in a park yelling their heart out without consequences. But if you do, you feel their humanity and their feelings on such a deeper emotional level. More so than on television. Here, you’re existing without ego, and just by being in that close proximity with another person, you feel so much more empathy for them.”

That’s one of the prime motivations behind another VRSE project, Clouds Over Sidra, which was produced with Unicef and shown during one of its events at the Davos conference recently. Also available within the VRSE app, it explores the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan through the eyes of a 12-year-old Syrian refugee.

“This is the one that half the people come out crying after watching it,” says Milk. “And the UN is using this to bring about change: to show this piece to people who can actually change the course of people’s lives in these places.” He stresses that he is keen for his VR films to reach as wide an audience as possible.

That’s the thinking behind the VRSE apps, which are designed to be watched with a make-it-yourself Google Cardboard headset that a smartphone slots into, rather than just targeting a device like Oculus Rift, which is expensive and still only available for developers. “I measure the worth of the work I’m making on two metrics: the first is how deeply can I affect other human beings, and the second is how many human beings can I deeply affect?” says Milk

“Virtual reality is already affecting people on an emotional level much more than any other media, and it has the potential to scale: all you need is an attachment for your cellphone, and you can have this experience.”

With VRSE, Milk is keen to keep stretching the creative boundaries for VR film-making, as well as developing the tools to make those films, and providing a platform for their creators to find audiences for their work. Creators is a carefully-chosen term, too, rather than “directors”.

“Directing is very much about directing your attention to this very specific thing that I am shooting,” Milk says. “I’m showing you exactly what I want you to see, when I want you to see it, and in the way I want you to see it.

“In virtual reality, it’s more about capturing and creating worlds that people are inhabiting. You really are a creator in the way the audience lives within the world that you are building. And we’re still figuring out the language of the storytelling in these worlds.”

• Toyota Oculus Rift app uses VR to explain distracted driving



• Disabled boy learns to play piano with his eyes using VR headset



• Paul McCartney launches free virtual-reality concert app