Queerskins: an immersive love story
Queerskins is a cinematic virtual reality experience created by Illya Szilak and Cyril Tsiboulski. While it was created in 2018, the film is an ongoing project with multiple parts that are still being produced today. The two completed short films are “Queerskins: a love story” and “Queerskins: Ark.” These short films are based on an interactive online experience written by the two. These series of works use many different sources of media. All of the forms published in this account explore the fascinating tension between the “real” and the virtual, fact and fiction, memory, and desire through a compelling, character-driven narrative.
“Queerskins: the novel” was written by Illya Szilak and the interaction design was by Cyril Tsiboulski. It is a web-based novel relying on HTML5, JavaScript, and video to produce a layered interactive text. The novel follows the life of a young gay doctor who is infected with HIV and dies of AIDS at the beginning of the epidemic in the US. The work explores binaries of gender as well as the boundaries of nonfiction and fiction, with the character’s diary entries interleaved with “real” images taken from the Flickr Creative Commons. This work feels as if the reader is invading the private archives of the main character, voyeuristically following his romances, struggles, and confessions.
“Queerskins: a love story” and “Queerskins: ark” were also produced by Illya Szilak and Cyril Tsiboulski. They are the first two of four short films in this series. These short films rein in the immersive realism of 360º video. They volumetric videos captured with Depthkit, photogrammetry, and CGI. Queerskins offers visitors a new kind of interactive cinema, one in which they construct the story from an excess of information.
“Queerskins: a love story” was also shot on location in rural Missouri. The viewer is positioned in the back seat of the main character, Sebastian’s family car within the intimate proximity of Depthkit rendered volumetric characters. Mary-Helen, Sebastian’s mother, is in the front passenger seat, and Ed, Sebastian’s father, who is driving. The viewer is surrounded by silence. The viewer also has the opportunity to focus on dialogue and the body language of the two characters. 3D scanned objects appear in the box next to the visitor on the car seat. The story is revealed through the visitor’s interaction with the objects found inside the box of Sebastian’s belongings.
“Queerskins: ark” continues the story of Mary-Helen. This character is portrayed as a devout Catholic mother who reconnects with her son now dead son, Sebastian, through his diary, belongings, and her imagination. She forms a mental picture of a scene from Sebastian’s diary and envisions him alive and in love. This part also utilizes 3D scanned objects. The scenes in this part vary in “interactiveness.” The viewer is sometimes just a standby observer, and also is a hold of the setting when the camera is set as a POV angle.
The last two chapters of this short film series are currently underway. According to the Queerskins website, both of these chapters will use the same technologies as the first two did. Part three will take place as Sebastian is receiving his diagnosis, and party four will take place during his funeral mass.
This series of works is a great example of immersion in virtual reality. You are transported deeply to every location depicted in the film. There is an interactiveness that has never been experienced in a film by viewers yet. While this film is not a simulation entirely, there is a heavy amount of stimulation through the sound, picture, and mechanics. There is binaural audio playing. It is most noticeable in the first part, “a love story.” While the mother is sitting in front of the viewer in the passenger seat, the audio of her speaking spews from the right side of the Oculus Rift’s headset. It is the same with the father, he is driving behind the wheel, and you hear his voice through the left side of the Oculus Rift’s headset. The most enveloping part in the back of the car was rolling the window down, and moving the headset to stare at the rolling clouds and passing fields outside of the car while Sebastian’s parents had their heated conversation in the front seat. It was also mesmerizing in the second part. The beach that the viewer is transported to is extremely picturesque, and the viewer gets to explore it thoroughly.
There are a few specific moments in the two films that really influence this highly immersive nature. In Queerskins: ark, you can hear the waves crashing into the shore. And as the camera pans back and forth, the sound is moving binaural between the viewer’s ears. Also, when the viewer is eavesdropping in the back of the car, the VR headset makes the viewers feel as if they’re in very close proximity to the parents. Personally, when I was experiencing the film, I felt as if I had to be quiet and not interrupt the actor’s conversation while “sitting in their backseat.”
In Neese’s blog post “What is New Media?” he describes new media as “digital media that [is] interactive, incorporates two-way communication and involves some form of computing,” … New media is “very easily processed, stored, transformed, retrieved, hyperlinked and, perhaps most radical of all, easily searched for and accessed.” Queerskins is a highly interactive source of media. Its viewers are placed inside this meticulously simulated world that gives a greater sense of immersion than is experienced through a classic flat screen.
In sum, Queerskins is a VR cinematic experience that is blurring the lines between the immersion experienced in VR and filmmaking. This arrangement of work uses a variety of sources of media. And again, of the forms published in this account explore the fascinating tension between the “real” and the virtual, fact and fiction, memory, and desire through a compelling, character-driven narrative.
