DiscoveryVR
The road leaving Longyearbyen, Svalbard
company: discovery
role: Senior director of programming
Four years ago, a colleague of mine at Discovery took a week of personal leave and disappeared to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. This side project for the United Nations would turn into Clouds Over Sidra, an immersive documentary about a 12 year old Syrian girl living in the refugee camp. Through my tears, I felt like I saw the future and I needed to understand how a medium could not only affect its user emotionally, but physiologically as well.
With my colleague, we pooled resources and began experimenting with hacked cameras, 3D printing, and buggy software and, with another internal group at Discovery, helped define what would become DiscoveryVR.
And because Discovery is Discovery (PLANET EARTH!), I had the opportunity to travel the world, producing VR documentaries on the Doomsday Seed Vault in Svalbard near the North Pole and the rising middle class in Tanzania.
The following are some of the experiences we created...
The Untold Story of Africa’s Middle Class
This 360 documentary looks at the under-reported stories of the African middle class, told through the lens of a Stella, a midwife in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
Surfing 101
Big-wave surfer Kyle Thiermann gives a lesson in VR on the basics of surfing – how to read surf conditions, body movement and the rules of the waves!
Inside The Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault
For years, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has been collecting seeds in case of natural disaster or if a food crisis breaks out. Find out what it's like inside the vault.
Synesthesia: What's It Like To Hear Colors?
