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Opening New Horizons Through CommunicationDirector of [Buddy VR] CHAE Soo-Eung

CHAE Su-Eung, the Director of [Buddy VR], not only was the one and only Korean invitee to the competition at the 75th Venice International Film Festival this year, but is also the youngest Korean director ever invited to the competition. His animation [Buddy VR] was given the ‘Best VR Experience Award’ out of more than 30 works submitted to the VR competition segment of the Venice Film Festival. We met with Chae after getting news of the director's triumph.

[Buddy VR]'s win as an indicator of the current standing of VR

[Buddy VR] is a VR animation in which the audience meets a lonesome rat named Buddy and has to make it through various challenges with him. The running time is 16 minutes. The objective for this short time is for the audience and Buddy to become friends.
Instead of sitting in a movie theater chair and watching the movie, the audience must become the protagonist together with Buddy, and actively participate in the adventure to complete the movie. In the movie, Buddy will ask the audience for help with things like writing his name down.
At the Venice Film Festival, audiences rode a gondola to an island that had been developed into a VR zone, at which they each entered a room 3m deep and 3m wide wearing VR gear to ‘experience’ the movie alone.
Many of the VR movies submitted to this year's Venice Film Festival dealt with relatively heavier subject matter, such as the environment, sexual violence, and refugees. On this topic, Chae’s current judgment is that “VR technology itself has not been sufficiently developed to properly convey these more profound topics.” On the other hand, the storyline of [Buddy VR] can be summarized as 'meeting a lonely rat and making friends.’ As Chae puts it, the aim was "to show that content can vary wildly depending on how audiences participate and communicate with it, even though the movie’s storyline is at the level of a kindergarten fairy tale.”
[Buddy VR] has no spoken dialogue, and no subtitles. This is because the premise from the start was that there would be no language. Chae determined that interactive VR technology is still very lacking when it comes to expressing the small nuances of language. On the other hand, he was confident that it was possible to communicate and become friends through physical gestures only, without using verbal language. “I was glad to see my design worked; audiences did actually communicate with Buddy, and became deeply emotionally involved when Buddy recognized them.”

Thoughts that went into [Buddy VR]

[Buddy VR] is the director's fourth work. The work began from the sense of lonely isolation one gets when wearing VR goggles.
Watching the character ‘Buddy’ in the IP work [Nutjob], the director thought to himself, “I wish I had a friend like that; of few words but always true.” Part of this thought came from a desire to not feel so lonely behind the VR goggles anymore.
The main focus of [Buddy VR] was to actively use ‘interactive storytelling’ techniques to communicate with audiences. To spur audiences, who have for decades been stationary outside the screen, into engaging in an active experience, it was important for the movements of the audience to have significance in the movie.
Instead of the audience members being trapped behind the ‘fourth wall’ (a term that refers to the imaginary wall facing the audience, beyond which the action is taking place) and simply observing the storyline, [Buddy VR] audiences need to actively participate in the story.
Chae says it is important to have audiences frolic in the space designed by the creator, and to convey the intended message while they do so. This is to provide them with ‘limited freedom’ within virtual reality while simultaneously being able to enjoy the storytelling designed by the director. Thanks to this ‘narrative reward,’ the series of events that audiences go through together with Buddy amount to the movie having been ‘experienced,’ and not just ‘watched.’
Audiences are emotionally touched in the end, when Buddy reacts as if he remembers the name of the watcher, his ‘friend.’

The world after VR

Chae is already preparing for the world after VR contents. He said “VR equipment that you have to wear represents the first step - you can’t get over the discomfort of having to stick something on your body.” The technologies he is focusing on now are ‘brain wave recognition’ and ‘machine learning.’ The future he described excitedly sounds closer to the [Matrix] (1999) than to [Ready Player One] (2018).
These technologies involve direct signal exchange with the brain, instead of using devices to trick the brain into experiencing things. Chae commented “I probably won’t be alive when these technologies are out; all I can do in the present is create a phenomenon.
We're at the stage where things are most fun.” Chae’s comments are very appropriate to his current circumstances. While Korea’s conventional movie industry lagged far behind the west, now the world is developing the VR contents industry together from scratch. The director says that it is highly likely that Korea will be able to make inroads into the market through creativity.
Chae stressed that when new modes of culture (such as VR equipment) emerge and audiences take a liking to them, creators must be flexible and accept these changes, while developing the ability to better plan and manage the new media.

YOO Ji-Young, Correspondent, Ohmynews (alreadyblues@gmail.com)