9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Virtual reality started for me

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in sort of an unusual place.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was the 1970s,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I got into the field very young,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was 7-years-old.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the tool that I used [br]to access virtual reality

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
was an Evel Knievel stunt cycle.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is a commercial for [br]that particular item:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Commercial: "What a jump!

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Evel's riding the amazing stunt cycle.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That jiro-power sends him [br]over 100 feet at top speed."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So this was my joy back then.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I rode this motorcycle everywhere,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I was there with Evel Knievel:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we jumped the Snake River Canyon together.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I wanted the rocket,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I never got the rocket.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I only got the motorcycle.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I felt so connected to this world,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I didn't want to be storyteller[br]when I grew up,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I wanted to be stuntman.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was there, Evel Knievel was my friend,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I had so much empathy for him.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But, it didn't work out.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I went to art school.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I started making music videos.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this is one of the early[br]music videos that I made:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Music: "Before the day you die,[br]you gon' touch the sky."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Chris Milk: You may notice [br]some slight similarities here.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I got that rocket.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, now I'm a filmmaker,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the beginning of a filmmaker,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I started using the tools that are[br]available to me as a filmmaker

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to tell the most compelling stories[br]that I can to an audience.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And film is this incredible medium[br]that allows us to feel empathy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for people that are very different than us

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and worlds completely foreign [br]from our own.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Unfortunately, Evel Knievel didn't feel[br]the same empathy for us

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that we felt for him,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and he sued us for this video

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
shortly thereafter.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
On the upside,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the man that I worshiped as a child,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the man that I wanted [br]to become as an adult,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was finally able to get his autograph.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Let's talk about film now.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Film, it's an incredible medium,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but essentially,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's the same now as then.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a group of rectangles that are[br]played in a sequence.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we've done incredible things[br]with those rectangles.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But, I started thinking about

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is there a way that I can use modern[br]and developing technologies

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to tell stories in different ways

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and tell different kinds of stories

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that maybe I couldn't tell using[br]the traditional tools of filmmaking

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that we've been using for 100 years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, I started experiementing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and what I was trying to do was

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to build the ultimate empathy machine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And here's one of the early experiments:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Promo: "This is a Chrome Experiment.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Arcade Fire: 'The Wilderness Downtown.'

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Chris Milk: So this was called[br]"The Wilderness Downtown",

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it was a collaboration with Arcade Fire

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to put in the address where you[br]grew up at the beginning of it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a website,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and out of it starts growing these[br]little boxes with different browser windows.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And you see this teenager [br]running down the street,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and then you see Google Streetview[br]and Google Maps imagery

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you realize that the street[br]he's running down is yours.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And when he stops in front of a house,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
he's in front of your house.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this was great, and I saw people [br]having an even deeper emotional reaction

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
than the things that I [br]had made in rectangles.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I'm essentially taking a piece[br]of your history

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and putting it inside the framing[br]of the story.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But then I started thinking,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Okay, well that's a part of you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
How do I put all of you inside[br]of the frame?"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, to do that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I started making art installations.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is one called [br]"The Treachery of Sanctuary."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I'm going to show you the third panel:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So now I've got you inside of the frame,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I saw people having even more[br]visceral emotional reactions

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to this work than the previous one.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But then I started thinking about frames,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and what do they represent.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And a frame is just a window.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I mean, all the media that we watch

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
-- television, cinema --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they're these windows into [br]these other worlds.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I thought, "Well, great. I got [br]you in a frame.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But I don't want you in the frame,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I don't want you in a window,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I want you through the window,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I want you on the other side,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the world, inhabiting the world."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So that leads me back to virtual reality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Let's talk about virtual reality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Unfortunately,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Talking about virtual reality

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is like dancing about architecture."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And this is actually someone dancing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
about architecture in virtual reality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, it's difficult to explain.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Why is difficult to explain?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's because it's a very [br]experiential medium.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You feel your way inside of it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a machine, but inside of it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it feels like real-life,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it feels like truth.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And you feel present in the world[br]that you're inside

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you feel present with the people[br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that you're inside of it with.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So, I'm going to show you a demo[br]of virtual reality film:[br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a full-screeen version of[br]all the information

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that we capture when we shoot[br]virtual reality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we're shooting in every direction.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This is a camera system that we built

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that has 3D cameras that look[br]at every direction

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and binaural microphones[br]that face in very direction.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We take this and we build, basically,[br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a sphere of a world that you inhabit.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So what I'm going to show you[br]is not a view into the world,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's basically the whole world[br]stretched into a rectangle.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So this film is called "Clouds over Sidra."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And it was made in conjunction with [br]our virtual reality company

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
called VRSE,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the United Nations,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and a co-collaborator named Gabo Arora.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we went to a Syrian refugee camp[br]in Jordan,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and shot the story of a 12-year-old girl[br]named Sidra.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And her and her family fled Syria[br]through the desert into Jordan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and she's been living in this[br]camp for the last year and a half.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Video: "My name is Sidra,[br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I am 12-years-old.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I am in the fifth grade.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I am from Syria in the Daraa province[br]in (?).

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I have lived here in the Zaatari camp[br]in Jordan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for the last year and a half.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I have a big family:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
three brothers, one is a baby.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He cries a lot.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I asked my father if [br]I cried when I was a baby,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and he says I did not.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think I was a stronger baby[br]than my brother."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Chris Milk: So, when you're inside[br]of the headset,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're not seeing it like this.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You're looking around through this world.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You'll notice you see a full[br]360 degrees in all directions.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And when you're sitting there[br]in her room, watching her,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're not watching it through[br]a television screen,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're not watching it through a window,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're sitting there with her.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When you look down,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you're sitting on the same ground[br]that she's sitting on.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And because of that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you feel her humanity in a deeper way.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You empathize with her in a deeper way.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I think that we can change minds[br]with this machine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And we've already started to try [br]to change a few.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we took this film to the[br]World Economic Forum

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in Davos in January.