Conversations with Liminal Media Productions on their 360 project “Chennai Floods”

Tell us a little bit about yourself and Liminal Media ? What Inspired you to get into the world of 360 and virtual reality in the first place?

Thank you. My name is Saurabh Ranjan. I am the Co-founder and owner of Liminal Media Productions. At Liminal we aim to provide end to end solution for Virtual Reality content development through innovative shooting and editing techniques. We are focussed on utilizing the maximum potential of the medium by implementing new storytelling methods.

My career started as a photographer, I was working for a real estate company in the imagery research and development division where I got introduced to Virtual Reality and also my business partner and VR editor Mr. Manish Bhanushali. A month later Aditya Bhairi an ISB( Indian School of Business) grad joined us as a business analyst. Since then this team has been working together.

Technologies of media are like engines of empathy, Cinema being the epitome of the communication technologies which allows you to see the world from another point of view acting like a stimulus for us to become more compassionate and empathetic towards others. With the rise of Virtual Reality the idea of fully immersive, virtually rendered dream world, where you can literally get to another world was very fascinating for us.

VR being the portal to another world and the ability to get inside someone else’s world was never possible without this technology and that was what inspired us to get into the world of 360.

Please tell us your inspiration behind your latest project, “Chennai Flood Story”? what gear did you use for the project?

$15 billion worth of destruction to one of the largest cities in Asia due to floods is unheard of. Chennai is a vibrant and one of the largest cities in India. After Katrina in US, we saw firsthand what natural calamities can do to large urban areas.

We heard about this catastrophe in the news, and the next thought in my mind was how can we help Chennai. We started investigating deeper to what exactly was the reason for the floods and found some really shocking facts. We wanted to help the flood victims by raising funds through the documentary. And the implementation of this medium in such a situation to create something which can deliver a true sense of the place and the surrounding, was our inspiration for the film.

Through the documentary we also want to raise a very important question. “Is this disaster man-made?” and if so who should be held responsible. As the facts suggest, apart from the El-Nino cyclone there were other reasons for such devastative consequences of the floods. like ill management of the reservoirs, uncontrolled urbanization, and diminishing of marshlands. The level of water reached to 5-6 meters (19 feet) in some areas after 30,000 cusec of water was released in 12 hours from one of the reservoirs. Can you imagine standing in one of the biggest and ancient cities in the world and realising that you are suddenly in 20 feet of water?

In order to shoot this project, We used 7 GoPro cameras mounted on a 360 Rig for shooting the videos and a lapel mic for the audio.

What made you decide to shoot the short in 360 as opposed to traditional medium? Are there segments in the short where you feel ..Aha I couldn’t have done this without 360?

By using Virtual Reality medium, we want the user to be teleported to the place of disaster and give him/her a true experience of the place to help them understand the situation better.

We imagined the kind of intimacy people will have when they watch this scenario in VR. There was no way we could have generated such a reaction from the audiences if this would have been shot on traditional video format.

We merged traditional flat videos which were given by the Natural Disaster Response Force on our 360 videos so that people watching it would be able to see the situation at the time of the floods with the flat videos while experiencing the impact and the aftermath of the disaster in 360° footage. As said earlier we wanted to get the maximum coverage of the situation with the 360° medium so I think all the shots were needed to be captured in 360°.

There is a lot of change that is transpiring in this nascent industry. As you know, the technologies are changing and the art of storytelling is evolving every day. As a leader, how are you and your team preparing for these rapid changes? And more importantly how is the Indian subcontinent adapting to VR/360 ?

Evolution is the nature of everything. We have come a long way from theaters, books, cinema, T.V to Virtual Reality and this will keep evolving with time. In terms of storytelling, I think the most primitive technology which we have still preserved are Dreams. And VR is about creating these dream spaces.

The grammar of VR still being not very concrete apart from some guidelines, We are experimenting with different styles of storytelling with VR, with my experience VR filmmaking is more inclined to theater performance rather than films for its long cuts and one-take performances. We are also working on block diagrams and storyboarding in VR. I think Indian subcontinent is picking up the technology very well, by trending of 360° videos worldwide with some really good production quality, people have started to rotate their phones already. A lot of Indian made HMD`s are also available online while Indian startup “Absentia” with Tesseract headset just bagged US$181,000 funding. Since Oculus did not announce plans of entry into the Indian market, local companies such as Absentia are trying to establish themselves in this niche.

New VR content developers are also emerging from different parts of the country contributing to the international VR community. The Indian VR market is growing rapidly with the initial involvement of Bollywood, social and cultural events and media firms.

What are some of the other projects that you are planning for 2016?

We are have plans to produce cinematic VR experiences by integrating both photo-realistic and 3D rendered spaces. We are also working on photogrammetry and its implementation in VR. Apart from cinematic VR we are also looking forward to create unique VR experiences for hospitality, tourism, advertisement and event industries.

In your opinion, what are some of the key challenges around building solid, 360° content? What advice to do you have for up and coming content/filmmakers in this area?

As the technology is nascent there are a lot of challenges in creating a solid 360° content. GoPro cameras get overheated very quickly and does not give much dynamic range on the edit while Cinematic cameras like Nokia OZO and Jaunt are very expensive. Dealing with as high as 8k resolution needs very high computing power and software support, live preview on VR while shooting is not possible with the GoPro setup so it becomes difficult to monitor the footage which is being captured. Apart from the technical difficulties other challenges in cinematic VR includes blocking of the scene, hiding the crew, lighting the set, movement of the actors etc.

So we need an experimental approach for filming 360° content with creative problem-solving abilities. My advice to upcoming VR content developers is to experiment with the technology as much as possible, at the end VR is about immersing the user into your own imagination as John Perry Barlow says “VR will further expose the conceit that reality is a fact, providing another reminder of the seamless continuity between the world outside and the world within, delivering other major hit to the old fraud of objectivity.” With the rise of such a powerful medium, it’s our responsibility as content developers to contribute to the technology by creating new and unique experiences and furnish the grammar of Virtual Reality.

This has been really great. It gives our readers a perspective around how VR/360 is starting to become a mainstay in countries such as India. We really wish you and your team all the best and look forward to hearing from you as you add more projects to your portfolio.