Kleiser was at the Cannes Film Festival last week, with his new film, this time a virtual reality (VR) thriller. With such successful traditional cinematic content under his name, why would Kleiser, now at 71 years, turn towards VR filmmaking?
Kleiser’s answer is like reading a VR for Dummies book. Not even the new entrants into the field, names such as Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu and our own A.R. Rahman, have been so articulate about their headlong dives into VR. But first, let us learn about Kleiser’s new VR film. “It is a 12-episode series called Defrost,” says Kleiser. Each episode is five minutes long. Defrost tells the story of a woman, Joan Garrison, who is frozen after she had a stroke. She was frozen using liquid nitrogen so that remedies can be found later. “This happens in 2015. Thirty years later, she wakes up to meet her family again. The film follows her experience when she comes across her family members who have become strangers,” he adds.
Defrost was a story Kleiser wrote in the early 1970s. “It was the time when cryogenic technology (use of cryogens or gases that turn into extremely cold temperatures when they are in liquid state) was just starting to develop. There were talks about the idea of freezing people and bringing them back to life after decades,” explains the director about the story of Defrost. “I wanted to make a science fiction film then,” he says. Kleiser, however, let his story cool for another three decades.
A few years ago, it was his brother Jeffrey Kleiser, who woke his sibling back to his long forgotten story. “Jeffrey is a visual-effects supervisor, who worked in movies like X-Men,” says Kleiser. “He introduced me to the world of virtual reality and I knew I wanted to explore the story of Defrost in that medium. Virtual reality is like science fiction. New, fresh and technologically modern.” And Defrost entered a new world, just like its main character, Joan Garrison.
Kleiser came to Cannes with teasers of his new VR film, which is now in post-production. “We shot the series in a 360-degree studio,” he says. “I felt like I just came back from film school.” When Joan Garrison reunites with her family after waking up from her 30-year sleep, she sees only strangers. In Defrost, the viewer is inside the set, experiencing the strange reunion like Garrison herself.
Incidentally, Rahman, who has announced plans to make his first VR film, was in Cannes when Kleiser was handing over VR headsets to visitors at the Marche du Film, the Cannes film market, which is the biggest in the world. So was Innaritu, the Oscar-winning director of The Birdman and The Revenant. Innaritu, though, had come with his first VR film, Carne y Arena in Spanish or Virtually Present, Physically Invisible in English. Innaritu has said Carne y Arena is not cinema, instead calling it an “installation”. The Cannes festival’s official programme, too, lists the seven-minute film as an installation. Kleiser, however, wouldn’t have it any other way. He calls his work film, and sees a promising future for VR in the world of cinema.
In Toronto, watching the VR film from India with interest was celebrated Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan. The auteur’s first reaction after watching was a question to the film’s producer and Ship of Theseus director Anand Gandhi. “What is the future of VR?” Gopalakrishnan asked Gandhi.
“The VR cinema is a democratic space. There is no leader yet. No rules and no hierarchy,” says Kleiser. “Everything is like wild, wild west.” There are some heavy weights like Kleiser, who have already entered the unknown VR arena. For example, American filmmaker Doug Liman, who made Bourne Identity, came out with his five-episode action series, Invisible, last year.
Though Kleiser sees a future for VR in cinema, he isn’t sure what it is. “Nobody knows. We are trying to figure it out,” he says, going on to quote Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams to make his point. “If you build it, he will come.” In the film, Costner wakes up one day hearing those words and builds a baseball field in his farm. The Chicago White Sox, a big baseball team in America, then comes to play in his farm.
Kleiser, however, is sure that things are going to change. “The technology will get better. The glasses will become light and the resolution will become high,” he says. He also sees the technology developing to make it easy for viewers to watch a VR film for a longer period than the few minutes now for fear of disorientation.
VR’s future already looks bright with major film festivals making the medium a part of their plans. Cannes had for the first time a VR film this year in Inarritu’s installation as official selection. Last year, Toronto Film Festival launched a separate VR programme, selecting a film from India among the many international entries. Right to Pray, a seven-minute VR film by the Mumbai-based filmmaker Khushboo Ranka, placed the viewer in the middle of a successful campaign by women in Nashik, Maharashtra, to enter the Trimbakeshwar temple, a right that had been denied to them.
In Toronto, watching the VR film from India with interest was the celebrated Malayalam filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan. The auteur’s first reaction after watching was a question to the film’s producer and Ship of Theseus director Anand Gandhi. “What is the future of VR?” Gopalakrishnan asked Gandhi. An excited Gandhi reeled off several positive words, but also went on to produce three more VR films in the months after his Toronto encounter with Gopalakrishnan, including one about the making of Aamir Khan’s Dangal and Cost of Coal, a hardhitting environmental disaster in the coal mining district of Korba in Chhattisgarh, directed by Faiza Khan. Cost of Coal premiered at the Dubai film festival last year.
Just like Gopalakrishnan, Kleiser too is excited about the new filmmaking scope offered by VR. Kleiser’s Defrost, filmed with an ultra-modern Nokia OZO 360-degree camera, went to the Sundance film festival in the US last year. Now, the Cannes appearance is expected to place the film and VR’s future into an orbit within reach of a great majority of viewers very soon.