Helllo everyone, Ian Hamilton here with director Joe Hunting who's the filmmaker behind We Met In Virtual Reality streaming now on HBO Max captured entirely inside VRChat virtual worlds. It appeared at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and on the poster it says "the setting is virtual the connections are real."
There is one question that I have right at the top of my head after watching the film and noticing that you've made some kind of directorial choice in not representing these people at all outside of their VRChat personas. That's the second question I want to get into, so put that one in the back of your mind. The first question is, you're gonna introduce a lot of people to VRChat culture who have never tried a VR headset and have never heard of VRChat before.
How do you expect this project is gonna be received by them? Yeah, that's a very unpredictable question, really. But before I get into it, I wanna say a huge thank you for having me on it's a pleasure to be speaking with you in the studio today. It's a really intentional decision for me to be considering that audience from the very beginning of making the documentary, I was very aware that it was gonna be received and seen by people.
And I really wanted it to be seen by people who had never tried VR before. And I really hope that the documentary is one that will enlighten people about this new reality. I hope that people see the film and judge it and are confused and are really shocked, especially in the opening of the film and they question what the representation of this world is like and the choices of avatars, the choices of worlds.
There's so many ways it can be interpreted, but I think my intention is to start a conversation and immediately from the trailer release alone and now the film is gonna be available. I know that so many people are on so many spectrums with social media, online culture, especially VR as it's so new for so many people, there's so many ways it can be interpreted, but every way it can be is to me a conversation.
If I was to speak to the reaction that I really want to achieve, it is to open minds and to show people that we can find community and support and express ourselves in very unique ways that are constantly evolving and constantly changing and so that's what I really want people to find in the film. I'm wondering what that conversation might become if there is the lack of any physical grounding to your presentation here. Right. Exactly.
Again, very intentional decision that actually came from when I was making my short films.
I made my first short film in 2018 and released it in 2019 titled A Wider Screen, and I showed that film at festivals and in this short film we get to see the reveal of the authentic real selves of the subjects of the film when we see them in VRChat and as I was touring the film, I would often ask people, what was your favorite moment and what moment was really dramatic to you and that you enjoyed the most, and it was always, 'my favorite moment was when I got to see
the people in real life and see their authentic image.' And that to me was actually quite upsetting because that wasn't the truth and the representation that I really wanted people to connect with, I wanted people to connect with their more fantastical images, their representations of themselves, and see the excitement and the joy that I see in them when filming with them in VRChat.
And so I took that inspiration really into, We Met In Virtual Reality, and I really wanted people to connect with that side of someone and I think it's more interesting when seeing a film like this, especially a documentary that you leave those questions to the imagination and you let people tread that line between authenticity and more of a fantasy. I think that's what makes the film so fascinating and also what makes VR so fascinating.
I never saw the real images of the subjects of the film or anyone featured until the film was finished and so the film is how I saw them as well as a director and as a filmmaker and I want audiences to feel that too. Mm. That is a very interesting bit of context to add there at the end. Were there any surprises for you then as director, when you did your own reveal of who these people were?
Oh, good well, I mean, first of all, it felt amazing, it was such a thrill and it was so warm and wonderful to finally see the real images of these people that I was working with for a year and a half almost, we watched the film together and obviously spoke all about it. And then we all got on video camera and had that moment.
And I think the best way to sum up that experience is, there was a moment of kind of confusion just realizing who they were in our physical world and how they present themselves and seeing the connections to their avatar as well. I think with every cast member who appears in the documentary, I could immediately see them with their avatar.
There was immediate correlations, like Jenny for example, as we see here behind me has pink hair and dust bunny has very similar hair that her avatar does as well. And the body language, you feel that when we're interviewing, we were always in very intimate situations where making the documentary. And so I immediately felt a presence and a similarity in their body. And so it was very quick to fall into that ,understand that new world, But it was a wonderful experience.
I really have nothing negative to say. Interesting. You started production on this while finishing a film degree when COVID hit, right? Is that correct? Mm-hmm And... That's right. There's a lot of connection that people were able to find and are able to find via these headsets that for a very large range of reasons they don't necessarily find in the real physical world.
But there's that other part of the conversation where, if I can say that I understand that perspective, there is another perspective that says people need to go and actually do this in the real world. Right? Mm-hmm that, that's the only real form of connection. And I'm curious how those perspectives are gonna collide as this film reaches more people.
If you had to take a poll of your audience of a hundred people or a thousand people that are gonna be introduced to this, do you think they're gonna be open-minded or close-minded about what they see? Yeah, that's an excellent question and one that I was questioning whilst editing as well very specifically.
I think we'll have a mix of both audiences and to just speak to the close-minded reaction that we've already been facing with the documentary and it's really fascinating to read and understand that perspective. Towards the end of the film I really wanted audiences to feel that the subjects of the documentary and their stories were actually moving outta VR and into the real world.
I personally agree very much so that the healthiest way to engage in this technology, especially in a social context, is in a balance with physical socialization and virtual socialization. I think there is a beautiful balance that can occur, and during the pandemic that balance was completely shifted for a lot of the population who had access to headsets, me included, considering I made a film for hours and hours and hours a week.
I think now we're reaching much more of a defined balance, but I can certainly see audiences having their alarm bells rang after seeing this film and thinking, oh my goodness, these people need to get outside and engage with their real friends and engage with the real world. But the beautiful thing is that they do, they all have jobs and they're all engaged with their real friends and real relationships.
And I really hope people feel that and all of the couples that we see in the film are also together in real life right now, as I'm speaking, If I'm to say where we are right now, I'm in Brooklyn. We just had our premiere of the film in New York, and we're all together here in person and so obviously that's not in the documentary, but it certainly is a story that's attached to that reaction that we are facing about people seeing our subjects in the film in a way that is close minded.
I hope that the journey that we've had making it as well as the film itself presents the idea that isn't the stereotype, that these stigmas are false and we can have a healthy balance if we engage in the technology in the right way. Can you tell us about how you actually captured, what were your camera tools inside of VRChat? Oh, yes, absolutely.
So VRChat, if I'm sure many of the people watching have tried VRChat, has a native camera that's really accessible and easy to pull out using the menu system and with this camera you can zoom in, you can change your depth of field and add these really nice cinematic qualities. And I didn't use that camera. I used it as a base for using a third party camera that someone in the VRChat community named Hirabiki created called VRCLens.
You upload this other camera through your avatar, and then you override the VRChat camera with this avatar camera, which allows for a lot more cinematic tools. With VRCLens I was able to change my aperture to a very precise f-stop.. I could change my focal length, I had focus assist on my display.
I could fly as a drone, I could change my exposure, and it was like a real cinema camera that you'd use in live action but translated into VR, which gave me the ability to shoot very intimate handheld shots with a very distinct camera presence, and also shoot these sweeping drone sequences that we see in some of the dance sequences in the film. And so the camera that I used was VRCLens, which was created by Hirabiki in the community.
You're just out of college now you've made a feature length documentary that is airing on HBO. What role do you see virtual cameras playing in your future? I'm definitely gonna stay in VR, I've learned a great deal making We Met In Virtual Reality both in my directing, in working with people, collaborating and the technicalities of doing a production with VRCLens and VRChat and working with avatar and world creators and I certainly intend to stay in VR for my next project.
I am in development for something new and a little bit more refreshing that goes a little bit outside of documentary, but that's all I'm gonna say at the moment. I hate to be that person and keeping things secret, but it's still super early days whilst I wind down and get this documentary out into the world, but I'm certainly staying in VR, I am still on the path of curiosity and just absolutely love it and love the people in it and love the community and just want to keep working.
In terms of greater scope, I think filming in VR has the ability to become its own separate genre of film.
I've really learnt with this documentary, it's very similar to animation and very similar to live action, but capturing something in real time in avatar and in worlds that we can create and having that spatial awareness within our virtual productions is extremely special and so I'm very grateful to be helping to push that medium and I really hope that we will get more films shot in VRChat, but also greater because of We Met In Virtual Reality, if I'm allowed to say that.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the time. This is an interesting starting point in that conversation about how people are gonna present themselves in the years to come, so I appreciate this time and yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people discovering VRChat in the next couple weeks I think. So, uh, good luck. And we'll see what you do next. Thank you so much. Yeah, I really, really appreciate the conversation. Yeah, please go see the film and tell us what you think.