1 00:00:01,354 --> 00:00:05,950 Virtual reality started for me in sort of an unusual place. 2 00:00:06,976 --> 00:00:09,173 It was the 1970s. 3 00:00:09,173 --> 00:00:12,383 I got into the field very young: I was seven years old. 4 00:00:12,383 --> 00:00:17,245 And the tool that I used to access virtual reality 5 00:00:17,245 --> 00:00:20,810 was the Evel Knievel stunt cycle. 6 00:00:20,810 --> 00:00:23,201 This is a commercial for that particular item: 7 00:00:23,201 --> 00:00:24,776 (Video) Voice-over: What a jump! 8 00:00:24,776 --> 00:00:26,767 Evel's riding the amazing stunt cycle. 9 00:00:26,767 --> 00:00:29,536 That gyro-power sends him over 100 feet at top speed. 10 00:00:29,536 --> 00:00:31,628 Chris Milk: So this was my joy back then. 11 00:00:31,628 --> 00:00:34,587 I rode this motorcycle everywhere. 12 00:00:34,587 --> 00:00:38,847 And I was there with Evel Knievel; we jumped the Snake River Canyon together. 13 00:00:38,847 --> 00:00:40,216 I wanted the rocket. 14 00:00:40,216 --> 00:00:42,996 I never got the rocket, I only got the motorcycle. 15 00:00:45,626 --> 00:00:48,203 I felt so connected to this world. 16 00:00:48,203 --> 00:00:52,440 I didn't want to be a storyteller when I grew up, I wanted to be stuntman. 17 00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:55,644 I was there. Evel Knievel was my friend. 18 00:00:55,644 --> 00:00:58,027 I had so much empathy for him. 19 00:00:58,747 --> 00:01:01,358 But it didn't work out. (Laughter) 20 00:01:01,358 --> 00:01:03,382 I went to art school. 21 00:01:03,382 --> 00:01:05,792 I started making music videos. 22 00:01:05,792 --> 00:01:08,866 And this is one of the early music videos that I made: 23 00:01:08,866 --> 00:01:14,756 (Music: "Touch the Sky" by Kanye West) 24 00:01:14,756 --> 00:01:18,032 CM: You may notice some slight similarities here. 25 00:01:18,032 --> 00:01:19,818 (Laughter) 26 00:01:19,818 --> 00:01:22,461 And I got that rocket. 27 00:01:22,461 --> 00:01:25,104 (Laughter) 28 00:01:25,104 --> 00:01:29,509 So, now I'm a filmmaker, or, the beginning of a filmmaker, 29 00:01:29,509 --> 00:01:33,243 and I started using the tools that are available to me as a filmmaker 30 00:01:33,243 --> 00:01:37,831 to try to tell the most compelling stories that I can to an audience. 31 00:01:37,831 --> 00:01:40,980 And film is this incredible medium that allows us to feel empathy 32 00:01:40,980 --> 00:01:43,006 for people that are very different than us 33 00:01:43,006 --> 00:01:45,838 and worlds completely foreign from our own. 34 00:01:45,838 --> 00:01:46,668 Unfortunately, 35 00:01:46,668 --> 00:01:51,527 Evel Knievel did not feel the same empathy for us that we felt for him, 36 00:01:51,527 --> 00:01:54,330 and he sued us for this video -- 37 00:01:54,330 --> 00:01:56,061 (Laughter) -- 38 00:01:56,061 --> 00:01:58,110 shortly thereafter. 39 00:01:58,110 --> 00:02:02,950 On the upside, the man that I worshipped as a child, 40 00:02:02,950 --> 00:02:06,066 the man that I wanted to become as an adult, 41 00:02:06,066 --> 00:02:09,906 I was finally able to get his autograph. 42 00:02:10,556 --> 00:02:13,902 (Applause) 43 00:02:17,832 --> 00:02:22,849 Let's talk about film now. 44 00:02:22,849 --> 00:02:25,745 Film, it's an incredible medium, 45 00:02:25,745 --> 00:02:29,060 but essentially, it's the same now as it was then. 46 00:02:29,060 --> 00:02:32,529 It's a group of rectangles that are played in a sequence. 47 00:02:32,529 --> 00:02:36,362 And we've done incredible things with those rectangles. 48 00:02:36,362 --> 00:02:39,247 But I started thinking about, 49 00:02:39,247 --> 00:02:43,616 is there a way that I can use modern and developing technologies 50 00:02:43,616 --> 00:02:45,741 to tell stories in different ways 51 00:02:45,741 --> 00:02:47,482 and tell different kinds of stories 52 00:02:47,482 --> 00:02:51,793 that maybe I couldn't tell using the traditional tools of filmmaking 53 00:02:51,793 --> 00:02:53,964 that we've been using for 100 years? 54 00:02:53,964 --> 00:02:56,785 So I started experimenting, 55 00:02:56,785 --> 00:03:01,874 and what I was trying to do was to build the ultimate empathy machine. 56 00:03:03,054 --> 00:03:05,588 And here's one of the early experiments: 57 00:03:05,588 --> 00:03:08,412 (Music) 58 00:03:08,412 --> 00:03:10,656 So this is called "The Wilderness Downtown." 59 00:03:10,656 --> 00:03:12,712 It was a collaboration with Arcade Fire. 60 00:03:12,712 --> 00:03:16,362 It asked you to put in the address where you grew up at the beginning of it. 61 00:03:16,362 --> 00:03:17,359 It's a website. 62 00:03:17,359 --> 00:03:22,275 And out of it starts growing these little boxes with different browser windows. 63 00:03:22,275 --> 00:03:24,657 And you see this teenager running down a street, 64 00:03:24,657 --> 00:03:27,415 and then you see Google Street View and Google Maps imagery 65 00:03:27,415 --> 00:03:29,939 and you realize the street he's running down is yours. 66 00:03:29,939 --> 00:03:34,048 And when he stops in front of a house, he stops in front of your house. 67 00:03:35,735 --> 00:03:39,417 And this was great, and I saw people having an even deeper emotional reaction 68 00:03:39,417 --> 00:03:42,631 to this than the things that I had made in rectangles. 69 00:03:42,631 --> 00:03:46,562 And I'm essentially taking a piece of your history 70 00:03:46,562 --> 00:03:49,981 and putting it inside the framing of the story. 71 00:03:49,981 --> 00:03:51,578 But then I started thinking, 72 00:03:51,578 --> 00:03:53,430 okay, well that's a part of you, 73 00:03:53,430 --> 00:03:58,731 but how do I put all of you inside of the frame? 74 00:03:58,731 --> 00:04:01,834 So to do that, I started making art installations. 75 00:04:01,834 --> 00:04:04,374 And this is one called "The Treachery of Sanctuary." 76 00:04:04,374 --> 00:04:07,392 It's a triptych. I'm going to show you the third panel. 77 00:04:07,392 --> 00:04:11,230 (Music) 78 00:04:31,260 --> 00:04:34,848 So now I've got you inside of the frame, 79 00:04:34,848 --> 00:04:39,403 and I saw people having even more visceral emotional reactions 80 00:04:39,403 --> 00:04:42,080 to this work than the previous one. 81 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:46,230 But then I started thinking about frames, and what do they represent? 82 00:04:46,230 --> 00:04:48,487 And a frame is just a window. 83 00:04:48,487 --> 00:04:51,566 I mean, all the media that we watch -- television, cinema -- 84 00:04:51,566 --> 00:04:53,819 they're these windows into these other worlds. 85 00:04:53,819 --> 00:04:56,507 And I thought, well, great. I got you in a frame. 86 00:04:56,507 --> 00:04:59,634 But I don't want you in the frame, I don't want you in the window, 87 00:04:59,634 --> 00:05:02,523 I want you through the window, I want you on the other side, 88 00:05:02,523 --> 00:05:05,598 in the world, inhabiting the world. 89 00:05:06,218 --> 00:05:09,123 So that leads me back to virtual reality. 90 00:05:09,123 --> 00:05:11,344 Let's talk about virtual reality. 91 00:05:12,634 --> 00:05:13,934 Unfortunately, 92 00:05:13,934 --> 00:05:18,423 talking about virtual reality is like dancing about architecture. 93 00:05:18,423 --> 00:05:25,340 And this is actually someone dancing about architecture in virtual reality. 94 00:05:25,340 --> 00:05:27,823 (Laughter) 95 00:05:27,823 --> 00:05:31,084 So, it's difficult to explain. Why is it difficult to explain? 96 00:05:31,084 --> 00:05:34,782 It's difficult because it's a very experiential medium. 97 00:05:34,782 --> 00:05:36,698 You feel your way inside of it. 98 00:05:36,698 --> 00:05:38,496 It's a machine, but inside of it, 99 00:05:38,496 --> 00:05:41,945 it feels like real life, it feels like truth. 100 00:05:41,945 --> 00:05:44,466 And you feel present in the world that you're inside 101 00:05:44,466 --> 00:05:47,689 and you feel present with the people that you're inside of it with. 102 00:05:47,689 --> 00:05:51,785 So, I'm going to show you a demo of a virtual reality film: 103 00:05:51,785 --> 00:05:54,006 a full-screeen version of all the information 104 00:05:54,006 --> 00:05:56,209 that we capture when we shoot virtual reality. 105 00:05:56,209 --> 00:05:58,034 So we're shooting in every direction. 106 00:05:58,034 --> 00:06:00,210 This is a camera system that we built 107 00:06:00,210 --> 00:06:03,235 that has 3D cameras that look in every direction 108 00:06:03,235 --> 00:06:05,987 and binaural microphones that face in very direction. 109 00:06:05,987 --> 00:06:11,333 We take this and we build, basically, a sphere of a world that you inhabit. 110 00:06:11,333 --> 00:06:14,736 So what I'm going to show you is not a view into the world, 111 00:06:14,736 --> 00:06:18,107 it's basically the whole world stretched into a rectangle. 112 00:06:18,107 --> 00:06:21,495 So this film is called "Clouds Over Sidra," 113 00:06:21,495 --> 00:06:25,989 and it was made in conjunction with our virtual reality company called VRSE 114 00:06:25,989 --> 00:06:27,755 and the United Nations, 115 00:06:27,755 --> 00:06:30,788 and a co-collaborator named Gabo Arora. 116 00:06:30,788 --> 00:06:34,625 And we went to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan in December 117 00:06:34,625 --> 00:06:38,982 and shot the story of a 12-year-old girl there named Sidra. 118 00:06:38,982 --> 00:06:42,473 And she and her family fled Syria through the desert into Jordan 119 00:06:42,473 --> 00:06:46,567 and she's been living in this camp for the last year and a half. 120 00:06:48,207 --> 00:06:50,720 (Video) Sidra: My name is Sidra, 121 00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:52,616 I am 12-years-old. 122 00:06:52,616 --> 00:06:54,418 I am in the fifth grade. 123 00:06:54,418 --> 00:06:59,605 I am from Syria in the Daraa province in (?). 124 00:06:59,605 --> 00:07:04,843 I have lived here in the Zaatari camp in Jordan for the last year and a half. 125 00:07:06,923 --> 00:07:08,931 I have a big family: 126 00:07:08,931 --> 00:07:11,697 Three brothers, one is a baby. 127 00:07:11,697 --> 00:07:15,142 He cries a lot. 128 00:07:15,142 --> 00:07:20,197 I asked my father if I cried when I was a baby and he says I did not. 129 00:07:20,197 --> 00:07:23,821 I think I was a stronger baby than my brother." 130 00:07:23,821 --> 00:07:26,281 Chris Milk: So, when you're inside of the headset. 131 00:07:26,281 --> 00:07:28,351 you're not seeing it like this. 132 00:07:28,351 --> 00:07:30,423 You're looking around through this world. 133 00:07:30,423 --> 00:07:35,711 You'll notice you see full 360 degrees in all directions. 134 00:07:35,711 --> 00:07:38,662 And when you're sitting there in her room, watching her, 135 00:07:38,662 --> 00:07:41,115 you're not watching it through a television screen, 136 00:07:41,115 --> 00:07:44,523 you're not watching it through a window, you're sitting there with her. 137 00:07:44,523 --> 00:07:48,896 When you look down, you're sitting on the same ground that she's sitting on. 138 00:07:48,915 --> 00:07:50,666 And because of that, 139 00:07:50,666 --> 00:07:55,054 you feel her humanity in a deeper way. 140 00:07:55,054 --> 00:07:59,590 You empathize with her in a deeper way. 141 00:07:59,590 --> 00:08:05,917 And I think that we can change minds with this machine. 142 00:08:05,917 --> 00:08:09,690 And we've already started to try to change a few. 143 00:08:09,690 --> 00:08:14,536 So we took this film to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. 144 00:08:14,536 --> 00:08:17,022 And we showed it to a group of people 145 00:08:17,022 --> 00:08:21,102 whose decisions affect the lives of millions of people. 146 00:08:21,102 --> 00:08:24,200 And these are people who might not otherwise 147 00:08:24,200 --> 00:08:29,624 be sitting in a tent in a refugee camp in Jordan. 148 00:08:29,624 --> 00:08:35,813 But, in January, one afternoon in Switzerland, 149 00:08:35,813 --> 00:08:39,429 they suddenly all found themselves there. 150 00:08:40,309 --> 00:08:44,489 (Applause) 151 00:08:46,999 --> 00:08:49,058 And they were affected by it. 152 00:08:49,058 --> 00:08:52,374 So we're going to make more of them. 153 00:08:52,374 --> 00:08:55,460 We're working with the United Nations right now 154 00:08:55,460 --> 00:08:57,515 to shoot a whole series of these films. 155 00:08:57,515 --> 00:09:00,187 We just finished shooting a story in Liberia. 156 00:09:00,187 --> 00:09:03,633 And now, we're going to shoot a story in India. 157 00:09:03,633 --> 00:09:05,511 And we're taking these films, 158 00:09:05,511 --> 00:09:08,036 and we're showing them at the United Nations 159 00:09:08,036 --> 00:09:11,023 to people that work there and people who are visiting there. 160 00:09:11,023 --> 00:09:12,810 And we're showing them to the people 161 00:09:12,810 --> 00:09:17,274 that can actually change the lives of the people inside of the films. 162 00:09:17,274 --> 00:09:20,955 And that's where I think we just start to scratch the surface 163 00:09:20,955 --> 00:09:24,614 of the true power of virtual reality. 164 00:09:24,614 --> 00:09:26,835 It's not a video game peripheral. 165 00:09:26,835 --> 00:09:31,408 It connects humans to other humans in a profound way 166 00:09:31,408 --> 00:09:34,873 that I've never seen before in any other form of media. 167 00:09:34,873 --> 00:09:38,612 And it can change people's perception of each other. 168 00:09:38,612 --> 00:09:40,298 And that's how I think 169 00:09:40,298 --> 00:09:43,734 virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world. 170 00:09:46,604 --> 00:09:49,151 So, it's a machine, 171 00:09:49,151 --> 00:09:54,074 but through this machine we become more compassionate, 172 00:09:54,074 --> 00:09:59,667 we become more empathetic, and we become more connected. 173 00:09:59,667 --> 00:10:03,521 And ultimately, we become more human. 174 00:10:04,491 --> 00:10:05,651 Thank you. 175 00:10:05,651 --> 00:10:08,771 (Applause)