A few months back, I had the pleasure of joining “the one and only” OutdoorProject on a hike through the Oregon Wilderness and we shot it all in 360 virtual reality video. We did this in conjunction with Superswell VR, the virtual reality production company I co-founded, and it was a blast!
Check out our excursion to Clackamas & Memaloose Falls either in Samsung VR if you’re using a GearVR headset, or on Veer.Tv and YouTube.com. (Don’t worry, if you don’t have a VR headset, you will soon, and until then, it’s still pretty cool to drag around in the YouTube video window to see everything in all directions…).
This one is very very dear to my heart. When I made the choice to move up to the Pacific Northwest a few months ago, I knew that I had to pay homage to the Santa Monica Mountains – the mountains that made me ‘me.’
So I figured during my final weeks living in the Santa Monica Mountains, I’d take along a 360˚ VR video camera on the remainder of my hikes and excursions and cut together my gift back to the mountains…hoping it’ll get at least a few more people to discover the magic of those hills, and a conscious relationship with nature in general. Because if there’s one thing I’m 100% sure of, it’s that no one would regret a single second of it.
No question about it, that range played one of the most pivotal roles in the development from one version of me to another. From living in the city all my life, the transition from a destructive reactionary existence to one where I suddenly found myself with the luxury to process my thoughts and existence and directions was the greatest gift life could have given me at that stage. I learned more about who I was and the relationship I wanted to have with myself, my environment, and the people that I choose to surround myself with, that at any point in my life, and I attribute it all to being in those mountains. Furthermore, it was being up there that re-kindled my love for photography as a means of capturing, savoring, and sharing the ‘special,’ and that has essentially guided my path since.
Anyhow, you can watch the video below in YouTube and drag around to see everything in all directions at all times, but the best way to enjoy it is definitely in a Virtual Reality headset for a fully immersive experience (just make sure to sit in a swivel chair…). If you’ve got a Google Cardboard, hit the little headset icon in the bottom right of the screen on your mobile device, if you’ve got a Samsung Gear VR, use this link: https://samsungvr.com/view/r_kopT9C4iE
Thank you Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council, National Park Service, California State Parks, Malibu Creek State Park Docents and all those who contributed to my journey, inside and out.
And if you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to ‘me.’ You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, I’m a poor bastard, so your little helps me a LOT.
I know I’ve been mostly absent for a while and for that I apologize, but it’s been a bit of a crazy few months. To make a super long story short, as of April 20, I have migrated north to the grand Pacific Northwest. The lush greenery and outdoor lifestyle-driven populations have been seducing me for close to a decade, and I finally decided to take the leap.
Not only have I lived in Southern California all of my life and have been curious about a change for just about as long, but perhaps the biggest driver was to be better positioned to explore the wondrous nature the region has to offer and the people, companies, and organizations that make Mother Earth such a concentrated focus of this region.
So I now proudly call Portland, Oregon my home.
If you’re at all familiar with my journey over the past half decade, you’ll probably see it as a natural progression, and it certainly feels that way. While I spent most of my adult life and career working in Los Angeles in various aspects of the entertainment and publishing industries – from record labels to broadcast news production companies, to the publishing business (including starting and running my own newsstand magazine) to music videos and films to branding and advertising content agencies…you name it – I can’t say that much of quite ever felt…well…me.
That all began to change about 8 years ago, when a series of events led me to move out of the reactive ‘madness’ of the city and up into Topanga Canyon, a magical enclave that sits in the Santa Monica Mountains just above Santa Monica, between Los Angeles and Malibu. It was close enough to work in the city, but far enough to not be consumed by it. And residing in the midst of one of the largest urban parks in the country led me to embrace nature in ways that have only before seemed like unfathomable dreams (I wrote a very personal piece addressing that in the past).
I spent most of my time in the mountains, exploring the canyons and hills that surrounded me, which led me to exploring the State Parks, and then the National Parks and, well, the rest is history.
The more time I spent outdoors and in nature, the more I realized that, well…this was me.
Every aspect of it felt right, not a single aspect of it felt wrong. There was no resistance, it all just felt so…so…natural!
This, thankfully, eventually led me to return to my first creative love, which I had abandoned close to a decade prior – photography. Soon thereafter, thanks to the recommendation and introdcution by good friend Zach Rosenberg of 8BitDad, Samsung picked me up as a camera sponsor, which only helped fuel and reinforce my newfound embrace for my passion of the visual medium.
What began as an escape from a very difficult period in my life, morphed into new reason, new energy and new purpose, and in the years since, my cameras have taken me through landscapes and cultures and experiences that I wouldn’t trade for the world.
It was around then that I made a conscious decision to reframe the focus of my life by translating the skills I had accumulated from a working world and environment I did not care for, and employing them in environments that I did.
The more I started volunteering at local parks, photographing my outdoor hikes, adventures, and travels, the less it became a part of my life and the more it became my entire life. Eventually, through a Nature Conservancy photo contest entry, the Portland based World Forestry Center found me, and over the past several years, I have found myself doing more work for them, which had me networking in the Pacific Northwest, and the pull just got stronger and stronger.
Now looking back, it is increasingly clear that a major unanticipated X-factor from 2 years ago at DPReview’s PIX Conference in Seattle has proven to be a major element in where I find myself now. It was there that Samsung introduced me to a prototype VR camera rig. Three months later I found myself playing with this rig in Tahiti with my friend and travel blogger Joan Jetsetter. This launched a whole new obsession with a new visual medium that has yet to subside (and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to anytime soon). I started superswell VR, a VR video production company with Joan Jetsetter, and since then we’ve done all sorts of exciting projects that have taken us from festival and spa hopping in Denmark to diving in Catalina to crapping our pants in drift cars, and has opened doors that I once only dreamt about (there will be a post about that soon).
Anyhow, two things happened in the past 6 months that led to the decision to finally make the move, the first being the 2016 U.S. election – it was clear that science and nature were going to be taking a backseat in the new administration, at a time when they needed to be in the driver’s seat, and this broke my heart, for it was those very things that led me to a renewed sense of life, hope and purpose. My drive to introduce younger generations to nature and its benefits and why it’s essential immediately caught fire. There was going to be a gap to fill, and I had to be part of that, and seeing as how the Pacific Northwest is to the nature and conservation industries what Los Angeles is to the entertainment industry, it only made sense.
The second impetus for the move happened about 2 months ago, and it was a series of events that took place within the course of about a week:
-I found out we had mold in the home I was renting in, so all of the tenants, one by one, ended up moving out. -The World Forestry Center expressed their interest in consulting with me about creating a VR display in their Portland museum. -A (for now shall remain un-named, but very exciting) Portland-based outdoor organization that I had met with a year prior expressed interest in exploring VR. -My friends in Portland had a new unit they were building out for Airbnb that wasn’t quite yet ready and offered it to me as a ‘halfway’ house of sorts.
I couldn’t think of a bigger kick in the gotcha if I tried…
So that was it.
I sold some stuff, gave away some stuff, tossed some stuff, and filled up whatever stuff I can in my trusty Nissan Altima Hybrid, and began my drive up the coast.
There are many exciting things a’brewin’ and I cannot wait to share those with you, but in the meantime, I cannot overstate enough how important it has been for me to begin to pay attention to my intuition…my feelings…and toss logic out the window. So far everything that has happened since I’ve begun to be truer to myself seems to be happening with much more ease and intention than I’ve ever experienced before, and let me tell you…it’s quite refreshing. I don’t know where to begin in encouraging anyone reading this that feels stuck, to try to do the same.
It’s a process, no doubt, but it’s one you won’t regret.
In any case, until the proper time comes to share some of those ventures and projects, here are some images from my migration up the coast from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon. (Don’t skip the 360˚ photo treats amongst the tallest trees in the world at the bottom!)
And if you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to ‘me.’ You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT.
If you’re not familiar, at 140 years old, American Forests is the nation’s oldest conservation organization, so needless to say, I am completely humbled and flattered to have received an Honorable Mention by American Forests in their 2016 Forests in Focus photography contest for my photograph “Big Baby” taken in Mariposa Grove at Yosemite National Park. Click here to see a larger version of “Big Baby” and click here to check out all the beautiful winning images.
American Forests recognizes the importance of forests in our very survival and play a more than major role in protecting and restoring our world’s forests. Since 1990 alone, they have planted more than 50 million trees across all 50 states and in almost 50 countries. By their stated mission, “American Forests inspires and advances the conservation of forests, which are essential to life. We envision a world in which forests are thriving and valued for their significant environmental, societal and economic benefits.”
Oh me too. Meeeee too…
Thank you so much American Forests for this honor and, more importantly, the work that you do. We’re going to need you now more than ever!!
I have not felt joy like this in a long time. I’m not sure why this hit me so hard, but hearing the whooping and celebrating at Oceti Sakowin literally brought tears to my eyes (here’s a cool 360˚ look at the celebration). This is a HUGE victory for Native American rights, the rights of indigenous people everywhere, the environment, the fight against corporate interests over human life, Mother Earth, and most importantly…humanity! The people came together and made this happen. This only happened because of the attention and peaceful resistance and information dissemination amongst the people. Incredible respect to the Native American elders that held it all together against all odds as they imparted their incredible wisdom and guidance to the brave water protectors both at camp and around the world. My time at Standing Rock was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I remember nothing but love, prayer, celebration of life, ceremony, and unity throughout that entire camp. It was one of, if not THE, most touching thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to be a part of. And watching and listening to these cries of celebration, my only regret is that I was unable to be there with them for this announcement.
This is beautiful.
Thanks so much to Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Josh Fox, Erin Schrode, Cornel West, the 2000+ veterans that showed up, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Gilbertt, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Fonda, and all those with a loud and listened to voice for being on the right side of history and tirelessly bringing the world’s attention to Standing Rock, ultimately leading to the Army Corps of Engineers to deny the permit for the easement that the black snakes was after, while simultaneously recognizing that they did not provide sufficient examination of the pipeline’s route and it’s affect on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Reservation lands, sacred sites, and natural resources.
And most importantly, thank you to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the over 200 tribes that came to Standing Rock in solidarity with the water protectors. Thank you for continuing to be beautiful and your struggle to lead us back to the source of our life and our being…Mother Nature. We have a lot to learn from you, and perhaps this can be remembered as the event that woke the Wasichu out of our slumber.
This type of unity is unprecedented, but it has shown and proven that together, especially in this day and age, against all odds, we have a voice.
People Power!
One love!!
Now while this is a MAJOR VICTORY for the progressive and environmental movements, we must remain vigilant, for as of January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump takes office, things are going to get MUCH MUCH more difficult on these fronts. But we must remember, it was after the extreme darkness of the Bush era that led us into this light, and I am giddy to see what the next era of post-darkness is going to bring.
So it started to get real once I was waiting for my connecting flight in Denver, Colorado to Bismarck, North Dakota and I flicked through my Feedly stream. “War Crimes On The Northern Plains” “More than 140 NoDAPL Water Protectors Arrested Overnight” “Police Brutality at Standing Rock Soars With Use of Out of State Law Enforcement” “Brutalized by Police and Jailed in Dog Kennels.”
Then I checked the email from my producer at AJ+. “Safety is first – please not get close to anything that could put you in danger.” “The police will be removing people from the camp.” “It is an honor to be there and cover this story and be part of history.”
Oh yeah, this one was much more than just a trip. This one was something much much more than that.
I’ve been following this story for months, it struck a chord for many reasons, and ever since it was on my radar, I have been aching for a way to get out there or be involved, so when an opportunity to cover it for AJ+ in 360 video came my way, I was on it. I was originally planning to leave sometime late the week of October 31, but the events of October 27, the ones that spurred those headlines above, made it a much more pressing story, so first contact with AJ+ to the time of my flight went from 10 days to just under 48 hours. I was on a plane before all the details were even finalized.
It was go time.
If you’re not familiar with what’s been happening in North Dakota, I VERY highly encourage you to research the story on your own. Just Google “Dakota Access” or “NoDAPL” or “Standing Rock” and there will be no shortage of information.
In a nutshell, a pipeline that is set to carry oil from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota through 4 states to Illinois is meeting resistance at a crucial juncture where it is set to cross the Missouri River. The pipeline was originally routed to cross the Missouri River about 35 miles north near Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, but, and this part is crucial to note, residents feared it could threaten their water, so it got re-routed here…in Cannonball, North Dakota, less than a half mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where it immediately threatens not only the water supply of the Lakota Indians on this reservation, but also up to 17 million American residents downstream.
Additionally, the route of the pipeline has already destroyed sacred sites and burial grounds, and is currently routed to destroy even more.
On the night of October 27th, under the instruction of Morton County Sheriff Kyle L. Kirchmeier, and with the backing of North Dakota’s Governor Jack Dalrymple, over 140 protectors, including elders who were praying for the sacred grounds, were met with violent response from authorities that included Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) private security, the National Guard, as well as officers from North Dakota and 3 other states. Protectors were pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, and many were marked on their wrists with numbers and thrown into 12’ x 8’ dog kennels with up to 15 others. I spoke with several medics who were treated this way while treating injured protectors, and they weren’t released until 3 days later. While I was there, Amnesty International showed up and the U.N. sent a team to investigate human rights abuses.
It is important to also note that the Lakota of the Sioux Reservation still view all of this land as their own under a treaty from 1851. Parts have since been wrangled from them under controversial ‘imminent domain’ claims, unrecognized by the tribe, and have been sold to private, non-tribal buyers, who have in turn sold swaths to the developers of the Dakota Access pipeline. If it reads like a highly organized gangster scheme, that’s because it basically is.
Anyhow, this was a story that brought everything that I care about together into one tight package – racism, environment, immigration, big business, national security, the economy, equality, human rights. You name it, this story was ALL of that. And now, finally, was my turn to experience this firsthand.
As I began my drive the next morning from Bismarck to Cannon Ball, a 45 mile straight-shot down the 1086, I wasn’t even 10 miles in before I ran into a roadblock, blocking the freeway to keep it clear for those constructing the pipeline, meanwhile re-routing me on a 20 mile detour that took me inland and then back around. When I made my approach into Cannon Ball an hour later, the signs began to make themselves more evident, beginning with a police checkpoint at the juncture of the 24 and the 1086 freeways, just about a mile south of the original camp, Sacred Stone, and 7 miles south of the Oceti Sakowin Camp, the largest of the camps and the one closest to the pipeline.
Oceti Sakowin was my destination.
As I made my way around the final ridgeline, the camp came into view in dramatic fashion – what looked like hundreds of tipis and tents and flags of all shapes and colors were stretched across an open prairie and the blue sparkle of the Cannonball river marked the horizon. It was actually quite beautiful.
I reached the end of the road, which in this case was a bunch of cones prohibiting us from going any further, and the entrance to the camp just of the side of the road. I checked in with the media tent, filled out the recommended form in the legal tent so they’d have my information in case of any arrest, and started walking around the grounds to get better acquainted with Oceti Sakowin.
I don’t know why, but I was surprised by what I found, even though it was exactly what I was hoping and expecting to find – prayer circles, communal fires, elders sitting around the spirit fire puffing on their ceremonial peace pipes while simultaneously discussing the situation and guiding the youth of their tribes. Wellness and healing tents. Communal meals.
The state of affairs of where our country’s interests truly lie can be summarized by the most telling emotion I had that day – I felt safer and more at peace as soon as I got off of the jurisdiction of my own country and onto Standing Rock Sioux Reservation territory. From the guns, tasers, tanks, batons and riot gear to the peace pipes, sage, horses, prayer circles and feathers – it was clear only one side, and which side, truly had our best interests as a people in mind.
And the organization of the camp was intensely striking. I mean, they had everything, more was coming in, and all basic services and infrastructure was created out of thin air and pure will with the help of super committed and passionate beings from all walks of life. I spoke with doctors from New Zealand, lawyers from Boston, massage therapists from California.
And the flags.
It’s hard not to be awestricken by the flags.
There were over 200 flags that lined the main road through camp, each of which represented a tribe or organization that has descended upon this remote area to show their solidarity with Standing Rock. Some of these tribes haven’t spoken or communicated in over a decade. And they’ve come together for this. For example, the Crow Nation hasn’t been welcome in Sioux territory since the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Just this past August, representatives from Crow Nation brought peace pipes and hundreds of pounds of buffalo meat as a peace and solidarity offering.
At the end of the road of flags lie the medic tent. It was here that I was to meet one of my point of contacts for this story, Noah, and it was here that I quickly heard some firsthand accounts of what had happened a few nights before, for as I arrived, a group of volunteer medics, including Noah himself, that had been beaten, arrested, marked on their wrists with numbers, and thrown into 12×8 dog kennels for 3 days while attending to injured water protectors were released and giving their testimonials for the medical department’s records. You can see parts of that interview I conducted with them in 360 video at AJ+.
The next day, I had just finished an interview with Linda Black Elk, the liaison between the herbalists and the campers, and Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, a physician on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, outside of their der (pronounced like bear…apparently the real name for a yurt), when a truck came by. The driver saw my media badge and instructed me to head towards the ridge – something was happening. We looked up towards it and there was a line of police officers and DAPL security all outfitted in full riot gear with rifles all pointed in the camp’s direction. Behind them was a visible piece of the pipeline being moved while tractors prepared its path on the other side. So I jumped in a van with Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle who took me towards the action. We stopped in a thicket of brush to watch from afar for a little while, and started noticing a group from the camp start to make their way up the ridge towards the officers.
They were face to face.
Things were tense.
As I was standing there shooting some footage, a pickup full of water protectors came by and asked me to hop in the back, so without thinking (in retrospect probably not the best practice to get into), I did. I jumped into the bed of the truck and headed towards the action. I jumped out when I started to feel I was getting a bit too close for comfort. I set up my rig and tried to figure out what was going on. Horses with whooping indigenous Native Americans came flying by me, drum lines came passing by, and prayer began on the riverbank below the officers on the ridge. There was obviously an agenda on both sides, but it was unclear what that was. Several rumors began to circulate. One was that some water protectors were crossing the river to test the waters and see if they can get to the construction site to block the pipeline. Another was that the DAPL side was using that as a diversion while they proceeded with construction on an unseen portion of the ridge.
I still don’t know.
But I do know things were definitely coming to some sort of head.
Meanwhile, helicopters, private planes, and drones with facial recognition were allegedly violating no-fly zones to keep a watchful eye on the ‘savages.’
As I mentioned before, and worth repeating here, it is important to remember that the original permits for this thing apparently had the pipeline routed to cross the Missouri River 35 miles upstream near Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, but they denied it because…not so ironically…they were worried that it might contaminate their water!
So they decided to move it downstream.
Here.
Less than a half mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the main source of water for the tribe and all citizens downstream.
And here we are.
Anyhow, the crowds dispersed and regrouped in various parts of the camp.
Soon after, while I was offloading and decompressing back at camp, I heard some hoopla near the spirit fire, a communal gathering place in the center of camp, a base for announcements, ideas, prayer and ceremony. While the action was happening, a member of the UN was at camp, and this was a bit of a debriefing of what was said and is being done.
After the briefing I got a chance to speak with Roberto Borrero of the Indian International Treaty Council, human rights observer accompanying Grand Chief Edward John of the U.N., about his role in the report that will be presented to the U.N. regarding human rights violations as well as the issue of criminalizing the water protectors, and the man that was standing right next to him, who happened to be Doug Good Feather, the Executive Director of the Lakota Way Healing Center and…get this…grandson to Sitting Bull.
The Grandson to Sitting Bull.
When he looked at me and said “My Grandpa Sitting Bull said…let’s put our minds and our hearts together, to see what kind of life we can make for our children,” I got goosebumps all over my body.
It was impossible not to feel completely humbled and lucky to be here at this very moment – a pivotal and historical moment in the history of the Native Americans and America as whole.
The next morning, it almost seemed like a a calm before the storm. As I walked around camp with my friend, and incredible photographer (who was there shooting on a Hasselblad), Chantal Anderson, the quiet but undeniable murmur of people getting ready for something was thick in the air.
And they were, soon we’d learn, for more than one reason.
The first being the proximity of the cold winter months. They were just around the corner, and as the tribes and water protectors have vowed to remain at camp through those months, there were some preparations that needed to be made. Permits for permanent structures were being acquired, permanent tipis and ders were being constructed all around us, truckloads of wood were being brought in and chopped up for warmth and cooking, and the kitchens were preparing for storage and allocations.
This was also the scene of one of the most unforgettable moments of my life…an interaction with a tribal member that left me literally speechless. After I had finished interviewing the kitchen staff on how they’re preparing for the winter months, and how they’re keeping a camp this size properly satiated, I felt a tap on the back of my knee. I turned around came face to face with an elderly Native American man who was using a rod to prod at the camera hanging on my side. I asked him “can I help you?” He immediately shot back “Can I help YOU?” I said something to the effect of “I’m not sure. What do you need.” He replied with “What do YOU need?”
That’s when I realized I just fell into a confrontation. It went back and forth like this for well over 5 minutes, him asking me what I wanted and why I was there. Him asking me if I was getting paid and if I was exploiting what was happening at the camp for a paycheck. Him stating to me that when I was done with my job that I’d get to go back to my comfortable home. He was playing the role of devil’s advocate to every response I had. I was starting to get frustrated and told him as much. “This is starting to get very irritating.” He looked at me and told me “Tell me about it!” I reminded him that he started this. He responded, “No YOU started this.” When I told him I was simply there as a journalist to help get their story out to the world, and I was trying to bring the fundamentals of their cause to the public eye, he responded, “My cause? What’s my cause? You didn’t ask me anything.” I responded, “Well, water! And your rights. I assumed since you were here,” and he cut me off…”Ohhhh…you assumed!”
Finally I just looked at him and said, “What’s it going to take to end this conversation?” He paused. He smiled. He looked me in the eye. He extended his arm. He said “A handshake.”
The tension immediately broke. When I shook his hand, he held onto it. “What you just experienced is just a tiny bit of what we’ve been experiencing for 500 years,” he told me. “But now I know you’re with us. Thank you for doing what you’re doing.”
I was humbled. I was speechless. I was empathetic, I was sympathetic and I felt like I had just been blessed. This proved to be a very powerful moment for me. And as I’d deduce later, this was very probably a result of certain parts on the administrative side tightening up their operations, including, but not limited to, media access and vetting, as there have been several reports of DAPL plants posing as media to infiltrate the camps.
Anyhow, the second reason the air felt ripe with calculated preparation was what happened the following morning, Wednesday, November 2.
Imagine this…your uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, parents, brothers and sisters are buried on your property. The U.S. government sells that piece of your property to someone that isn’t related to you at all, despite a long standing treaty that you have the rights to the land. An oil company comes in with tanks, an army of armed police, a fleet of bulldozers and digs up and desecrates all the remains of those relatives and ancestors.
Well, that’s precisely what’s happening to all the people here.
You see, on that very same ridge that I was whisked off to the day before, lies a tree. Before that ridge lies a river. That tree, on the ridge, on the other side of the river, marks a sacred burial site that the tractors were getting dangerously close to – Turtle Mountain. A group of water protectors and elders used makeshift bridges to get to that side of the river, still on public Army Corps of Engineering land, for ceremony and prayer over the sacred site. They were met with a military style line of police and security, who were clearly off of their jurisdiction, armed with rifles, pepper spray, and an unknown white substance, who destroyed the bridges while the protectors were on them. A line of water protectors praying while standing waist deep in the water with their arms in the air were attacked with mace, and Erin Schrode, a journalist who was there with “Gasland” director Josh Fox, caught the very moment on video that she was shot in the back by a rubber bullet.
This made clear what was happening the day before. It’s fair to assume that the water protectors were doing recon to see how close the construction was to the sacred site.
Their ancestor’s sites were about to be desecrated.
They were concerned.
They wanted to pray.
This is a story that has not ended, and, if we’re lucky, it may never have an ending, as it simply marks another pivotal point in the evolution of the human mind and the resilience of our communal spirit. It is important to remember that, if this had happened 10 years ago, more likely than not, no one would have ever known about it. As a matter of fact, it’s been happening for well over 500 years to the indigenous peoples of this land, and not until now has the mass population had the tools to effectively battle it and bring the injustices to scalable attention.
These police officers, this governor, these oil companies…they couldn’t have imagined that something like this would have taken such a strong root in the public eye. They’ve grown so used to doing what they’ve been doing and getting away with it, far from meaningful scrutiny. You can see in how the have handled the situation, as well as the statements they’ve been giving to the mainstream media – it’s the same tired lines and methods they’ve been feeding the public for decades and centuries.
But what they fail to recognize, and this may serve as a big lesson, is that things have changed.
This is the first time in human history that we’ve had the tools and the collective voice that we do, free and clear of the restraints of bureaucracy, and the more we learn how to best use those tools, the more we’ll begin to realize how connected we really are.
I don’t see the end of anything, I see the beginning of everything.
Which is why perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this entire thing has been how silent our two main ‘presidential’ candidates had been on not only the topic of DAPL, but also of climate change as a whole. Save for a short non-committal form letter paragraph released by the Clinton campaign, it’s as if this modern day cowboys and Indians scene wasn’t even happening. And that’s a distressing symbol and reason that we need to keep the pressure on, no matter the outcome.
The Cannonball River running through the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
This is not a Native American story or an oil story or a rural story or a far away story.
This is your story. My story. Our story.
This is the story of life.
Very literally.
For if water, the source of life, is not sacred…then nothing is.
And I firmly believe that if you can’t see that, then, well…that’s the ultimate sign that you’re due for a break from your comfort zone.
You will be challenged.
You will be frightened.
You will be confused.
You might cry.
You will laugh.
I did all of those things last week.
But those are all the very things that will remind you that you are alive.
Those are the very things that remind us that we are all connected.
Those are the very things that provide us with the perspective we need to remain on the right side of history, the right side of evolution.
It’s near impossible to walk away from an experience like that without a positive view on people and the future of humanity. You don’t see this testament to the resilience and good of the human spirit by watching it on a backlit screen, you get it by being with the people. For when you’re there, when you’re actually part of it, you transcend the profit-driven sensationalism, and can’t help but realize what a remarkable testament to the human spirit the power of being present and connected to community truly is.
After this experience I’m convinced that community is not a noun, but rather an emotion. A necessary one we have so strayed from in modern westernized culture as we have focused on isolating ourselves in our own echo chambers, we have forgotten how to be human. Anger, depression, confusion, restlessness, frustration…all modern signs of disconnect. But the more connected we become, the more connected we realize we all are, and the more important community becomes again.
We may have strayed, but events like this sure do make it seem like we’re making our way back home.
So if you don’t care, goddamnit start caring. Because if you don’t care about water, then you LITERALLY don’t care about life.
It really is as simple as that.
As these thoughts were racing through my head, it was time for me to bid farewell.
At least for now.
So as I stood in the communal dining tent and grabbed a piece of freshly cured jerky made from the bison that one of the tribes brought as an offering just a few days before, I began plotting how and when I was going to return. A quote kept prodding at the back of my head.
Well, that’s where I was born. That’s where my parents both immigrated from. That’s where almost all of my extended family still is. That’s where I haven’t been in over a decade.
The last time I made it ‘back home’ was in 2004 for a cousin’s wedding, which, if you’ve ever been to a Middle Eastern wedding, you know…lasts a week. Literally. It was madness.
Anyhow, this past summer, I was working relatively close by in Denmark, checked ticket prices, and seeing has how they were about 20% of what it would have been from home, I jumped on the opportunity. And I haven’t the faintest how to start this one properly.
If you come from a foreign country, you’ll sort of understand.
If you come from a town in a foreign country where everyone knows everyone, you’ll even more than understand.
If you come from a town in a foreign country where everyone knows everyone and you still have family there, you’ll know exactly where I’m coming from.
If you come from a town in a foreign country where everyone knows everyone and you still have family there and you haven’t seen any of them in over a decade, well…now…that…that is an experience to behold. And behold on tight, because those next 10 days…oh my…those next 10 days…were borderline frightening!
As if the previous 10 days in Denmark weren’t enough to make my entire year, the next 10 days in Israel/Palestine truly reminded me how incredibly fortunate and blessed I am, for in this next week and a half (not NEARLY enough time), I would be surrounded by and smothered in more love than should be legal. Seeing as how I hadn’t been back in so long, this was a ‘homecoming’ of sorts in which I’d get swept back and forth and up and down and all around the country for dinners and lunches and drives and excursions with family members and extended family members galore. I don’t think I ever got more than a couple hours sleep in between sitting at at least 7 or 8 different tables, each one with anywhere from 10-20 different people, all of which were related to me in one way or another, and many of whom I was only meeting for the first time.
In addition to all the family time, I somehow managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing time. While insanely exhausting, it was impossible to complain.
I didn’t want it to end.
Although I’m not exactly a ‘religious’ person by any means, it was impossible not to feel the weight of the history of where I was and what I was doing. I got to visit Jerusalem with my cousin and his family where we feasted on shawarma before walking into the old city and following the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus took, the stations of the cross, during his final hours. I saw and entered the tomb that he was buried in and saw the spot where his crucifixion took place inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I got a chance to check out the Garden of Gethsemane, where the garden of olive trees that Jesus spent his final night praying, rests.
I saw the Wailing Wall and The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque.
I had sushi on the shores of Tel Aviv and shawarma on the shores of Haifa, and more shawarma (this time pork…oh my GOD!) in a Mediterranean town just a few miles south of the border of Lebanon.
We walked through the old city of Akko (Acre) and along the wall that Napoleon was unable to scale (legend has it he threw his hat over the wall to say part of him was in Acre), and saw where Christ fed the masses with a few fish and changed the water to wine and meditated along the shoreline of Lake Galilee.
I walked through the old city and market of Nazareth, saw the caves where Jesus lived and Joseph held his workshop, now under the Church of the Annunciation, and had (yes, another) shawarma besides Mary’s Well.
I spent nights in the old house that my mother’s family grew up in (and still live in). I spent time at my father’s family’s home, that I also remember from visiting as a child, with my cousins and aunt and family, as well as his siblings family’s homes in nearby villages and towns. All the while, it was one dinner after another lunch after another memory before another dinner after another coffee between two more meals with one family after friend of family after family of friend of family after another.
It was insane. In such a good way!
And it was beautiful.
And I can’t even begin to express the myriad of emotions I felt during that time.
So to all my family and friends that helped make my trip so incredibly memorable, I love you. So SO much. I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me and the feelings and thoughts and emotions and memories you instilled in me. I am so forever grateful.
Below is a gallery of images from that whirlwind 10 day trip to the ‘homeland,’ as well as few 360˚ photographs from some of those locations so you can click and drag and enjoy all angles to your hearts’ content.
Hope you enjoy.
And here are a few of those 360˚ photos…for more, including some from the Denmark leg of this trip, visit this Google Plus gallery.
And if you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to ‘me.’ You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT.
Here’s one way to start the summer off with a bang: Head to Denmark to shoot virtual reality at northern Europe’s largest music and arts gathering, the infamous, and incredibly sustainable and socially conscious, Roskilde Festival, which, this year, included Neil Young, At The Drive In, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Action Bronson, Wiz Khalifa and an all-star cast of over 100,000 professional vomitors and shameless public urinators (oh to be young again…).
Here’s another way to start the summer off with a woot woot: Head to Skodsborg, Denmark, a beautiful quaint coastal town, to have a beautiful Dane splash you with ice cold lavender-scented water after convincing you and your pot belly to roast in a sauna, just before somehow making you think jumping into the frigid waters of the Baltic sea from the private jetty right across the street was a good idea. Oh…and to shoot it all in VR (and btw…yes…jumping into the Baltic was indeed a good idea).
Here’s yet another way to start off the summer with a yahoo! Head to Helsingor, Denmark for a private tour of the Kronborg Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site best known as Elsinor, the castle made famous by Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Oh yeah…and shoot that all in VR too!
Oh oh oh wait…here’s one more way to start the summer off with a gotcha! Head to Nazareth, in the Holy Land, to reconnect with the place of your birth and the home of just about all of your relatives and bloodline. In between belly-growth-hormone-laced meal after meal, you can make your way to spots like the Sea of Galilee, Haifa and Jerusalem to…well…yeah, shoot some VR!
Somehow, someway, I was able to finagle out of life all 4 of these different ways to start your summer off with a bang, into the beginning of a single summer!
This one.
(I have a feeling she’ll come back to collect in coming years, but until then…)
The trip was cast over a period of 3 weeks. The first 10 days, and focus of this post, were spent in Denmark, split between Roskilde, the Hotel Skodsborg, and Helsingor, and they went like this (and by the way, when you see a photo with the 360 symbol like the following one, you can click on it and then drag around to see in all directions…neato stuff right?!):
Days 1 – 6: The Roskilde Festival
This. Was. Insane.
So the Roskilde festival is an annual event that has been taking place since 1971. It’s held on the outskirts of Roskilde, Denmark, a charming town of about 50,000 that sits roughly 30 kilometers west of Copenhagen. It has a very rich history dating back to the pre-Christian Vikings, and at first seems like an unlikely location for the largest music festival in northern Europe. Lucky for me, Joan Jetsetter, my partner in Superswell VR, was invited to Roskilde and graciously let me tag along to help shoot some VR video throughout Denmark.
Roskilde Festival is a non-profit that’s staffed by about 30,000 volunteers and hosts about 130,000 festival goers over the course of a week’s time, most of whom shack up in the campgrounds set up around the festival grounds. Now, ‘campgrounds’ is being quite generous, as, no thanks to the weather, they felt more like mud-puddle border camps that were carpet-bombed with urine and various varieties of upchuck, but nevertheless, all of the attendees seemed, for the most part, quite unfazed and rather happy to be there, perhaps, due in no small part to the fact that, well, by participating in this madness, they’re doing good for the planet.
Yeah, that wasn’t a typo.
You see, Roskilde is very much set up with sustainability in it’s DNA. As a matter of fact, the very mission of the Roskilde Festival Charity Society, the non-profit behind the festival, is “to support initiatives benefiting children and young people and to support humanitarian and cultural work,” so there’s a huge focus on philanthropic and eco-friendly practices throughout all aspects of the festival. The aformentioned campgrounds, for instance – rather than lug all that stuff back on the trains and busses, more than half of the festival goers choose to leave their equipment and tents and sleeping bags behind. Roskilde collects it all, cleans it all, and donates it all to those in need of basic shelter and survival items, this year focusing on Syrian refugee camps.
Additionally, the festival mandates that all of its food vendors use at least 75% organic ingredients and materials, and their goal for 2017 is to increase that inspiring requirement to 90%. And speaking of food, none of it is wasted. All leftovers and unused portions are packed up and sent to the homeless and the hungry.
With that being said, over the next several days, I totally did not feel bad about rocking out to acts including At The Drive In, Neil Young, Action Bronson, LCD Soundsystem, Wiz Khalifa, House of Pain, M83, Immortal Technique, Mo, and Mura Masa, all spread across 9 stages on a field that seemed like it would never end.
But believe it or not, the music shared equally the title for main attraction with everything else on the festival grounds, from the aformentioned phenomena that are the campgrounds – including sites like Dream City, where teams spend months putting together their customized and ornately decorated camps, similar to a Burning Man setup, but on a slightly smaller, and much muddier, scale – to the street culture, skate demos, and art installations that adorn the Art Zone, Street City, and the Grafitti Zone, to the legendary ‘Naked Race’ that takes place through Dream City every year – and yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like. For better or for worse, we shot some of this in VR and will be posting the 360 videos at www.SuperswellVR.com in the very near future…
The People of Roskilde
All in all this festival was incredible fun. The atmosphere, the amenities, the entertainment, the culture…Europeans know how to do it right! One of the most remarkable aspects of this entire thing was the complete lack of douche-baggery. I cannot think of one time, in the entire week that we were there, that I saw any sort of violence or general assholiness. It was almost disturbingly civil from end to end. America, I love you, but we’ve got a lot to learn…
After almost a week of logging well over 60,000 steps, we were due for some R&R, and what better way to rest & relax than – yeah, that’s right, I, a heterosexual Los Angeleno, am about to proudly say it – a spa.
Days 7-9 : Gettin’ fancy at the Kurhotel Skodsborg, and gettin’ our Shakespeare on at the Kronborg Castle in Helsingor.
Our experience started almost immediately after walking onto the perfectly manicured grounds. We were properly greeted by the friendly staff, shown to our respective rooms, and whisked away by the General Manager for our grand tour of the incredibly luxurious Kurhotel Skodsborg, recent winner of Europes #1 luxury spa.
What better way to start your ‘spa’ experience than on a sublime sliver of land that rests snugly between the forest and the waters of the Baltic Sea, standing in the middle of King Frederik the 7th’s villa, where he spent his summers with (and word on the street is, often spied upon), his wife Countess Danner? (See that…I’m cultured!)
After our mini-tour of the recently renovated Villa Rex, which was restored to it’s original drawings so it looks the way it did in the 1800s, we were led to the centerpiece of this property…the 2016 World Luxury Spa Award winning…well…spa, where we were handed off to spa master Tina to do what she do, who started by ensuring we’ve conformed to the proper dress code: robe and slippers.
The experience began with a tour of the spa facilities. I have NEVER in my life been in a place like this, and unless some serious good fortune strikes, I may never have a chance to set foot in a place like this again. So I soaked it all in (slight pun intended) – 16 different cooling and warming experiences…yeah, that’s right and experiences they sure are. We walked by massage showers, a salt grotto, a steam room, and spa rains, all straddling the perimeter of a pool in glow by the skylights welcoming in Denmark’s 20 hours of daylight, before ultimately arriving at the centerpiece of today’s experience, the sauna.
Now don’t be fooled, this is no ordinary sauna. There were wooden buckets filled with scented waters, and once you’re inside, nice and toasty, Tina uses everything from a wooden spatula to a towel to her hands to conduct some sort of voodoo that would surely be illegal if anyone found out was happening. I mean, nothing…NOTHING… should be as refreshing as a towel blast of lavender-scented cold water vapors straight to the dome. And nothing…NOTHING…should be as freakishly invigorating as a bucket of ice water lunged right at your back. I don’t care WHO you are, at that point, you’re screaming. Loudly. And shamelessly. And you’re enjoying every ridiculously exhilarating second of it.
So you think it’s over. And you think you’re ready for a steak dinner. But no…Tina has other plans. And by this point, you’re well beyond fighting it. You’ve given in. She is your leader. And you will do as she says. So when she says jump into the ice cold waters of the Baltic Sea…you say…OH HELLLLL NO!!! And then you do it anyway.
That evening was one of the best nights of sleep I had had in a loooooooong time…perhaps even years. And when I woke up the next morning, looked out the window to see a blue sky with scattered cartoonish Simpsons clouds, and saw that my agenda consisted of a short train ride up the coast of Denmark to the town of Helsingor for a tour of the Kronborg Castle followed by a slow meandering walking tour through the village, I smiled.
Life is good.
The castle was…IMPRESSIVE. It’s crazy to walk up on a thing like this and know that it’s real. It’s wasn’t built as a facade or a movie set or an amusement park gift shop…this thing was a real, living, breathing, castle. And it was enormous. And it was surrounded by a moat, and the moat was surrounded by carefully manicured rolling green hills on 3 sides, and the Baltic on the last.
Our guide led us through the various halls and wings of the massive structure, all the while, various scenes from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” were being played out by actors and actresses throughout the grounds. This was too much fun.
After the castle, a guide proceeded to lead us on an afternoon walking tour of the town of Helsingor.
Classic, clean, charming, quaint…Danish!
We strolled through colorful corridors and storybook neighborhoods, cobblestone sidewalks and art-adorned walkways, finding ourselves standing in front of centuries old churches and Viking-era alleyways, before closing out the afternoon the way any Dane worth their Krone does – at a neighborhood sidewalk cafe preparing to recklessly inhale a vanilla-bean ice cream chocolate crepe (I know they don’t…but a man can dream damnit!).
This was a trip for the ages. There’s no doubt about that. And I couldn’t be more grateful to Joan Jetsetter for allowing me to tag along, her role in setting up it all up, and her bright eyed and adventure-addicted company throughout the whole thing. And I have to give a big ups to the charming, warm & gracious Cecelia, our tour guide throughout the festvial, and Martin, the overly accommodating and hospitable PR contact at the festival. T’was truly a blast!
And now…I had to prepare myself for part 2. I had no idea how much the rest from the past couple of days was going to be valued, for what the next 10 days had in store for me, I’m still trying to make sense of it all even almost 2 months later. It was all a bit of a blur. Beautiful madness. But madness nonetheless. The fog is starting to clear, and I’m getting close to deciphering the insanity, so soon…I’ll post it here. Should be in the coming week or so…
To check out a tour of the Kurhotel Skodsborg, the Kronborg Castle, and the town of Helsingor in VR, grab your Gear VR or Google Cardboard, and visit us at www.SuperswellVR.com/DenmarkVR. We’ll be posting those videos in the coming weeks, so follow us on Twitter or Instagram and we’ll let you know once they’re live. And if you don’t have a VR viewer yet, it’s still cool to drag your mouse around the video to see all angles all the time. However, go get a VR headset. Now. Trust us. It’s fantabulous. Heck, even President Obama’s got one!!
And if you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to ‘me.’ You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT.
Our National Parks and outdoors spaces have done more for me than I can ever possibly express. I have learned more about myself, more about all of us, and more about what and why matters and drives me and all of humanity in those parks than anywhere and anytime else in my adult life. I cannot think of anything that has helped to heal my psyche over the past decade and put everything into necessary perspective more than our natural world and outdoors spaces, and while it’s absolutely impossible to express all of those sentiments in a blog post, the most appropriate attempt would be to simply rehash some of my favorite scenes and stories that I have been blessed to see with my own eyes and experience with my own being over the years. So below is a gallery of 100 images from within some of our national parks and some links to some of the stories behind those images. Hope You Enjoy.
With that, I thank you National Park Service. You cannot begin to understand what you have done for me and how much you have meant to me. Thank you for all that you are and all that you do. I look forward to another century of stories, adventures, meditations, and realizations. Happy 100th. Here’s to 100 more!
And if you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe to my mailing list at top right of this page, and I’ll deliver each post to you as I publish them, and if you support the kind of work I’m doing and the things I’m sharing, please consider ‘subscribing to me’ on Patreon.com. Yup, subscribing to ‘me.’ You can even set the price. Literally, $1 per month if you want. No joke, your little helps me a LOT.
A couple of months ago, I found myself in the fortunate situation of shooting virtual reality footage with a prototype VR camera…in Tahiti. Needless to say, that was an insane experience that I will never ever forget. If you want to read about that experience, check out this post, but here, I’m going to lay out a few things Skye Mayring, my partner in Superswell VR, and I, learned about shooting virtual reality, because, let me tell you, it’s nothing like shooting regular video.
I have spent the better portion of the last two decades working in the media industry, and a LOT of that time has been spent producing, shooting, and editing videos. Everything from Fortune 500 corporate packages to music videos to broadcast television packages and nature films, you name it. The process has become almost robotic in the sense that you know what to expect, you know how to set things up, you know what you need to do to get the material you need…basically, you’ve gone through the true, tried and tested formulas to the point where the whole procedure becomes quite instinctual.
Well, with VR…forget all that! Essentially, you’re learning from scratch, and everything you thought you knew…throw it right out the window. Heck, it might be almost easier for someone that doesn’t come from a background of video production, because they don’t have to focus on re-training their brain…it’d all be new to them, eventually becoming instinctual.
With every video I’ve ever worked on, and anyone has ever worked on – whether it be film, television, internet, whatever – there is always a barrier between the storyteller, the production itself, and what the viewer ends up seeing on the other end. With this, fuggedabadit. That barrier completely disappears. This was no longer just finding a way to tell a story to someone, this was a way of that someone experiencing the story with you.
For the first time.
Ever.
And because of that, the approach had to be completely altered. There was definitely a learning curve to the process, and I’ll lay out a few of those key things we learned. If you jump down the VR rabbit hole (and it’s quite an exciting rabbit hole to jump into right now), hopefully some of them might help you save some time and sanity in your own productions.
1. Create Movement To Guide The Viewer When most people first put the headset on, they’re not sure what to do. Essentially they look right, they look left, they look ahead, sometimes they look up, but it doesn’t occur to them that they can literally look EVERYWHERE, all around them. And when they finally realize this, that’s when the ‘aha’ moment kicks in, the jaw drops, and an expression along the lines of ‘Oh wow! That’s amazing!’ uncontrollably oozes out of their psyche.
As 360 degree Virtual Reality filmmakers, your job is to find ways to utilize that space, otherwise, why shoot in VR? An easy way to do this is to create moment in order to guide the viewers head.
For example, while we were in Tahiti, one of the videos we shot was a motu picnic experience, in which a local guide prepares a dish of poisson cru, the national dish of Tahiti. It consists of fresh fish, citrus, vegetables, mixed with coconut water and shavings. The first couple of takes, we had him prepare the entire dish while standing in one position. Something wasn’t clicking. We realized that we weren’t giving the viewer a single reason to move their heads. That’s when it hit us. So we moved the coconut he was going to shuck to the other end of the beach and we placed the table where he would make the final preparations 180 degrees to the right of him. This way, he’d have to walk down the beach to the left to pick up the coconut, and then back to the right to the shucking station, and then from there, he’d walk 90 degrees to the right to the table to finish the preparation. This forces the viewer to turn their head completely with him, naturally guiding them to take full advantage of the immersive view.
Another example was on the Island of Huahine, another French Polynesian island of Tahiti. This island is famous for its ancient marea temples and rich archaeological history, so we had a local tour guide there take us around the island to various locations. While he was guiding us in several scenes, we had him walk around the camera as he pointed out various landmarks and aspects of the tour. This gives the viewer the reason to turn and look at what he’s pointing at.
2. Treat Your 360 Camera As You’d Like To Be Treated While not as important in regular video, as viewers have their entire periphery as a frame of reference, nothing is more important to making your viewers feel comfortable, especially when experiencing fully immersed VR in a headset, than being able to relate to the point-of-view. Therefore, treat the 360 camera as another person. For example, if the scene is a situation in which everyone is standing up, have the camera level at an average height of a human being. If the scene is a situation in which everyone is sitting down, have the camera at the height of everyone sitting down. Imagine standing with a group and looking up at everyone if the camera is too low, or looking down on everyone if the camera is too high – it can be very disorienting – so this is super important to remember in order to help minimize any sort of unnatural sensations, greatly reducing the risk of nausea. Especially in VR, nausea is a no-no.
3. Use Sound As A Cue. With the nature of VR being a completely immersive experience, things that were impossible before, become very possible now, including the effective use of sound as a ‘visual’ cue. For example, if someone is talking behind you, you can now turn around and see that person talking behind you. The surround sound experience is now enhanced by surround view. While shooting that same poisson cru preparation discussed in #1 above, we had two elements of sound that helped guide the story. One, we had live ukulele playing, and it was completely opposite of the focus of the scene. If you turned around, you’d see another local Tahitian man sitting on the picnic table in the water, playing the ukulele. Additionally, when our main guide was ready to move from one step of preparing the dish to the next, he walked through the water, roughly to a point 45 degrees away from where he was, and as he walked through the water, you hear the water splashing in the direction he is walking, prompting you to turn your head and follow him.
There are several ways to play with this new story telling technique. Imagine a horror film where someone suddenly screams at you from right behind you and you turn your head…finding yourself face to face with a monster!
4. Learn to Let Go – Remember the ‘Reality’ in ‘Virtual Reality’ When you’re used to shooting in a 2D space, whether still photography or film, you’re used to having a certain amount of control of every element in the frame. From blocking to positioning to crew. It took quite a bit of self-control to realize that, when shooting in 360, you don’t have all that control, and once you realize that you don’t have that control, you have to learn to let go and embrace it. You can’t really predict what’s going to happen in the ‘background,’ and you have to remember that’s a good thing. We had kayakers, swimmers, people walking on the beach, doing what you might consider ordinary and unremarkable things, but those are the very things that lend to the immersive nature of the medium. It helps add a new element of approachability that can often work in your favor, because, after all, life is not perfect, and if everything was perfect, you’d lose the ‘reality’ in ‘virtual reality.’
Also, another lesson along these lines is that what may seem boring in real life, may not be so boring in VR. We were with the engineer of the Project Beyond camera we were using, and he insisted we shoot a bit of footage between a bunch of food vendors on the side of the street. We weren’t quite sure why, it made no sense as there didn’t seem to be anything compelling other than the delicious aromas, but once we saw the footage, it was surprisingly engaging. We realized that because it’s such a real scene that we’re used to and know, we were immediately able to relate. At the time we weren’t focused on getting release forms as we didn’t think we’d use that footage, but, well, now I wish we had.
5. It’s Not About You! Again, remember, this is 360, so EVERYTHING will be seen. Everything. So be aware of what’s in focus because you’re gonna see anyone and everyone in the frame. And with this, people’s faces will be in focus. You will need to sort out any release form situations before you get to the location. Otherwise, it will be madness trying to get everyone to sign them. Trust me. Oh, PLEASE…trust me…
6. Wait What? There IS A Front Of The Camera!?? This was a weird one to learn…as it was a lesson that wasn’t apparent until post production. We were editing a scene in the interior of one of the overwater bungalows where a couple was supposed to be front and center as the focal point. Well, when I imported the clip, the boring screen of a TV was at the center of the frame. No bueno!
It should become a simple habit while shooting to use a piece of tape or a marker to learn which set of lenses you will use as the front, and always use that marker to distinguish where the main focal point of action is located, especially when shooting with a very multi-camera array like we were (17 cameras). That front will be the center of your stitch, so it’s useful to know which of the cameras is #1 and which is #16, as it makes for great practice to keep that focal point of action away from the stitching point of the vertical planes between the first camera and the last camera, which, ideally, would be behind the head when viewing in a viewer. So trying to keep the focus between cameras between cameras #8 & #9 would be ideal (or whatever the middle cameras in your array are, for example, in a 6 camera array, use lenses 3&4, and so forth). By keeping the action in the center frame of your VR array, you’ll help assure that the action remains in front of the viewer in the safe zone.
Thankfully, there are now plugins for Premiere and After Effects made my Mettle where you can seamlessly shift that plane of view, which are INCREDIBLY useful and a must for anyone working in VR. Additionally, if you’re using Adobe’s Creative Cloud, the latest version of Premiere CC includes built in VR tools, one of which is the ability to shift the plane of view in post.
7. Clean Every Lens Every Shot This is EXTREMELY important. Any fingerprint or smudge on one, or any part of, a lens has the very real potential of ruining an entire shot. Have lens wipes in all your pockets at all times.
8. Slate Everything! The importance of this will become incredibly apparent come the post production phase for two distinct reasons:
A. Since you have to run and hide while shooting, if you don’t have a wifi or bluetooth monitoring solution or connection, most times you are unable to see all the action and hear everything that’s happening, so to have a visual cue of each take becomes super important.
B. You will most likely have to sync audio from a separate audio device or recorder, just like in regular video or film productions, and since so many of the takes will be similar with just minor variants, you’ll have to be sure to use the right audio, primarily when shooting in situations in which the environment isn’t completely controlled. You don’t want to hear a random motorboat cruise by if there wasn’t one there while shooting in 360 because, well, the viewer can turn around and see that there is no motorboat. Jus’ sayin…
9. Keep It Short & Sweet As best you can, never record long clips for a few reasons. First of all, it gets boring for the viewer after an average of around 20-30 seconds. Second of all, cameras like Project Beyond uses 17 cameras, each with their own sensor, capturing over 35 megapixels per frame, at an average of 30-60 frames per second…well…you do the math. This becomes quite the issue once we get to post production. Large files equals large amounts of data equals computer wants to poo.
10.Learn To Offline Edit! If you’ve never done it before, you’re going to want to learn to offline edit. Unless you have a super powerful super computer, chances are you’re going to have an insanely frustrating troublesome time editing these large files on your computer. Essentially, offline editing is creating low resolution versions of the files, while retaining the exact same names and naming structure, editing with those, and then connecting to the high resolution files once you have picture locked with final edits. Lucky for Adobe Creative Cloud users, the latest version of Premiere includes an automatic function to create proxies (low resolution offline versions) that you can switch back and forth from with the high resolution original with the click of a button. This is a game changer. Seriously.
11. Take Your Sweet Time. Let the shots ring out. Even when you thought you let the shot ring out, you haven’t. Let it ring out even more. In regular video or film setting, you’ll cut to the next scene once the action or dialogue is done in the prior scene because there’s nothing else to see or hear. In 360, you want to give the viewer adequate time to explore the entire scene as there is much more to see.
Our first two edits, while cutting in Premiere, it seemed like we were definitely staying on shots long enough, almost too long. But when I put it in the Gear VR to review, I was longing for more time to explore the scene. I had to go back in and literally almost double the length of each shot before I was comfortable I had enough time to explore.
12. Get Your Extensions Right! Learn the naming conventions for uploading and viewing on GearVR. I had to test and try and figure out several different ways of encoding in order for the videos to play, and on top of that, you have to be cognizant of the ending of the name (TB_BT_3DV, etc) to play in different viewers, apps, and programs. There’s a great post on the Oculus support pages that will help with this: https://goo.gl/y4NzYZ
14. Be Prepared To Show Off! Take a GearVR or some viewer with you everywhere you go because everybody thinks VR is amazing. Everybody. From the grandma in Tahiti to the GM of a Bora Bora resort to a child in Los Angeles. My mom, dentist, friends, and random strangers in random coffee shops. Everyone. And if you’re in the business of VR, even better, as it sells itself. People see it, and their neurons immediately fire.
With all that being said, the industry and the technologies are moving at such an incredible rate, that new stuff is available literally every single minute. It’s almost impossible to keep up with. But that’s a big part of the excitement of the VR space right now…there is so much experimentation and so much to figure out, as there are no real precedents set just yet, which leaves room for a LOT of us to get crazy.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m learning more with each project and with each day and perhaps I’ll update this post with more or write a new post later, but these tips will hopefully get you on the right path with your VR project. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me, I’ll do my best to answer any questions.
All the screenshots you see throughout this post are from the footage we shot in Tahiti. If you want to check out those videos, keep an eye on SuperswellVR. We’ll be posting them there soon. Very very soon…
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