Student virtual-reality film brings Stanford as close as one’s cellphone
Just as Muybridge used his camera to understand movement, today Stanford researchers use virtual reality to understand how we interact with our environment.
– “Moments of Innovation”
When American suffragists marched for the vote in the late 19th century, Stanford women were there. When Martin Luther King campaigned for civil rights in 1967, he took his cause to Stanford, where he gave one of his most eloquent speeches. When Stanford scientists prototyped a lunar rover, Stanford cameras were there, too.
Now, anyone with a smartphone can experience these moments virtually, thanks to Moments of Innovation, a new student-produced virtual-reality film that brings to vivid life Stanford’s 125-year commitment to innovation in learning.
Moments of Innovation is a collaboration between the Stanford University Archives and three MFA students in Stanford’s documentary filmmaking program. The four-minute film weaves together historical images and audiovisual materials from the archives with 360-degree video of Stanford today.
It takes viewers into Stanford’s Avery Aquatic Center pool and onto an equestrian course at the Red Barn. It takes them onto a 1960s-era sports field with the Stanford Cart, a precursor to the lunar rover, developed by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1962 to 1971; and back to the Palo Alto Stock Farm, where Eadweard Muybridge pioneered stop-action photography in the 1870s.
Filmmakers Lauren Knapp, MFA ’16, Dane Christensen, MFA ’17, and Aria Swarr, MFA ’17, explored many other Stanford moments as well.
Knapp was not new to VR. She co-directed (with Cody Karutz) The Crystal Reef, a VR film produced by Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory that dives underwater with Biology Professor Fiorenza Micheli to yield an immersive and scientifically valid view of ocean acidification and climate change. She also analyzed VR news footage with an eye toward best practices in the Stanford course Communications 291: Immersive Journalism.
“Because this is a new medium, there are still a lot of unknowns,” Knapp said.
“For one, the method of storytelling isn’t always as obvious as with a traditional 2D video. We had to think about what would work in a 360 environment and how we would place the archival footage in that environment.
“We also wanted to transport people back to campus and tried to film in locations that would evoke nostalgia while working in a spherical space.”
Funding for Moments of Innovation came from the Stanford University Libraries’ Payson J. Treat Fund for Library Program Development and Research, and from a Stanford Arts student grant to support extracurricular arts projects on campus.
Moments of Innovation’s VR effect doesn’t play on conventional desktop computers. The film is best seen through a head-mounted VR playback device or on mobile devices via the YouTube 360 app.
It can also be viewed on an Oculus Rift at the David Rumsey Map Center in Green Library on campus.
Learn more about the making of the film and the locations and images in it.