Company:Here Be Dragons

Here Be Dragons

Industry	Production Company
Founders	Patrick Milling-Smith, Chris Milk, Brian Carmody
Headquarters	Los Angeles , New York City , London
Website	dragons.org

Here Be Dragons (formerly known as Vrse.works) is a medium-agnostic creative studio co-founded by Patrick Milling-Smith, Chris Milk and Brian Carmody.

History

In December 2014, Chris Milk and Spike Jonze captured the Million Man March in NY which protested police brutality for Vice News. Here Be Dragons premiered its first VR experiences on the Within (formerly known as Vrse) app platform at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival including Evolution of Verse, a photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3-D virtual reality film, and Clouds Over Sidra, a virtual reality short documentary made in partnership with the United Nations which follows a 12-year-old girl's life in a Syrian refugee camp. After the Sundance launch, Here Be Dragons captured Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary special in VR and created director Guy Shelmerdine's Catatonic, an immersive journey through an insane asylum in which the audience, bound to a wheelchair, undergoes a sensory shocking horror thrill ride.

In April 2015, Here Be Dragons produced Walking New York, a VR experience made in partnership with the New York Times which follows JR (artist) and his making of a 150-foot-tall portrait of a recent immigrant to NYC that was wheat pasted across the Flatiron Building Pedestrian Plaza for less than 24 hours. Here Be Dragons followed with Director Adam Berg's Nike's The Neymar Jr Effect, which takes viewers into Neymar's POV as he plays soccer and an experiential film for Toms Shoes that gives users the chance to participate in a Toms Giving Trip to Peru. Here Be Dragons continued its partnership with the United Nations to create the VR experience Waves of Grace in October 2015. The film transports viewers to West Point, the most populous slum in the capital of Liberia, and follows the experience of Decontee Davis, an Ebola survivor who uses her immunity to help others affected by the disease.

Here Be Dragons created a virtual reality music video for the band U2’s Song for Someone. In this globe-spanning reimagining of the music video, the experience takes singers from all walks of life and harmoniously blends them with U2 inside the VR space. The studio followed with another music video, Muse’s first foray into VR. The 360-degree immersive experience, directed by Guy Shelmerdine and crafted for Muse’s track Revolt, is set in a dystopian future where rebel women fight against cold cyborg police.

In 2015, Vice News VR and Clouds Over Sidra were nominated for Individual Documentary Episode and Mobile App Music respectively at the Webby Awards. The Within app was also nominated in the Experimental Mobile category. Evolution of Verse and Clouds Over Sidra were shortlisted for Original Branded Content at the 2015 Cannes International Advertising Festival. Apple Insider named Vrse as the best VR app/player for iPhones in August 2015.

Here Be Dragons continued its partnership with The New York Times, creating The Displaced, a film VR that tells the stories of three children from Syria, Ukraine and the Sudan whose lives have been upended by conflict and follows them as they move forward, trying to rebuild in the aftermath of earth-shattering events. Over one million subscribers to the New York Times received a special edition Google Cardboard on November 8, 2015 to experience the film. The Displaced won the Entertainment Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Best in Show at AICP’s Next Awards and was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy.

Shortly afterwards, the studio collaborated with The New York Times again with a piece celebrating the year's best actors for their annual Great Performers issue using VR. Created by Daniel Askill, Take Flight is inspired by some of the most memorable airborne moments in cinematic history and lifts viewers up into a strange and beguiling night-sky tableau. Amongst the actors viewers get to fly with are Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Benicio del Toro, and Rooney Mara.

At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Here Be Dragons showcased two new VR experiences and the immersive installation Treachery of Sanctuary as part of the New Frontier program. A History of Cuban Dance is a 5-minute visual feast charting the exuberant and spontaneous dances that embody Cuba’s rich cultural heritage directed by multi-award winning documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker. The film takes the viewer on a chronological journey through Afro-Cuban Santería, rumba, mambo, cha-cha-chá, salsa, breakdancing, and reggaeton, with documentary voices offering some lyrical insights into the story of the Cuban people as revealed in the moves. The Click Effect follows journalist James Nestor and filmmaker Sandy Smolan, also two renegade marine science researchers, as they attempt to free-dive a hundred feet below the ocean’s surface in a single breath, to capture the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales—the world’s largest predators.

Continuing its conservation efforts, Here Be Dragons created Valen's Reef, a new 360-degree short film for the environmental organization Conservation International. The film follows West Papuan fisherman-turned-conservationist Ronald Mambrasar and his 8-year-old son Valen as they explore the protected Bird's Head Seascape, one of the most biologically diverse reefs on the planet.

In July 2016, Here Be Dragons debuted a 13-minute virtual reality experience at San Diego Comic-Con for Mr. Robot. Written and directed by creator and showrunner Sam Esmail, The Mr. Robot Virtual Reality Experience takes viewers on a flashback journey with lead character Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) as he remembers an early encounter with his dealer-turned-love-interest Shayla (Frankie Shaw). On Thursday July 22, fans, including a large crowd at Comic Con, got a chance to watch the experience when it was briefly made available for viewing through the Within app.

Here Be Dragons followed with the official immersive music video experience for OneRepublic’s new single Kids. Directed by Hal Kirkland and filmed in Mexico City with the Nokia OZO, the VR experience follows the story of two teenagers, a boy and girl who live across the street from one another in the city and witness to each other's lives through their windows. Hal Kirkland also created another music-related experience for Stubhub titled Always.

At the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, creators Milica Zec and Winslow Porter launched Tree, a room scale experience that allows participants to become a rainforest tree as it goes from its growth as a seedling to its death in a slash-and-burn farming operation. Tree was the second New Frontier VR piece from Milica Zec and Winslow Porter, following last year’s dramatic war experience Giant. Milica Zec and Winslow Porter brought their latest iteration of Tree to the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival which featured more elements of mixed reality to enhance the immersion of the experience.

Here Be Dragons also began 2017 with the launch of the five-part virtual reality documentary series The Possible which explores cutting-edge science and engineering. Created in partnership with Within, General Electric, Mashable, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first episode Hello Robot takes viewers inside the Boston Dynamics lab for a look at robotic species. The final episode Hover Board, directed by David Gelb, debuted at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

In March, 2017, Here Be Dragons created the Ghost in the Shell VR experience which allows viewers a glimpse into Major’s journey – punctuated with glitches, action and acrobatic intrigue – to find her ghost. Created in collaboration with Paramount Studios and Oculus VR Studios, the experience was built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity real-time rendering engines.

Here Be Dragons released four projects at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Amongst those four were The Protectors: Walk in the Ranger’s Shoe, created by Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow and Imraan Ismail and made in partnership with National Geographic, Annapurna Pictures and African Parks Network. The documentary short shot in VR chronicles a day in the life of a ranger in Garamba National Park, managed by African Parks Network, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On April 22, 2017, Hillary Clinton made a surprise appearance at the Tribeca Film Festival to join a panel hosted by the film’s creators’ Kathryn Bigelow and Imraan Ismail, National Geographic’s Rachel Webber, and African Parks Network’s Andrea Heydlauff.

The Last Goodbye was featured as part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes competition which celebrates innovation in storytelling. The experience allows viewers to walk alongside Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as he toured the Majdanek Concentration Camp where his parents and sister lost their lives during World War II. Considered the first testimony captured in room-scale VR, the experience was created in partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation, Here Be Dragons, Moving Picture Company and OTOY which a physical installation created by designer David Korins and original music by Q Department. The experience garnered numerous accolades including The Lumiere Award for Best VR Documentary, The Webby Award for 360-Video:Branded, AICP Next Award for Virtual Reality, and shortlisted twice at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Here Be Dragons launched Sessions: The Legion Mixed Reality Experience for FX Network series Legion at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con. The experience, created by Justin Denton, utilized both the Microsoft HoloLens headset and live actors within a massive interactive installation, putting viewers into the eyes of the show’s lead character David Haller (Dan Stevens), a diagnosed schizophrenic who discovers he may actually be a super powerful mutant instead.

Dispatch, a four-part virtual reality episodic series for Oculus VR by Edward Robles, debuted its first episode at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and followed with the entire series premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The series follows a small-town police dispatcher named Ted (Martin Starr) on the worst night of his life. It was most recently nominated for a 2018 Webby Award and won a Gold Lion at the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Further reading

• McMillan, Sam (30 April 2018). "Here Be Dragons: A production studio is just beginning to unlock the potentials of storytelling in virtual reality". Commarts. https://www.commarts.com/features/here-be-dragons. 
• "Here Be Dragons is defining VR docs - with help from Kathryn Bigelow & Tribeca". https://www.wareable.com/vr/here-be-dragons-tribeca-the-protectors-7776. 
• "We Trip on the ‘Legion’ Mixed Reality Experience at SDCC". http://collider.com/legion-mixed-reality-experience-sdcc/#images. 
• Hardawar, Devindra (22 April 2017). "'The Last Goodbye' is the VR Holocaust memorial we need today". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/22/the-last-goodbye-vr/. 
• "Chris Milk: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine | TED Talk". TED.com. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine?language=en. Retrieved 2015-09-05. 
• "This Ebola Documentary Shows VR Film's Radical Potential". WIRED. 2015-09-01. https://www.wired.com/2015/09/vr-ebola-film/. Retrieved 2015-09-05. 
• "TOMS Brings Virtual Reality Giving Trips to Retail Customers". VRScout. 2015-07-24. http://vrscout.com/projects/toms-virtual-reality-giving-trips/. Retrieved 2015-09-05. 
• Strange, Adario (2015-04-28). "How this startup helped the 'New York Times' create a virtual New York City". Mashable.com. http://mashable.com/2015/04/27/vr-film-ny-times/. Retrieved 2015-09-05. 
• "New Frontier exhibition at Sundance focuses on the future". LA Times. 2015-01-22. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-new-frontier-sundance-20150122-story.html#page=1. Retrieved 2015-09-05. 
• "Milk, Milling-Smith, Carmody Launch VRSE Works VR Projects | Ad Critic News - Advertising Age". Adage.com. 2015-01-28. http://adage.com/article/creativity-news/milk-milling-smith-carmody-launch-vrse-works-vr-projects/296862/. Retrieved 2015-09-05.