Ane Skak, Danish National Broadcast (DR)

Good afternoon! I hope you had a lemon cake down there. That was nice and it woke you up if you're a bit tired by now. Well, I'm an editor and VR producer in DR and I must say I think there's only one VR producer in DR right now. But I'm doing my best to convince the rest of the house that we have to produce a lot more VR content. So these two are looking at one of our VR productions. We were letting... Can I... the clicker? Maybe I should swap clickers. Yep. We were letting people into a locker room where a young male soccer team was celebrating their victory and getting undressed as well. And that's the very nice part about VR. You can actually choose your own perspective and your own focus. That helps many people through the experience. Many of my exciting journeys in DR... ...started with a simple question. And the question I was asked one and a half year ago was how we could engage the young audience in the Danish history. We were at that time facing... We were at that time facing our big history show that's on right now, if you've seen it on television, Sunday evenings. And we knew that the young audience, they might not be that interested in the Danish history. They think about it as being an old dusty book or something they're taught in school. And they're not even on our platform. So we can't even be sure that they'll be fronted together with their parents in front of the regular TV show. So what should we do? Then I came to think about my own youth and the dream I had about travelling in time and space. And here you will see my first time machine. This was my first time machine. And it worked really nicely. I was travelling everywhere. And with that helmet... You have to look out for that helmet because you will see how it has influenced our work with VR and DR in many perspectives. Now I'm trying to let other people have this time and travel feeling. And what I'm talking about here is not a graphic built gaming universe. It's simply live action scenes recorded with sound equipment and VR cameras. And it's with characters in flesh and blood. And it's experienced through VR glasses. This is what we produce. And we have produced within the one and a half years, last year, we have produced several VR films. We have produced films dealing with Danish history. But we have also produced in current affairs, sports and satire. And in about two weeks we will come out with DR's first VR app in app stores and Google Play. And its primary focus is on the cardboard customers. But we have also produced one for the Samsung Gear. Since Samsung is the glasses we use when we have a lot of outreach events with our history films. And the app you can choose between having a 360 degree mobile or a VR perspective. And you have about eight films telling the Danish history from very early ages to the 1970s. And you can have a 360 degree image or you can have of course a VR and this one here. And I have brought some goggles but you can download the app yourself in about two weeks from the different stores. But let me first start with why I think VR is an important new media platform for DR. And the difference between a 360 and VR and how we connect the VR experience to the rest of the work we are doing. Of course DR as a broadcaster would look very much upon the different platforms. And these are the platforms we use right now for 360 and VR content. And it has kind of a big reach. Facebook's algorithm is pushing 360 degrees content to the top. YouTube has a universe dedicated to 360 or VR content. DRDK has a new player, a 360 player. Not yet a VR player but that will come soon. But a 360 degree player that's integrated in our news app as well. And then we have this new app coming up. And of course you can watch it as 360 degrees content but you can also put it in some of the glasses available and get a VR experience. And an even better one with the better glasses on the market you can have an interactive experience as well. And we are only still producing basic 360 VR experiences video wise. So we can be used in these platforms but there is no interactivity included in the films. And we are not the only one producing journalistic content. We have a lot of other players on the market. That's very interesting for us to look at. Particularly New York Times and CNN are producing a fairly amount of news stories and current affairs stories. A bit of fiction as well in 360 and VR. And just to put some numbers on. BBC has a department of 200 people producing VR and AR. And we are the only one in DR right now producing VR and we are 5 people. But again we always have to divide by at least 10 when it's BBC and DR. But just to state even though for us producing the content is the same. Then a 360 experience is this. When you still have the screen between you and the content. Going through this to this. So we are really encouraging people to see our content in VR mode and not in 360 mode. And in every talk it's always there's a right time for Elvis or Dottie Parton. And this time I chose Elvis since we are in the VR department. And you have to hear a song from 1970. It's Las Vegas. And you could say Elvis is singing about how it is to be a journalist or at least what we should aim for as journalists. But he's also dreaming about the VR experience. He doesn't know it himself. He thinks he talks about broken hearts. But listen to this lyrics and listen how it is predicting the VR experience. There was a guy said one time. He said you never stood in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes. Or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies. So help your brother along the way no matter where he starts. For the same God that made you made him too. These men with broken hearts. And no one is broken on truly. Why don't you just think you know about us. I believe it be, I believe it be, surprised to see that you've been blind. What am I like my shoes? What am I like my shoes? Yeah, before you abuse, criticize like you, just what am I like my shoes? Wasn't that the VR experience? At least when it comes to like the first person point of view VR experience or what we are aiming for as journalists to tell you a story so profoundly told that you feel how it is to be Elvis or walk a mile in his shoes. In VR, you can actually do this. You can embed the audience into the world of the story. You can let them feel present in the story. You can let them feel present in the story and present with the people they're with. And it's an experience that's experienced through your body to your brain. And it invokes your senses and physical reactions in a totally different way than the rest of our media platforms. Often you get a lot of physical reactions like you can see here when we have brought out some of our productions. This guy is having a ball thrown in his head and he reacts to it. This guy, he thinks he is having or he has a sword fight in the Middle Ages. And he was very sad that he hadn't been able to fight with these sword fighting people. Yeah, so a lot of physical reactions because it feels like you are there and it feels like you are part of the story, part of the action. But still, it is just some rally. It is a rather big thing to put on your head. And it has a magnetic attraction to a young audience but also to a slightly older audience as you can see here. So what can we use it for as content providers or as a public service broadcaster? We can very basically, we can use it to connect humans to humans. Very simple and a very important thing for us as a public service broadcaster. We can use it as a public service house to connect humans to humans. We can create deeper understanding. There is a whole terminology about this called immersive journalism. That you create a profound deep understanding how it is to be Elvis by letting people having a first person point of view VR experience. And as a lot of people are talking about, VR is the perfect empathy machine. And of course that rises a lot of ethics debates as well. Because who are you going to create empathy for? I will give you an example. We produced a VR experience in connection with a big campaign setting a spotlight on domestic violence. And we produced, we wanted of course nobody, you cannot find anybody saying, well we are for domestic violence. But the debate was held. And we were using the same arguments over and over again. And everybody agreed. But we have to take it to a deeper level. And try to create a different starting point for some interviews. So we created a first person point of view experience where we took the viewer into the house of family with domestic violence. Not set in a traditional lower class family. But a well off family. Family having, but experienced domestic violence. And we shot it from a first person point of view. So you felt like being in the first place the boy in the house. And we showed it to several people. More or less well known personalities. And interviewed them afterwards about the experience. And here we have the Danish minister Inger Stoiberg. And I guess you will agree on me that she is a pretty tough cookie. And try to see how she reacted on the experience when I interviewed her afterwards. Just take it off. How was it? It was not funny. No, no, no. No, Peter Stoiberg. No, Peter Stoiberg. You both have to start now. I think it was... Of course it's not easy to say it. The way you cover yourself afterwards. I thought it was really bad. If you had been Anders, the neighbour who was on the bench. Hi Anton. Hi. He does what he knows. That's what's so awful about it. He tries to intervene. I couldn't... Peter's look, I couldn't... I had a feeling that I caught his look. Following his father's look. And where you just thought... Damn you, you pig. Yes, I can say that. The two people who have his chair most often, probably, are not aware of what is happening. When you see something like this, and I'm also aware that it's happening, then you can just be unkindly grateful for the childhood itself. It's a huge loss and a huge loss for a child. Yes. A boy like that, he would... He would be with it for the rest of his life. And what annoys me the most is that I can't really answer Anders and go on with it. No. So raise your hand if you have heard Inger Stoiberg say to any problem, so I don't know what to do about it. Okay, so raise your hand when she has last time showed heavy emotion and cried. Alright. I think this is an example of a perfect empathy machine, and of course we have to think a lot about it in an ethical way, but at this point it took the discussions to a different level, or it was a different starting point for many discussions, and we showed it to a lot of professionals dealing with youngsters who had experienced domestic violence, and it brought many new perspectives to the issue that we have discussed over and over again. It was a part of a bigger campaign with DR and a lot of partners. We showed it to several personalities and made videos about it. Anders Lund was more focused on when you had the point of view of the mum, he was very focused on looking down and having breasts for the first time in his life, whereas Inger Stoiberg, and Sophia Groböl, she internalized the experience so much, so when I interviewed her afterwards, she was using I all the time about being Anton, so when my father looked me in my eyes, and when I did my homework and so on, so she internalized the experience while being interviewed afterwards. And it created articles on our own platforms, and we had the film on YouTube, and of course created a lot of social media content, whereas the Inger Stoiberg video was the most shared video on the news that month. And it created a lot of comments on people who have experienced domestic violence, but in reality, not in VR. So how do we produce VR? Because that is kind of a new thing for DR to produce VR. Basically, we have to think VR from the very first idea, to manuscripts, to a shooting plan, to a shooting, to post-production, and to distributing. You can't just say, well, this is how we do it in television, and then try to do a little twist and then do it in VR. And actually, I use my background a lot more producing theater and radio, than producing television. Because it's quite a different ballgame, and I would say, when I'm producing VR together with people from the world of television, there's often many things that they are quite concerned about that you can't do. You can't frame, you can't zoom, you can't pan, there's nothing you can do to produce a neat picture within a frame. And that is kind of like the most important thing, the most important tool you have while producing regular television, is framing. Should it be a close-up, should you focus on a detail, should it be a total? All the time you use the way that you select what the user is going to see, is your most important tool. Another very important tool is editing. And again, in VR, you have to be very gentle while editing. You can't just say, and the first couple of productions we did, we nearly didn't edit at all, but now we have slowly moved into more and more editing, but then again, you don't know where the viewer is looking. So you can, you know, I can be standing looking here, and then when I'm doing a cut, I will be looking still here, but on a totally different picture. So about editing, it's a different thing as well, and in general we do very longer takes than when producing television. So it's a lot more about creating scenes, 360 scenes, like in theatre, where you gently move the viewer's gaze towards the important elements in the story. And you have a lot of things you can do to move the viewer's gaze. You can work with sound, you can work with, you know, a person going through the picture to the important action with faces, but you have to realize that it's only a gentle way to try to navigate the viewer's gaze, and by that, the viewer's version of the story, you cannot control the gaze. So this lady, she is in a scene at Rosenborg Castle, and in front of her, like just in front of her, she has Lars Mikkelsen. But she is choosing to look at the ceiling. And it's a beautiful scene, but then again, Lars Mikkelsen is just in front of her. And these two guys, they are also looking at the same film, and it's some of the best soccer players performing tricks, and I guess they are also focusing on some very different parts of how to do these tricks. So one thing is actually to, it's a different dramaturgy, you have to tell the story in a different way, and when producing, we produced in the first productions, we produced the classical being the fly on the wall. So it was with six GoPros in a wreck, and when you were looking down, you were just like floating in the air without being somebody in the scene. And when you feel present, and you feel like being in the scene, you also feel the need to be somebody. So instead, we started to work with the first person point of view, where we put cameras on different headsets, and here comes my version, my new version of the helmet, like from my old time machine. This helmet was really good, and really heavy. So when we put it on some of the more tiny actors, they got a headache and a sore neck within 10 minutes. So then we thought, could we move from the helmet to a rig? And this one was really good for avoiding the actors headaches and so on. But when the actor moved, and you can't be playing, acting without just, you know, moving a bit. And when they moved, and the rig was standing still, and they moved the body a bit, as they were moving, it was a VR viewer, it felt like watching through the eyes, and then your body went like this, like an alien. So it didn't work either. And then we moved to this one, and this is the one we are working with right now. It's a more light weighted helmet, and it's with GoPro cameras, with a 220 degrees lenses, and this gives a first person point of view. So when you're looking down, and when we write the manuscripts, we include that the other actors are actually addressing the cameras, the actor, so it feels like you have been looking at, you have been addressed, you have been pushed and so on, and that creates a very strong feeling of being present in the film. Another hard thing to do is moving the camera. Since you're shooting 360 degrees, there's nowhere to position a cameraman. So what we have, so we have worked a lot with the cameras on the rig and cameras here, but we have also tried to work with small consumer cameras like this Samsung camera, and making our actors our steady camp man. So this is the mate, Marie, in one of our historical films, and she is carrying a tray with tea, for the two gentlemen in the house, and she is also carrying the camera on the tray, so we get a perspective like this. And when you're looking up, you always have Maria's face to look at, and that keeps you from being not that seasick, but when you look in front and just follow her tray, you get a bit more dizzy from taking this trip in VR glasses. And then, she puts down the tray in the center of the scene, so we can have the scene going on here with our two what is it called in English? Slaverhandler, or Verretningsfører, that was in Danish for you guys, and then she picks up the tray again and leads us into the next scene again. And yeah, she leads us through the next scene. Or this scene from 1945, just post Second World War, where we let the actor move the scene on a trolley, so it looked like this, when Charlotte Amok is going through the scene in character, and you get a picture like this, or this, when she puts down the tray. Yeah. So no cameraman while shooting, because you're shooting 360, and in the same way goes with the rest of the production team, there's nowhere to be positioned while actually shooting. So we are all positioned outside the scene, and looking at some rather tiny monitors. When we're doing the Samsung, with the Samsung, this is like how tiny the Samsung phone monitor works, but also when we do with the GoPro, we use a wireless monitor. But still, everybody has to go outside the room. And that goes with lighting, as well, nowhere to put light. So you have to put light outside, make it look like it's a natural light, and that gives a job to some very what do you say, this is our app developer actually, who thought he was just going for a nice have a look how they produce day, and then he was ending up holding the light all the day outside the room. And we go, yeah, and sound, again, sound, producing sound is a bit the same as in television, we put microports on everyone and have some central placed 360 degrees sound equipment as well. But then afterwards, in the post production, it gets a bit more rough. So post production is kind of a new, a bit heavy process for us to do. First of all, when stitching the images and editing, it looks like this. And it can be difficult just to choose between the right take. Since it's not the picture that we're used to look at. And the same goes for sound. We have to position every sound source, so when an actor is going like this, we'll move the sound source to go like this, and also when I'm having a sound source here, it has to go in both ears, but when I do like this, it only has to go in this ear. So the post production part is still a bit heavy compared to our normal production. But we can do it, and you can do it as well. And I'll just show you some reactions we got from a couple of weeks ago where we had our new VR app out at some events, at the with our historical films, and they reacted this way. And speaking of travel, 4,800 Finnish school students are experiencing a journey back in time. This journey is about virtual reality glasses on their heads, and they experience scenes from the Bronze Age up to the 1970s. And the idea with this virtual journey Today you will try virtual reality glasses. On with a modern glasses that covers our common history. The children will find out that they are part of history. A digital time travel that feels real. It feels a lot like you're in the situation. As if you're really there in reality. As if you suddenly entered the time of enlightenment. And we have left the time travel system, and a fifth of the women are dressed up, and we got the chance to rise. So that's two for one. But there were too many slaves in West India. Yes. When you wear a pair of virtual reality glasses, everything around you disappears. Right now I see a timeline with a lot of different stories. The point is to convey the history of Denmark in a new way. I think it's very exciting. It's not what you're used to in school, in relation to history at least. Virtual reality technology creates a life-like 360 degree art in the world you step into and let your gaze wander around. Especially many children and young people have chosen that Danish history is something you read about in big, thick, dusty books from one's grandfather. And VR glasses, they are probably big enough, but at least not dusty. I think you get a little more out of it when you see it and experience it instead of just hearing about it. I'm scared. You mustn't be, mother. Then you're thrown back to a house filled with pests in the Middle Ages. It's an apartment. It's the 1970s. Who are they? It's the police. The young speak a little differently to the adults and the adults speak a little differently to the young. Who's the next one? From Jehovah's Witnesses. Why didn't you log in? It feels very real. So maybe it works. Totally real. It's probably a way of thinking that I'm getting my eyes up and that history can be a great experience. Yes. That was wild. Yes, it is. This virtual time travel is at the Danish Tournament in the next half year. But there is also Danish history every Sunday night here on DR1 in the Danish History series. The History of Denmark. That was it. Thank you for your attention. I think we have a couple of minutes for questions. If you have any questions. Otherwise, thank you.