Unity, room scale VR combined with 360 video. Filmed on a Insta360 Pro

On the remote Canadian island of Texada, the everyday stuff of human existence—work, play and dreams—is juxtaposed against the tectonic shifts of the planet, rising and falling in cyclical patterns of creation, extinction and renewal.

In this impressionistic VR project, co-directors Claire Sanford and Josephine Anderson merge 360-degree live-action footage, captured across the island, with 3D animation of geologic upheaval to create an immersive, poetic experience. A chorus of residents’ voices ebbs and flows, unravelling the complexities of the surrounding limestone that is central to the community and economy of the island. Present in everything from toothpaste to the great Pyramids of Egypt, this humble yet ubiquitous rock is a critical element in the construction of our modern society.

Texada is about rocks, people and time—the head-spinning vastness of terrestrial epochs contrasted with the immediacy of day-to-day human experience. Real and imagined landscapes document a journey from the Earth’s formation to the current moment: twinned streams of existence mixing and mingling in an ever-changing flow. As geologic forces continue to unfold, the only constant is transformation. Yet amongst the great heave of history, glimpses of temporal beauty, like discovering beautiful stones on a beach, help us understand our place in the universe.

360 video, 3D animation, motion capture using Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D, Maya and After Effects. Filmmed on a Insta360 Titan

Niitsitapi writer and director Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon) takes us beyond the veil of traditional media and transports us directly into another realm, where past, present and future are one; where colonial rules and assumptions are forgotten; and where we can finally get to the truth of the matter.

In this stunning, cinematic VR experience, we’re invited to watch as the narrative unfolds all around us, on a dream-like plane of existence where spirits and time flow and merge, and stories come to life and dance before our eyes. Inside this immersive virtual world, two Indigenous trickster poets in mirrored red suits and long braids guide us on a journey, in which community protocols confront our notions of personal responsibility. The pair’s sharp wit and caustic humour will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in First Nation communities, and their comradery keeps us at ease as we explore some of the darker sides of living life in Canada while Indigenous.

Matriarchs and Inii (buffalo) rule this virtual realm. They pull no punches, yet they lead us with kindness, bringing us face-to-face with some of the grim realities Indigenous Peoples have experienced. We explore the stories of two Indigenous men wounded by the colonial tradition of systemic racism. These stories disrupt the status quo, laying bare the benign cruelty of colonial oppression, and dare to ask, “Now that you know, just what are you going to do about it?”

This unforgettable experience will stay with you long after it’s over. Challenging us to act on what we’ve learned, THIS IS NOT A CEREMONY calls on all who’ve watched to bear witness and share what they’ve seen and heard, to learn from these tragedies—and to never forget.

Propreitary engine, interactive 360 video, stopmotion animation with 3D animation - Gaze based interaction

The worlds first stop motion VR production.

Step into the stillness of an abandoned school and enter Gymnasia, a place where the ghostly ephemera of a lost childhood await you. Recall the particular sights and sounds of a child’s world through the echoes of ball games, school lessons and choir recitals. Gymnasia reanimates the memories of those forgotten days. This ground-breaking, cinematic VR experience is the first collaboration between the National Film Board of Canada, Felix & Paul Studios and Clyde Henry Productions. The project flawlessly blends 3D 360-degree video, stop-motion, miniatures and CGI, and pushes the art of puppet animation into uncharted territory. Gymnasia is a dark dream - unsettling and weirdly wonderful. It is the first VR experience to induce the elusive anxiety that occurs when the lines between what’s real and unreal are blurred beyond belief.

Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square is flooded. Its infrastructure has merged with the local fauna; mature trees grow through cracks in the sidewalks and vines cover south-facing walls. People commute via canoe and grow vegetables on skyscraper roofs. Urban life is thriving.

Rooted in the realm of Indigenous futurism, Biidaaban: First Light is an eight minute interactive VR time-jump into a highly realistic—and radically different—Toronto of tomorrow. As users explore this altered city now reclaimed by nature, they must think about their place in history and ultimately their role in the future.

Language carries the knowledge of its speakers. Indigenous North American languages are radically different from European languages and embody sets of relationships to the land, to each other, and to time itself. But as Indigenous languages face the risk of disappearing, we risk losing what they have to teach us.

Biidaaban: First Light asks users to think about their place in history and their role in a possible future. As they move through a highly realistic future Toronto reclaimed by nature, they hear the languages of the place originally known as Tkaronto. Through gaze-based interactions, users engage with the written text of the Wendat, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway) and gain insight into the complex thought systems of this land’s first peoples.

The VR environment was created using to-scale architectural models of Toronto’s Osgoode subway station and the buildings surrounding Nathan Phillips Square.

Lisa Jackson (Anishinaabe) is one of Canada’s most celebrated contemporary artists working in film and VR. In Biidaaban: First Light, Lisa joins forces with 3D artist Mathew Borrett to create a future for Canada’s largest urban centre from an Indigenous female perspective.

In this two minute linear video short for the internet a father finds one year of voice recordings of his five year old son talking with Google Assistant. He contemplates what it means for his son to grow up with intelligent machines.  

Hungry Month of March is the story of the fishers, farmers, hunters and foragers who supply the new Newfoundland cuisine. This flowering of haute cuisine in a remote and harsh northern landscape is a kind of rediscovery of who we are. Our identity springs from the heart of a hungry winter, when feeding ourselves took all our time and ingenuity.

This most easterly Canadian province, the planet’s 15th largest island, has 18,000 miles of coastline, sparsely populated by fishermen and their families who once searched for harbours to build a house, and to fish from. But before roads, when winter came and the harbours froze, you only ate what you had got.

By March month, provisions began to dwindle, and hunger became threatened. Those times are gone now but chefs who follow a seasonal, local aesthetic, cooking only with what they’ve managed to store and preserve, are still faced with familiar challenges come the hungry month of March.

But despite a hard climate, the land and sea is bountiful. There’s thousands of moose, hares and bears. Millions of birds. The berries and the bees. The codfish is still king. (If you could only have a couple of sheep, as my Aunt Marion would say). The suppliers behind our new local food movement have a perspective on the essential elements of life that seem to have vanished in the 21st century, but are nevertheless at the core of who we are and what we eat.

The seminal Bear 71 was recreated with the help of the Google Daydream team - this time for Virtual Reality. The re-envisioning also included a WebVR and HTML 5 version of the project so it could live on into the future for generations to come, whether on browser, headset or mobile device.  

Seances presents a new way of experiencing film narrative, framed through the lens of loss. In a technical feat of data-driven cinematic storytelling, films are dynamically assembled in never-to-be-repeated configurations. Each exists only in the moment, with no pausing, scrubbing or sharing permitted, offering the audience just one chance to see this film before it disappears.

The project was born from the mind of one of the world’s foremost outré directors, Guy Maddin, who has long been haunted by the idea that 80% of films from the silent era have been lost. Driven by the desire to reincarnate this vanished history, an abundance of these films have been reimagined by Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, with the express goal of combining and recombining them to create infinite narrative permutations.

In this trio’s inimitable ethos and aesthetic – which takes the language and spirit of early sound cinema and runs it through a filter of their invention, bound up in history, melodrama and bromance-infused neuroses – Seances has been co-created by the NFB as a web-based and installation-based film experience. In both iterations, the audience has an opportunity to influence the film they are about to see, but it will be the only instance of that particular film that will ever exist. There is only that moment to watch.

The revolutionary cinema verite film “Rouli-Roulant” or “The Devil’s Toy” by Claude Jutra of Montreal influenced a generation of seminal filmmakers – including Goerge Lucas. The film was named after a famed hillside corner on Mont Royale where auto enthusiasts and youthful skateboarders would come to play (and get in trouble). In his film Jutra showed what could happen when the camera was lifted off its tripod and followed the subject in the real world. 

In reaction to the 50th anniversary of this film the NFB French Digital studio and NFB English Digital Studio commissioned Skateboard films from all over the world celebrating the culture, style and rebelliousness of skateboarding and skateboard film making. Twelve films were made from renowned directors around the world including: Vancouver, Victoriaville, and Montreal Canada, New York and Los Angeles USA, Athens Greece, Bor Serbia, Johannesburg South Africa, Bad Durkheim Germany, Lyon France, and Singapore as well as a re-edit of the original film to match the 6 min 66 second length requirement.  

The project was launched on Youtube as well as an interactive website. The site was built by Montreal Digital Studio Deux Huit Huit. Beyond presenting the films the site allowed exploration of the background, location and inspiration for each film. 

Watch all the films on Youtube

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_BcPisMbhTa2OOWixjo5IA

Circa 1948 is an augmented reality app for the iPhone and iPad that allows users to take a virtual tour of two important sites from Vancouver’s history: Hogan’s Alley and the Old Hotel Vancouver, both since destroyed. Internationally renowned artist, Stan Douglas, has created 3D models of these locations which have been meticulously researched and are historically accurate, scripted spaces that can be physically navigated by the user. Using an iOS device as a window into the past, one will be able to literally walk into these places, on-line at the actual locations where the Alley and Hotel once stood, or off-line, anywhere in the world.

Bear 71 is the true story of a female grizzly bear monitored by the wildlife conservation offices from 2001 – 2009.

She lived her life under near constant surveillance and was continually stressed by the interactions with the human world. She was tracked and logged as data, reflecting the way we have to see the world around us through Tron and Matrix-like filters, qualifying and quantifying everything, rather than experiencing and interacting.

Leann Allison sifted through thousands of photos from motion-triggered cameras from this project. The grainy images gathered over the past 10 years by various scientists reveal the hidden life of the forest, played out by the animals and humans – including Bear 71 – captured covertly on film.

Bear 71’s story is consistently played out in places all over the globe where humans and wildlife intersect – from cougars in Nova Scotia to Bears in suburban Vancouver to bear culls in New Jersey.

It highlights how our growing dependence on technology divorces us from nature, even while allowing us to keep closer tabs on it. It raises questions about how we view nature, how we view ourselves in relation to technology and nature, and the nature and validity of surveillance both in the wild, and within human society

Sundance Premiering - this was the first project I worked on with the NFB. I produced the installation and helped produce the experience.