Traveling While Black is a 3-D VR 360 documentary style narrative. This experience opens in a movie theater where historical footage plays on the big screen. The topic is the Green Book, a map of safe spots for Black Americans as they travel through America.

We learn that one of the oldest safe havens for Brown people was a place called Ben’s Chili Bowl. And with that narration, we are transported to a 360 degree 3-D video of the exterior of the restaurant. This is fantastic! The story transforms from black and white footage to feeling like you are just outside of the real life restaurant.

The story continues inside the restaurant as a woman tells us her story of how she has been treated while she travels; her experience is that dogs were (maybe still are?) treated better than Black people in America. While she is speaking, we are able to look around the restaurant, see the empty seats, look at the menu, and more.

The camera dollies (which means that the camera moves on wheels) in on this woman ever so slowly, but the feeling of moving through space when I am sitting down did make me feel a bit nauseous. I guess it fit the feeling because it is nauseating how poorly she was treated.

The experience then does something wonderful, it puts you in a booth with people as they share their stories. We can look at the person sitting next to us or the person across from us telling the story. We can look around at other people in the restaurant, some who are ordering food, others who are in friendly conversation. Here we become a character in the conversation, and get to listen as if they are telling their stories directly to us, which in a way and through this medium, they are.

There are heartbreaking stories. A Mother’s son was shot and killed by the police and they wouldn’t even let her touch him or kiss him goodbye as he was dying. They wouldn’t let her in the back of the ambulance, they made her sit up front like a passenger while her son was dying behind her. It was difficult to hear her tell her story because it shows just what a difficult place America is if you are born with Brown skin.

This story is VERY immersive and it’s the kind of thing I LOVE about VR. We get close up and intimate glimpses into people’s lives and their continued struggle in America.

From the technical side of things, one of my favorite moments is inside the restaurant, while we are sitting in the booth, and the story talks about getting on a train. If you look around during this part, the mirror accent on the wall reflects you as a Black child looking out a train window at the passing grassy landscapes. Then the movie transitions to a seat on the actual moving train.

I also love how the creators projected historical footage onto the walls in Ben’s Chili Bowl restaurant during filming, so you see the current restaurant while you look into the past at these historical images. It is a very cool technique.
In terms of the 360 degree video, it worked for this documentary style narrative because it puts you there in the space with people telling their story. However, they did need to do a long fade out and fade back in between every shot. They do this because otherwise, cutting between shots is disorienting. The fade lets you know that another image is coming up and gets you looking in the right direction – ahead of you – which preps you for the next shot. But a lot of times this fading is awkward and happens while a person is still speaking. It’s clunky, but it’s the best way currently to move you from one shot to another in 360 degree videos.

Because of the 360 video, you have shots that last for a very long duration with very few edits. This gives me, the viewer, a chance to look around and take in all the scenery, but it’s a style that doesn’t work as well for all fictional narratives. Only twice did they move the camera, and even with VERY slow camera movements, I was a bit nauseous. It’s because I am sitting down but the environment is changing around me. It is very unnatural, but because it is so slow in this piece, it works better than some other VR films I have seen.

Overall, this is exactly the kind of experience I want to see in VR. I love seeing real people telling their stories with these innovative new techniques. Being in the space was interactive enough, we didn’t need to click on a bunch of random things to move the story forward. The project is about 20 minutes and it never feels slow. So they do a good job of immersing you in story without gimmicks like simple puzzles or having to cut this into three parts just to keep you watching it.

Technical Specs:
3-D 360 Video – you can look all around an environment and it’s in 3-D
Live Action – They filmed real people