Seeing Things: Scott Fisher

A conversation between Adam Lisagor and José Marquez

A note from Adam Lisagor, founder of Sandwich

I don't usually do this. We could have just put this film in the app and let you find it.

But I watched Seeing Things: Scott Fisher, the second episode of my Sandwich Vision partner/cofounder José Marquez's series on the history of VR, and it did something to me I wasn't prepared for. It brought tears to my eyes, with the Vision Pro on my face (I've been known to cry at great art and music, but believe this was my first time crying in the device). Not because of a story beat, but because somewhere in the middle of it I understood that the device on my face wasn't a delivery mechanism for the film. It was the film. José had made something that could only be appreciated by wearing the exact kind of machine his subjects spent their lives inventing. The medium and the message had collapsed into the same thing.

That's rare. In a hundred years of cinema it's happened only a handful of times: 2001, Star Wars, Tron—moments where a filmmaker saw a new machine for what it could do and took an audience somewhere they'd never been. I think José did that here. So instead of just dropping it into the app, I sat down and interviewed him about how he made it. I trust José's taste as the lead curatorial voice of Theater, and I wanted you to see how his astounding work of new cinema got made before you press play.

Then go press play. And don't take the headset off early.

Adam

AdamFirst of all, tell me what Seeing Things is.

JoséSeeing Things is a history of virtual reality, as told by some of its creators.

AdamWhen did you realize that Apple Immersive Video would be the perfect format to tell the story of the history of VR?

JoséLast summer I learned about the Sensorama. I think I learned about it on Wikipedia or Reddit, something kind of random. And then I saw that they had one at USC. So I reached out to them to document it with the Apple Immersive Video camera—because I thought it'd be really fun to do an Apple Immersive Video about an immersive video machine. And that's when I realized that the guy who created the archive [Scott Fisher], who teaches there, is responsible for one of the major milestones of VR. Talking to him, I realized that he and this other guy, Mark Bolas, have so much to tell us about the past, and in that way help inform the future.

AdamWhen you set out to make a documentary about them, did you think you'd be making a traditional documentary? The Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera was brand new in your hands at the time. And—have you ever made a film before?

JoséYes, I've made a couple of feature films and lots of documentary shorts. To answer your first question: when we shot the machine and I interviewed these guys, they started talking about the things they saw. They'd literally say, "I saw this thing, and then I was hooked." And of course they were making these devices so they could see these things. And I was like, fuck—I have to show the audience what they saw. Which is hard. But then I thought, well, maybe it's not so hard, because the person watching this is going to be wearing a VR headset. How hard could it be to put them inside the thing these people saw—to get them to see the thing that made them hooked?

AdamThat's an important distinction, though—you realized the precondition for experiencing the movie you were making is that the audience is wearing a very specialized piece of hardware. I'd suggest most immersive filmmakers don't even realize that precondition while they're making their films—because while they're shooting, they're not themselves wearing the hardware. They're shooting with a camera with lenses made of glass, but they're not wearing the hardware, so the experience is still somewhat traditional, and that has to inform the art. Having watched your film, I think there was an inflection point at which you realized that wearing the hardware your subjects pioneered was a precondition of appreciating the story they were telling. And to me, the reason that was a profound shift—to the point that I got tears in my eyes the first time I watched it—is something our audience needs to understand: that the specialized, futuristic hardware they're wearing while they experience this film is the only way this story could have been understood.

JoséYeah, that's right.

AdamTo me, this is an inflection point in immersive cinema history. It's unlike anything Apple has ever put out. It's unlike anything anybody else has put out. It represents the first step in the culmination of everything we've been trying to achieve with the products we make and the stories we tell at Sandwich Vision—which is: this is not just a better screen. It's a brand new, immersive...

JoséNot a player, a place.

AdamIt's not a player, it's a place. It's a brand new canvas. And it is still cinema. We can call it cinema—but it's a new cinema.

JoséI've told people I don't think I'll be able to get away with these exact tricks again, meaning it's easier to simulate 1980s VR than other environments. When I showed up to interview them—not knowing anything, not knowing who these people were—they said to me that day, "Well, the guy who created the Sensorama [Mort Heilig] was inspired by the Cinerama." And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? We're obsessed with the Cinerama. That's one of the things we do in Theater. And then Scott Fisher says he wanted to hire the guy who made the Sensorama. So...you cannot take cinema out of VR.

AdamRight. There's a lineage here.

JoséYes.

AdamThere's a continuity from where they came from to where we are now. It's not a different thing. It's the same timeline. But it's the DeLorean, you know? This is what nerds in headsets have unconsciously been waiting for. This is not a faster horse. This is a whole new machine.

JoséI think that's right.

AdamAnd you can do profound things with a new machine. The machine hasn't actually changed in moviemaking for 100 years. Even in stereoscopic—same principle. You're capturing a rectangle, sometimes putting two rectangles together, and projecting it where an audience can sit and watch. This is a new machine that breaks that paradigm—but still shares the lineage of cinema. And if there's one thing I want our audience to take away, it's that they're going to press play on Seeing Things: Scott Fisher, and they're not going to know what's coming, because they've never felt it before. And by the end, they'll have been changed—because they've just ridden in a car for the first time.

JoséI mean, I hope so. I can tell you that when I first had the inkling I should make the escalator—and I made it, and I showed it to Scott Fisher—he was like, Oh wow. And then when I made the VPDI (the Viewpoint Dependent Imaging room), he was like, OH WOW. It moved him. And that's how I knew.

AdamAnd that's the guy who created this whole world–

José– he was there, back to that place and time. When I was reviewing the interview footage, they were talking about seeing these things that changed their lives, and I was like, fuck, I can't go shoot that. Where's the B-roll for this? And when I made it, and he said, "Oh...you took me there," I was like, okay. We can move forward now.

AdamI'll say one more thing. In film history there are a few moments where audiences have been so astounded by the technical achievement—because a filmmaker saw opportunities to create in ways that hadn't been done before. I'd say 2001 is one. Star Wars is another. Tron is another—Tron literally being inside the machine, inside the computer. And I don't think it's an overstatement to say you're taking an audience inside the virtual reality machine in a way that hasn't really been experienced before. So—enjoy the show. Step in. Ride the escalator.

JoséLook, I agree with you. Just—don't give away the ending.