Saturday Night In America

Client: The atlantic magazine

role: executive producer

As traditional media publications began experimenting with the new virtual reality medium, The Atlantic Magazine approached us to contribute a 360 video piece to their series, Saturday Night In America, highlighting a typical Saturday night in six different cities. We only had to walk a couple blocks from our offices in Oakland, California, to find The Naming Gallery.

Saturday night in Oakland used to mean one sure thing: an explosion of music, art, and people on 15th Street in the city’s center. Anchoring these impromptu parties were galleries and other creative spaces - places for young, diverse artists and enthusiasts to gather, learn, and mingle in a safe and supportive community. In the summer of 2016, however, some of Oakland’s darker realities intruded here: a shooting during one of the neighborhood’s biggest parties left two young men killed and several injured.

In this short VR doc, we tell the story of 15th Street through the eyes of one of its central figures: Imari, the manager of The Naming Gallery, one of the neighborhood’s central art and music spaces. We dive into one of Saturday night’s big draws, a spoken word and remixing scene called Cypher. And we find out how, a month after the shooting, Imari and his supporters are rallying around 15th Street to push back against gun violence in their city.