SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/690210
3 4 S X S W o r l d | M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 6 | S X S W. C O M hen you enter the Outras Telas (Other Screens) department at O2 Filmes in São Paulo, Brazil, it is inevitable to notice, hanging on its glass entry door, a printed meme of a horse with a duck's head saying: "Jump in, there's no time to explain." The joke works as a depressur- izing widget to acclimatize visitors to the innovation culture that is revolutionizing the whole film production company. O2 was inspired by Virtual Reality (VR) and immersive story- telling content at SXSW in past years and now pioneers the field in Brazil. They've created their own equipment and tools to make VR an important part of their work. This all started in 2012, when O2 was chosen to produce a large-scale immersive reality project to be shown at a dome in the entrance of the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio de Janeiro. The film presents the history of the universe, beginning at the "Big Bang" and ending at the present. After one year working on this fully immersive film, O2 producers and directors found them- selves confused about how this movie would look like outside the computer. "The solution came when we put our hands in a prototype of Oculus Rift. The device took almost six months to arrive by mail and when it came, we saw we had found our creative tool," recalls Ricardo Laganaro, director of the film. "When we could finally see the movie on this device, it was like 'Eureka!' " "Everybody could understand what we were thinking," adds Janaina Augustin, director of Other Screens. She could be described as "the woman riding the duck-horse" and is pas- sionate about technology and innovation. "It was Brazil's first major collective immersive experience. O2 became a different production house after the Museum of Tomorrow project," says Oscar-nominated film director Fernando Meirelles (for City of God in 2002), who is one of the owners of O2 and also keen on new technologies. Laganaro and Augustin can be considered the two leaders of inno- vation at O2. They decided to focus on creating different projects regarding immersive content, and motivated by several reasons, they headed to SXSW in 2014 for the first time. "When we got there, our heads exploded. SXSW wasn't only net- working. We saw artists finding their markets and vice versa. What amazed us was the culture of people creating new things meeting other innovative people. It helped energize our team towards making the new," says Laganaro. "It was like being at Disney for nerds," jokes Augustin. "Having access to what the world was developing empowered us to just jump in the boat and make things happen, even though we're in a quite particular market here in Brazil, because everything new takes so much time to arrive here." Laganaro and Augustin came back to Brazil and started creating projects such as a 360 degree documentary filmed at São Paulo Fashion Week, and later, what became the most watched 360 music video in the world: the clip for Latin Grammy Award winner Ivete Sangalo's song "O Farol." This video reached more than 18 million views at Facebook and changed O2 forever. "We wanted so bad to film a story in 360 degrees that we had to convince a lot of people this would work," says Laganaro. "We designed a rig with four RED EPIC DR AGONS (cameras) shooting simulta- neously at 6k/60 fps. It was really hard work stitching images and thinking about a script that would tell a story ... not just showing the singer, but presenting a real story in this format." The connections Laganaro and Augustin made at SXSW and with other VR producers since 2014 led them to be invited to be panel leaders at SXSW 2016, with the support of Apex (the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency). Laganaro and the American filmmaker and United Nations advisor Gabo Arora headed a discus- sion entitled "Immersive Content: The Future of Storytelling." "We believe a whole new creative language comes with VR, and we want to be surfing this wave, even if we are quite far from the real market — and its resources, cameras and softwares," explains Paulo Barcellos, head of post-production at O2, who also attended SXSW this year. "As a company, we wanted to leave the cocoon of ads ... Not that we don't wanna do that anymore, but we wanted to do it differ- ently, in crazy formats. Now, clients come to us wanting to share our brain, asking us to create different languages and projects, and we're working almost fearless with 360 videos and VR experiences," says Augustin. "Getting confronted with the new changed our way of thinking as a production house. We used to have an urge for innovation, but it was a personal thing, not as a process inside the company. Now, we saw we can hack the system, we can put our crazy ideas in the biggest brand projects, and clients will love it, because it's new. It's coura- geous!" concludes Laganaro. T For more information about SXSW Platinum Connection, an international B2B networking service used by O2 Filmes, email: platinumconnection@sxsw.com. Brazilian Film Studio Finds VR Inspiration at SXSW by Débora Nogueira W Fil m in g t h e "O F a rol" m u s ic v i d e o O 2 Fil m es a t SX S W: ( L- R) Lu iz B r a g a , J a n a i n a A u - g u s t i n , I g o r Ku p s ta s a n d Rica r d o La g a n a ro J A N A I N A A U G U S T I N C O U R T E S Y O F O 2 F I L M E S