Title: JET LAG
Genre: romance
Status: completed
Type: 360° VR experience
Contribution: writer, co-director

ABOUT

Ju and Tanushree are in a long distance relationship between Mumbai, India, and Recife, Brazil. To express their love in absence of each other, the two women express their longing through Indian classical dance and capoeira dance. In these atypical forms of communication they find a transient union.

PROCESS

Over the spring of 2015, Ando Shah and I co-created our first 360 film for the virtual reality medium. The Samsung Gear VR was about to release and VR was poised to become the ‘next big medium’. Beyond the hype, we believed that VR could really change the way we interact with media, creating empathy with subjects and more thoughtful interactions. With a small grant, we set out to film Jetlag about a long-distance relationship between two women, a Brazilian Kathak dancer and Indian Capoerista. As we were wrapping up the Mumbai leg of the shoot, a massive earthquake struck Nepal, which shook the rooftop I was on, nearly 2000 kms away.

STATEMENT

The following is an attempt to explain some of the concepts and techniques we used to translate our vision into the language of this hitherto unknown landscape of VR films. In Jetlag, we set the tone by immersing users into downtown Mumbai flying along behind the taxi of the protagonist, participating in her WhatsApp messages.