The Next Best Thing to Being There

Adam Mason

Taking donors to a remote village where Charity: Water has built a well is the best way to show them how clean water transforms lives. But the nonprofit’s leaders know that only a tiny fraction of supporters will ever be able to make the trip.

During its annual gala in December, the organization tried to do the next best thing: bring the work to its donors. After dessert but before the live auction, 400 guests donned virtual-reality headsets to watch an eight-minute film that shows how a new well changes the life of Selam, a 13-year-old Ethiopian girl.

As the movie started and guests followed Selam on her early-morning trek to collect water from a leech-infested pond, the hum of small talk and the clinking of stemware fell away and the room became very quiet, says Melissa Burmester, director of production at Charity: Water. Couples reached across the table to hold hands.

“When we hit clean water, people were clapping and crying,” she says. “Everyone was experiencing it together.”

The virtual trip to Ethiopia didn’t come cheap. The film’s price tag was $100,000, mostly for post-production costs and travel, paid for by the Caterpillar Foundation as part of a larger grant. But the charity is confident it is a potent fundraising tool.

There’s no way to measure the movie’s exact impact, Ms. Burmester says, but the gala brought in $2.4 million, more than double what Charity: Water expected. Since then, fundraisers have taken virtual-reality headsets on visits with potential donors, sometimes winning big gifts right on the spot.

After people see the presentation, she says, “they just get it.”

Virtual reality’s radical promise is its ability to turn viewers into participants, taking them places they wouldn’t otherwise be able to go. As the technology’s popularity picks up speed in video games, movies, and journalism, a handful of nonprofits are testing it to win donations and change hearts and minds.

Amnesty International UK, a human-rights advocacy group, has given street fundraisers virtual-reality headsets they can use to show passers-by 3D photographs that document the damage caused by barrel bombing and other attacks in Syria. During the initial test in London, fundraisers equipped with the virtual-reality glasses signed up 16 percent more monthly donors than those who didn’t have them.

Central Missouri Honor Flight, which sponsors sightseeing trips to Washington for elderly military veterans, created a virtual-reality tour of the capital’s memorials for veterans too frail to make the journey. In the fall, the Sierra Club created a film that let viewers hear the drip, drip, drip of melting glaciers and asked them to urge leaders to take action on climate change at treaty negotiations in Paris.

But how many nonprofits will adopt the new technology — at least in the short term — is an open question. Unlike Charity: Water, many of the groups experimenting with virtual reality have received films free or at a steep discount from companies that are trying to prove there’s a market for the new technology. Some experts estimate the cost of producing virtual reality is at least three times that of traditional video, putting it out of reach for all but the largest charities.

‘Empathy Is Easy’

And then there’s the still unanswered question of whether the sexy new technology is worth the investment.

Bryn Mooser believes the answer is yes. Perhaps not surprisingly: He co-founded RYOT, a new-media company that does virtual-reality reporting around the world. The firm has started a business to help companies and nonprofits take advantage of the technology. Mr. Mooser points to a virtual-reality story RYOT filmed about the earthquake in Nepal that raised more than $100,000 for disaster relief.

But he acknowledges that a powerful story isn’t enough.

“Empathy is easy,” says Mr. Mooser. “It’s simple to get people to stand in a slum and feel for people. ... The challenge is how to turn that empathy into action."[[video url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XtbgPurqkUc” align="left” size="half-width” class="" starttime="" caption="The new-media company RYOT produced this virtual-reality 360 film with the Sierra Club to educate and urge world leaders to take action on climate change.” credits="RYOT”]]

Virtual reality is still an emerging technology. There are no manuals to follow, and standard practices for things as simple as how close to place the camera rig to the action are only starting to develop. Charity: Water learned just how experimental the technology is when it shot its first immersive video in Ethiopia.

To give viewers the sense that they’re part of the action, virtual-reality filmmakers shoot each scene from multiple directions. Later they use sophisticated software to stitch the feeds together.

Vrse.works, a virtual-reality production company, helped Charity: Water build a rig of eight traditional cameras, enabling simultaneous shooting in different directions.

“Before we went to go roll on the first shot, six of our eight cameras went down,” says Ms. Burmester. “It was hot. There was dust, and you just have all of this technology that you don’t want to get in the way of the story.”

(The company asked Charity: Water officials not to talk about the rig’s exact configuration. Mr. Mooser describes the equipment that RYOT uses as a “soccer ball of cameras.”)

The filmmakers also wanted to make sure that they weren’t part of the story. Because the cameras were shooting in multiple directions, the crew had to get creative to stay out of the picture. The solution they devised: Start the cameras, synchronize the sound, and then hide behind rocks or other large objects, hoping that the cameras capture the right things.

“We were in the middle of a rural village where there are animals roaming around, cows, and kids, and there were trucks coming in,” says Ms. Burmester. “I had a constant fear that we were going to come back and our remaining cameras were going to be tipped over and broken. But luckily that didn’t happen.”

Responsible Representation

Explaining the crew’s activity to people in the village was difficult.

“In the beginning, we got a lot of strange looks,” says Ms. Burmester. But by the end of the shoot residents were comfortable with the filming and what she calls the “Frankenstein-looking” camera rig. After filming a meeting where the community discussed the new well, Selam’s father, a local leader, basically asked the filmmakers for another take because he realized he hadn’t called on everyone in the village.

Scott Harrison, Charity: Water

Ms. Burmester and other charity leaders experimenting with virtual reality say the intimacy of the medium makes it critical that they portray the people they serve responsibly. During shooting, the crew encouraged Selam and other community members to listen to the audio they had recorded. Later, Charity: Water founder Scott Harrison returned to the village with a headset to show participants the video.

The visuals in virtual reality can affect a viewer’s mind and body as if they were the real thing, something filmmakers need to keep in mind, says Reuben Steains, innovations manager at Amnesty International UK.

“Where you might push the boundary and have a shocking or graphic image in a 2D film or in a photo, you will definitely need to rein that back if you’re going to represent that in VR, because you could be seriously traumatizing people,” he says.

Charity: Water had viewers in mind when it left out a scene that showed residents removing leeches that had attached under their cows’ tongues and could make the livestock sick.

The bloody imagery would be difficult but watchable in traditional video, Ms. Burmester says, but it was too much for virtual reality: “Visually it felt more like shock value, which is never what we’re going for.” Instead, Selam talks in the film’s narration about the leeches in the village’s old water supply.

Getting Closer to the Action

While Charity: Water doesn’t have immediate plans to tackle another virtual-reality project, Ms. Burmester already has a list of things she’d do differently the next time around.

First, she would make sure there was a way to review footage on-site, and she’d invest in one of the new cooling systems coming out to cut down on the problem of cameras overheating because they back up against each other on the rig.

She’s also excited by developments in the cameras themselves. Improvements in the lenses make it easier to get closer to the action and get better angles, which could shorten the painstaking — and expensive — post-production process. Greater stability control opens up new storytelling possibilities.

“In our film, you’re in a fixed point,” Ms. Burmester says. “But with some of the technology that’s coming out, I love the idea of you actually walking through space. So, just taking it another step further in terms of how real it feels.”