VentureBeat: With this project, were you aiming toward this length of story for a particular reason?
Darnell: We weren’t focusing on a length. But this is the length that the story needed to be told correctly. That’s one of the reasons why it was such an ambitious project. We wouldn’t have chosen to take it on at the very beginning of our company. We felt like we had enough work under our belts and enough knowledge about how we could move VR forward with this piece, as well as how we could tell this piece as best we could. We thought it was time.
There’s not a lot of projects out there that run this length, especially animated projects. In fact, I don’t know if there are any. It’s almost one-third of a feature film, one-fourth of a feature film. It’s a lot of work for a small company with 15 full-time employees. We felt like we were ready to do it.
Because we paralleled the process with VR and 2D at the same time, we could leverage the work we were doing in each of the distinct mediums, so it didn’t necessarily take twice as long to create this. We created one set of characters we could use in both versions and so on. There are some differences because the VR piece has to run in real time in Unity. All the animation, all the characters, all the sound that you see in here is created on the fly.
Obviously, in the film version, we could create all the imagery ahead of time. We still use Unity to do that. But that just allowed us, in the 2D piece, to leverage some of the things we’re familiar with in cinema, like depth of field and more dense lighting, that kind of thing.
Fan: That last point is pretty important, regarding the storybook feel. We did have to develop a lot of proprietary technology to get the storybook feeling you see in Crow. There’s a reason why, in the early days of VR — and in the early days of computer graphics, for that matter — people mostly created hard metallic objects, things like toys. Designing hard objects, it’s much easier to create that when you’re limited in your rendering cycles.
But Eric, being our visionary creative, wanted us to create that storybook feel. We wanted it to be so inviting that you’d want to go in and touch the animals. You’d want to feel the grass, feel the flora and fauna around you. We had to create the kind of effects where that looks fuzzy and soft wherever you go. This is normally easy to do in 2D because you’re looking at a screen. You can just cheat it and make the edges fuzzy. But in VR and you can walk around everything. We have to maintain that edge wherever you go.
We had to develop a lot of our own technology to create that. We were able to do that in Unity, and they were super helpful. But we also had to create a lot of proprietary technology to be able to create the 2D pipeline and the VR pipeline together, as well as different lighting methods. In computer animation, you can have multiple lights in one scene, but in a game engine, you can usually have only one light. We had to develop a system that allowed us to have the kind of theatrical lighting setup we used, as well as, of course, the technology that allowed us to have this high-quality animation running in a real-time game engine.
Above: Crow: The Legend is a Native American fable.
VentureBeat: I haven’t seen a lot of the interactivity yet because I’ve only seen the 2D version. But does the VR version allow you to stop and play around a lot more, as opposed to just watching the story?
Fan: Right. In the VR version, as soon as you start off, you’re given these hands. You actually make the seasons change. You make it spring. You make it winter. When you move your hands, you can throw snow around. It’s super fun. You can think of it like a snow globe. People like to wave their arms above them.
We learned a lot about interactivity in this piece, especially in the space sequence. In the 2D version, the space sequence is super short, but in VR, it’s actually quite lengthy because that’s the part that audiences really loved. You fly through several areas in space, and based on where you move your arms, you hit different stars and different planets, setting off different music. Every person who goes through it has their own unique soundtrack. It all depends on what things you set off based on the movement of your arms.
We spent a lot of effort on figuring out how to get you to make different arm movements in outer space. In the earlier versions of the piece, people kept whipping the controller up and down as fast as possible. They just wanted to activate the planets and stars as much as they could. Scott Peterson, our director of interactivity — he’s worked on both films and games — found a way to incentivize you to not do that whipping motion, to go for a more smooth flowing motion. We use the game mechanics to reward you with different sounds based on the way you wave.
There’s another scene that’s not in the 2D version where we have this asteroid field. If you wave, the asteroids turn around you with little faces, and they’re like sections of a choir. They sing to you. That’s almost become a completion [mechanic]. Viewers want to clear all the asteroids, but they also get rewarded for that by getting additional music and sounds.
We also detect whether or not you’ve moved your controllers previously. If you haven’t, we give you different cues. The narrator — that’s Randy Edmonds, the Native American tribal elder I mentioned before….
Darnell: He’ll just prompt you. “Go ahead, raise your arms, come on!”
Fan: We try to be smart about it. We make sure viewers are getting the key moments. One thing we learned in Asteroids! — there are some points in Asteroids where you’re able to interact more than in other areas. In Crow, we wanted to make sure that at every point in the entire piece, you can interact. Whether it’s waving your arms to create frost or actually changing your action to turn it into winter, at all times, there’s something you can do. It makes sense for you to be always there, always present.
Darnell: It’s important to us, too, that the interactivity is not just there as a toy. It’s not like we stop the story and let the viewer just play. It may be playful, play-like, what you’re doing, but it’s integrated into the story. The things you’re doing really matter. When you’re gesturing at the asteroids to make them sing, they’re also moving out of the way to clear a path for Crow to find his way through outer space. It’s longer because we can lean in to some of these moments more, in an effort to allow the viewer to inject themselves into the story. But it’s not necessarily longer because we stop the story to allow for some sandbox time and then turn the story back on again.
The primary goal for us is that everything feels integrated into one cohesive, comprehensive whole. Like Maureen said, we want you to feel like you’re there. We want you to feel like you matter to the characters in the world in some way. The characters and the story never stop to give you time to go off and just goof around.
Above: Crow: The Legend.
VentureBeat: What was it like working with John Legend? How much time did he get to put into it?
Darnell: John was great. The story and the themes of self-sacrifice, self-acceptance, helping your community, these are all things that matter to him. This wasn’t a job for him. This was something he was doing because he really wanted to. We would spend hours working on his performance. He did take after take without any complaints.
He came in one day with this idea for the main song in the piece, but he wanted to make sure that the lyrics of the song served the story. That was such a cool experience for us because we just sat in the studio with him and talked about the lyrics. He’d throw out a line, and we’d talk about whether it was the right feeling, the right line for the story. We just watched as this song came alive right there on stage, with a piano and a microphone in front of him. It didn’t take a lot of time because John is so incredibly talented. After a few hours, we had this great song that became a kind of cornerstone for the piece.
Fan: John is a spokesperson for many causes, and that’s why this piece was perfect for him because it is about using your celebrity to sacrifice for the greater good. We specifically chose a diverse cast, especially looking for talent who are advocates for their own underrepresented communities. He was perfect for that as well. He’s super supportive of the piece, especially since he’s not just the star voice and the person who wrote the song. He’s also our executive producer.
VentureBeat: Are the Go and Rift versions very different?
Fan: Yes. The Rift version is the interactive version. The Go and Gear versions are not interactive.
VentureBeat: When and how will the piece be available?
Fan: We’re launching this on YouTube and Facebook. It will also be available on the Oculus store at the same time.
