K-Content News

Scarecrow was created with the support from the “Content One Campus”, a project conducted by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) in which companies, research institutes and organizations cooperate in the form of a consortium, centering on universities, to develop different technology into a VR immersive theatre in such diverse fields such as humanities, engineering and arts. The film directed by Jeong Ji-hyeon was born after taking one of the classes at the Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) and carried out with the aid of the project. Jeong says that she can still feel how surprised she was when her film was invited to the Sundance Film Festival. When she began working on the film, she only thought about submitting it to class; until her film was invited to the world-famous film festival consequentially.

“I sent the film just for my own experience because there was no regulation regarding the video format. Due to the characteristics of a VR film, Scarecrow requires actors to perform actual actions for each scene, but it was impossible to include all these in one introduction video. So I didn’t expect that much,” she said. But she did everything she could to convey the content as best as possible, and let the judges comprehend. She shot the movements of the actors in a separate video and included all the necessary explanations. But with a surprise, the making-of passed the first screening. She sent another build file for the second screening, in which she once again passed, and a third video clip until she was sent an invitation for the event. This shows how Scarecrow accomplished the splendid feat of being invited to the New Frontier Exhibition of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It was the sole Korean film invited to the festival, which was a remarkable event for KOCCA that had supported the curriculum, for K-Arts that had conducted the class, and for Jeong who made the film.

The story of Scarecrow is completed by the actor and the VR user, performing one-on-one interaction in real time in the virtual world. Once the user wears a headset and enters the virtual world, actors taking the role of a scarecrow lead the story and act according to the user’s reactions. Live actors and different technology such as thermoception and motion capture allow more vivid experiences for the users, letting them get immersed to the VR world. Such characteristics result in slightly different story according to each user. The synopsis featured by Jeong is that “the user lifts the curse of the scarecrow and spends happy moments together until the scarecrow disappears like a magic.” But because the story slightly differs according to the user, some experienced the whole story in a different way. Jeong explains it, saying, “The film should be experienced focusing on images and senses rather than focusing on the set synopsis.” Although there may be a basic theme of “love”, but the progress of the story may be different somewhat, depending on the user.

Unlike Jeong’s previous works, various technology were used in Scarecrow, befitting its characteristic of an immersive theatre: a facial motion capture using a mobile phone and a motion capture suit. With respect to this, Jeong explains that her film differs slightly from other films in technology used but there is not much difference essentially. “Technology and films have made progress together so far. Modern films have already adopted various technology such as visual effects (VFX). This is just a film that used VR, which is a slightly different technology. From the perspective of expanding the reality, VR is rather closer to the essence than VFX. It seems that attractive visuals were possible thanks to human touch on top of existing technology combined.”

Is it because of this attractiveness? There were long queues before the experience center of Scarecrow day after day through the film festival, and the users released their favorable comments after experiencing the film. Jeong gave importance in increasing the perfection of technology to enhance user’s sympathy with the technology used and the story of the film. What she cared about the most, in particular, was the “eye contact” between the scarecrow and the user in the virtual world. “This came into my mind that any movement wouldn’t bring out sympathy from the user without making an eye contact. It was quite difficult to use this in technology but I was able to make it at last by seeking advice from professors and cooperating with Birdhand, an industry-academia collaboration organization.”

She had to be more cautious so that technology was not biased while endeavoring to improve the technology at the same time. After her decision of using the VR technology, one of the factors she considered the most important was that the technology should not be a hindrance to the story. She believed that giving too much focus on technology can result in negative reaction, and the users would focus more on technology than the story itself. Directing was an important factor, too. She tried not to adhere to excessive directing, with her intension to avoid awkward development of the story. What troubled her the most was the “contact” between the live actors and the users. This part made her agonized for a long time—making physical contact with the users might raise fear, but at the same time could help them get immersed more and sympathize with the actors. After all, she decided to let the actors adjust the extent of physical contact according to the users’ reactions, allowing direct contact with the scarecrow. And the result came out to be successful, earing positive and favorable feedbacks from the users.

Balancing between the technology and the story, and being cautious to avoid excessive directing to enable communication and experience sharing between the actors the users. This novice director made every effort to keep a balance in between these, and her efforts have touched the hearts of users. Among the reviews stated that it was quite touching to see in person the actor who played the role of a scarecrow after their extreme adventure together in the virtual world just a few minutes ago. This proves that it is a meaningful experience of letting the users feel sympathized and increase their interaction in the virtual world by meeting the person behind technology.

Jeong had knocked on the doors of other film festivals as well aside from the Sundance Film Festival. As a result, Scarecrow was invited to other film festivals in Europe, but after the occurrence of COVID-19, most of the film festivals were postponed or screened online. All previews scheduled domestically had been called off as well. It would be impossible to screen online this one-on-one content film Scarecrow, so we might not be able to see any users for this film at the moment. Jeong expects that film production industry will move swiftly toward contactless (also referred to as untact) tendencies in the future, affected by these circumstances. There could be more indoor filming or introduction of new technology aside from the existing ones.

Of course, to make this possible, huge development should be made on VR-related hardware technology; but she thinks this idea will turn feasible someday in the future. Such circumstance such as COVID-19 may be an unexpected one for Jeong, but she is slowly adjusting herself while doing what she can do at the moment. She says, “I cannot cave in forever. I continue to write new scenarios and plan new VR films. I will continue to create works grafting remote technology onto the film.”