[In addition to the impressive production values, big names and now important messages in the virtual reality productions of Baobab Studios, two stories in Variety (here and here) highlight the ways the studio is designing increasingly rich presence experiences; note the description of the company’s vision in the last two paragraphs below. For more information see the Baobab Studios website. –Matthew]
Virtual Reality Studio Baobab’s Message of Climate Change Leads to U.N. Partnership
By Carole Horst
December 10, 2020
For Baobab Studios, partnering with the United Nations on VR short “Baba Yaga” was a natural step. The company, which has won awards for its diverse, engaging content, worked with the U.N. and the org’s ActNow app for action on climate change and sustainability to tell the tale of “Baba Yaga,” inspired by ancient legends of witches who protect nature.
In the short, set to be released in early 2021, Baba Yaga is more a mantle to be handed down through generations. In this case, the title character, voiced by Kate Winslet, passes down the role of teaching others to live harmoniously with nature to young Magda (voiced by Daisy Ridley).
“There are two really important things in the film. One is female empowerment. It’s an all-female cast with all female characters. The second one is environmentalism,” says Baobab’s CEO Maureen Fan. “And we couldn’t think of a better organization to partner with — that understands both these issues — than the United Nations.”
Eric Darnell, Baobab’s chief creative officer and writer-director of “Baba Yaga,” notes that although not photorealistic, the stylized characters represent the first time that Baobab animators have created human personae for VR. “We always had aliens [or animals] before,” he says.
A key part of the studio’s storytelling is about playing to the strength of the immersive VR and putting the viewer in the middle of the story. Magda makes eye contact, engaging the viewer with tasks while Baba Yaga works to protect the Forest (voiced by Jennifer Hudson).
Darnell and his team, which included animation supervisor Ken Fountain and production designer Glenn Hernandez, had to make sure that the characters interacted with viewers like real people. “That means that things like eye contact when Magda looks at you — it has the potential to be very, very meaningful, and to make you feel like you’re connected to her,” says Darnell. Also important were the characters’ movements and environments, which are scaled to viewer size within the VR experience: Beds and chairs invite viewers to sit, and at one point, the viewer is locked in a cage.
The animation team also leaned into the hands-free setting on the Oculus VR headset, so that you don’t need the hand-held controls to, say, grasp a lantern that Magda gives you, or grab a magic flower, or have beautiful diamond shapes emerge delicately from your fingertips during the end credits.
Fan says the studio’s mission statement is to tap into people’s sense of wonder and inspire them to dream. “It does seem that when people feel like they matter, they just care so much more about these other characters; they feel like there’s consequences to their actions, which makes them even more engaged in the story.”
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[From Variety…]
Daisy Ridley to Star in Baobab Studios’ VR Short ‘Baba Yaga’ (EXCLUSIVE)
By Jamie Lang
June 15, 2020
[snip]
“I love playing Magda, because she is brave, vulnerable and fiercely protective of her family all at the same time. The idea that the viewer will be able to genuinely interact with my character in this magical world and help steer the course of the narrative is so amazing,” said Ridley.
In “Baba Yaga,” the viewer is the main character of a dark and mystic fairytale in which their choices impact the ending of the story. Users will follow their 10-year-old sister Magda, voiced by Ridley, as the two girls search a magical forest for a plant that can cure their mother’s sickness, but must be wary of the witch who lives there, Baba Yaga.
Technologically, “Baba Yaga” is another step forward for the young company, now in its fifth year of creating VR works which often translate to a traditional 2D format as well. The company’s last production to get the two-medium treatment, “Crow: The Legend,” was nominated for six daytime Emmys, winning four, and featured a superstar cast including John Legend, Diego Luna, Constance Wu and Oprah Winfrey.
“With ‘Invasion,’ our first piece [in 2016], there were no hand controllers and all you could do was look around. It took from then to now for us to learn and for the technology to be there to really interact with the other characters,” producer and Baobab CEO Maureen Fan told Variety [snip].
According to [director Eric] Darnell, advances in technology since then “allow us to tell stories where the viewer is inside the narrative, where they feel that they truly matter, and the choices they make are truly meaningful.”
That’s especially important in a rapidly changing and not so well-defined medium like VR, which is still carving out its place among other narrative storytelling formats.
“Eric explained it to me this way years ago,” Fan explained. “You see a little girl alone crying on a park bench and she’s clearly too young to be alone. If it’s in a film you feel bad for her, but you aren’t going to get out of your seat to try and help her, you know it’s not real. In a game you talk to her, but because you have a goal and you’re motivated by what you want to accomplish. In real life though, you would talk to her because you genuinely care about her, are worried about her and want to help her.”
According to Fan, the vision for Baobab is to create experiences that have the empathy of film with the agency of games, but motivated by the real life emotions of a viewer who cares about the characters and the story, not because they are trying to win something.