The bird I made

▶ONE - Purpose of production

For I Make Birds, we drew inspiration from a painting of a boy in love with flowers, insects, and nature. A girl wrote a story about the painting, which was later adapted into a 15-minute VR road/fantasy film. I Make Birds basically incorporates children’s imagination, innocence, and sensibility into a Kino book-turned VR film. The parents of these children, who collaborated among themselves to complete this film, are established artists in the fields of cinema and animation. This film is centered around a black object in the shape of eye that sets out on a journey to retrieving its lost memories. The film was made into an analog picture book filled with children’s favorite characters and then into a VR film, which is a new media art form. All the images and abstract spaces fabricated through a systematic creative process provide a playground full of time images that involve transforming and dissembling the parts of birds. Such an approach emphasizes an artwork’s expandability, signifying that there are no limits to what you can do when you put together the parts of characters and create stories. Furthermore, it invites both children and adults to join the lost world of innocence and indulge themselves in this special VR experience by boosting the experiential and aesthetic quality of this film.

_Technical Specs: Method: 3D Virtual Reality Sound Animation, Oculus Rift(6DoF)
_Production Tool: Tilt Brush, Blocks, Blender, Maya, Unity

▶TWO - Creative Technical note

In I Make Birds, We used the Tilt Brush & Blocks as a basic tool for the creation of the VR film. By creating 3D objects, VR drawings, and spatial designs, they aimed to reenact the movements of phenakistoscope and zoetrope, pre-film animation devices from the early 20th century, while creating VR moving images.
The musical element of I Make Birds is very important. It is a structure that delivers narratives through musical sensibility and generates animations based on musical rhythms. Through algorithms that move or stop object agents according to specific frequency of sound, VR technology that produces Tilt Brush & Blocks sound animation has been researched.
In particular, movement of cameras in VR space is even more important. The movement of the camera in VR space, namely, horizontal, vertical, depth, rotation and speed, creates a visual frame for the space traveler and delivers a cinematic story. To that end, we made 3D objects and space drawing made at Tilt Brush & Blocks by moving them to Unity and shooting them with cameras.

▶Three - User Scenario

S#1. Time Playground
The audience travels to a playground made of the boy’s memory. Passing through the swings made by the eye of memory, the seesaw of the sun and the moon, then clock needles of various ages threaten passing audiences. From the highest point of the clock, it falls to the watch tombstone hidden by the boy.

S#2. The boy’s Room
The boy made Bird-shaped tall statues are standing at the entrance of the hidden room, and the audiences see giant monster sneaking after them. The giant monster tries to grab the audience but missies. The audience falls into a rainbow tunnel and sees the lost paintings of the boy.

S#3. Necromancers
Giant monsters are incanting by sitting around the small islands from all directions. When the sorcerer ceremony took place, pieces of the audience and the boy’s memory is sucked in the the asteroid with the whirlwind of thunder and lightning from the sky.

S#4. Feast of Birds
Paused birds are beginning to move slowly. When the black sorcerer starts to blow the trumpet, everything starts dancing. The audience rides an elephant like they are riding a merry-go-round and joins the feasting of birds. And, they are sucked into the belly of a giant bird in the sky.

▶FOUR - Treatment

One day, a boy finds a bird lying dead on a forest path. Upon realizing that there is nothing he could have done to prevent its death, he decides to observe the characteristics of other birds and write them down in his nature journal to make a list of what the dead bird could have had to live. The little boy tries so hard to give the bird wings as powerful as steel, but time passes and he grows up, and ends up just like all of us. We all have lost memories. Particularly, our time before the age of seven is either fading or forever gone. As we become adults, we throw ourselves into conforming to so many social norms, rules, ethics, values, and standards. The only people who still hold onto our lost memories are our parents. However, they are too busy to attend to us, and our memories simply fade away. What have we lost? We decide to set out on a journey of retrieving the lost or deeply faded memories of our parents and bring back the time when we were with them. To do so, we have created a total of four VR playgrounds after creating spiritual birds with the pieces of memories taken from the remaining texts written by our children. Inspired by these four playgrounds, the VR film I Make Birds consists of four scenes: “Time Playground,” “The boy's room,” “Necromancers,” and “Feast of Birds.” Through this film, we will be able to begin a journey that involves maximizing our feelings with childhood innocence. The feelings such as curiosity, fear, joy, delight, despair, fright, hesitation, and hope are what we have had since we were born and what we have never shared with others.
As we begin our journey, each one of us will be a participant sharing the perspective of a black object in the shape of eye. Phenakistoscope and zoetrope, which are pre-film animation devices from the early days, will invite us to explore the VR space consisting of images, subtitles, sounds, and music just as in silent films. In this VR space, we will eventually realize that the camera’s position, movement, and speed make up the film’s narrative, and go even further to become our own story... about how beautiful they or I were, about how proud we were of them or me, and how much we loved them or me.
Oh, necromancers! Ignite a fire in the soul of every bird reborn in this world!

▶Five - Director’s note

A few winters ago, my father suffered a stroke. He’d called me earlier, but I was unable to pick up. That day I had a strange premonition that actually came true. Since that day, my father has been unable to have conversations with me and my family. He had multiple brain hemorrhagic strokes, which left him unable to move his body. He has spent the past five years lying on a bed, and looks like a skeleton after losing so much weight. I did not have the courage to confront him lying on his hospital bed. I was afraid of seeing him like that. It felt as if I have had multiple stab wounds in the skin. Looking at my skin in tatters, I prayed for the suffering to end. One day, I somehow managed to drop by the hospital. At that time, my father was gradually recovering yet still lying on the bed. I wanted to comfort him and smile at him but could not because I was still upset about the whole situation. I was swept up in fear and suffering that I felt would never end. Without noticing, I grabbed hold of his skinny arms and started groaning and screaming. Please stop! Out of embarrassment, he said in an inarticulate voice: "You... used to be... a lovely kid...” He pulled the young me I could not even remember out of my memories. Nevertheless, I could not help but feel upset. As time passed by, I slowly stopped visiting the hospital. It took more and more courage for me to see him. It was my little girl who finally gave me the courage to confront him. My daughter said, grinning amiably at my suffering father with his twisted face: "Grandpa... I love you.”
She had the look that I once had, that my father still remembered. There was a time when I accepted and loved things as they were, and felt how beautiful the world was with all my senses. I stared at my daughter for a long time. That was when I knew that I would say the same thing to my daughter as my father did to me: "You used to be... a lovely kid..." That way, I finally understood what kind of memories my father held onto about me, which motivated me to work on this project as a parent of a little girl. It always takes courage to capture long-lost memories and the freedom we once had as children because it is about facing all our suffering in life. During the creation of I Make Birds, we watched many VR films for reference, and we were surprised how VR could create the spaces and images that would bring us back to our childhood. This experience motivated me to work on this VR film project with great passion. All we hope now is that no one will have to shed tears because of the beautiful experience I once had.