Joe Hunting met the subjects of his documentary in the physical world for the first time during the film’s tour.
We Met In Virtual Reality is the full documentary now streaming to HBO subscribers and was captured by Hunting while completing film education in COVID-19 isolation. Using VRChat’s built-in recording tools adapted with the community-created VRCLens to add cinematic recording effects, Hunting encountered subjects in virtual worlds and put together a documentary that was shown first at the Sundance Film Festival.
utilities, We met in virtual reality introduces HBO Max viewers to the VRChat culture and the capabilities of modern VR headsets. The film’s director recently sat down in our virtual studio using Quest 2 stand-alone headsets with hand-tracking, and answered some questions about the making of the film.
“I hope people see and rate the film and are confused and really shocked, especially in the opening of the film,” Hunting told me. “My intent is to start a conversation… the response I really want to achieve, it’s to open the mind and show people that we can find community and support and express ourselves in very unique ways that are constantly evolving and constantly changing.”
Hunting said for a previous short film project A Wider Screen that he revealed the physical appearance of his VRChat subjects and when he spoke to viewers he realized it was “actually quite disturbing” that their “favorite moment” often saw that side of them. .
“I wanted people to connect with their more fantastic images, their representations of themselves, and see the excitement and joy I see in them when I film with them in VRChat,” Hunting said. “And so I really took that inspiration 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 seeing a movie like this, especially a documentary that you that leaves questions to the imagination and you let people walk the line between authenticity and more fantasy. I think that’s what makes the movie so fascinating and also what makes VR so fascinating. I never saw the real footage of the film’s subjects or anyone else until the film was done, so the film is how I saw them, as a director and as a filmmaker and I want the audience to feel that too.”
Hunting only shows the subjects of We Met In Virtual Reality as their avatars in VRChat, but, spoiler alert, “by the end of the film, I really wanted the audience to feel that the subjects of the documentary and their stories are actually from VR.” and in the real world.”
He recently met the physical counterparts of his film’s subjects in New York ahead of its premiere on HBO.
“I can definitely see audiences ringing their alarm bells after seeing this movie and thinking, oh my god, these people need to get out there and connect with their real friends and engage with the real world,” Hunting told me in our interview on July 22. “But the great thing is that they do, they all have jobs and they are all engaged to their real friends and real relationships. And I really hope people feel that and all the couples we see in the movie are now together in real life too, as I speak… I’m in Brooklyn, we just had our premiere of the movie in New York, and we’re all personal here and so obviously that’s not in the documentary, but it’s definitely a story tied to that reaction we get about people seeing our subjects in the film in a way that’s close. I hope that both the journey we took to make it and the film itself presents the idea that is not the stereotype, that these stigmas are false and that we can find a healthy balance if we handle the technology the right way. .”
Hunting said he plans to “stay in VR for my next project,” but didn’t want to reveal too much because “it’s super early.”