Experiencing BBC World Service's Virtual Reality 'Trafficked'

VR experiences have a newness to them that pricks the imagination. A Virtual Reality demonstration, like the one mounted in New Broadcasting House Media Café this week as part of the 100 Women season, harks back to broadcasting milestones when new-fangled technologies were introduced to curious notebook-wielding journalists. In that respect VR manages to play on that same sense of wonder.

VR has been reported on by the BBC’s Click for a long time now. BBC R&D have been developing VR experiences for a while too. The concept stretches back far far longer (the Virtual Reality Society’s history page is a good primer). But as public access to head-mounted equipment has increased over the past ten years or so, so the editorial propositions have been developed.

To date, I’d only experienced one piece of VR – the Philharmonia’s brilliantly executed immersive orchestral experience demoed at Southbank during the summer. In a corner of the Royal Festival Hall I sat with a headset and headphones clamped to my head and sat in the front desk of the violas watching conductor Essa Pekka Salonen lead his orchestra through the opening movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

It was an unexpectedly emotional experience – three-dimensional and overwhelming immersive. There is no better way to savour the essence classical music than being embedded in the machine that creates it.

BBC World Service’s 100 Women Trafficked VR experience had similar sensory elements to it. Trafficked sees the user become ‘Maria’, a woman trafficked into sex slavery from Central America (Nicaragua) to Mexico, where she was held for 8 years. Based on true events, Maria, and those involved in her rescue, were interviewed by BBC journalist Lourdes Heredia. The animated scenes which make up the experience are derived from their testimonies.

At eight minutes long I wanted it to be longer – a testament to the remarkable skill and devotion which powered the BBC World Service three month development project and the impact being cut off from the outside world had on my ability to focus on the messaging. Actively listening to a news report about human trafficking would have been a challenge in amongst the hubbub of my relatively charmed life. Here, my attention was solely on the story being told, its setting and the key messages delivered at the end of it.

What surprised me most was how the spatial experience created by the controlled environment VR constructs gave me a such a powerful sense of involvement. Even though the animations and artwork, compelling as they were, made it clear that this was a constructed world, there was still a unnerving sense of realness about proceedings which reached a peak when the violent manner of Maria’s capture was retold.

There is a sophistication to the storytelling experience in VR which I hope means content producers will continue to develop ideas for it. At a point in time when fragmented audiences consuming on-demand media makes live mass-audience highly-prized, the singular and personal experience offered by VR positions nestles neatly alongside television. VR storytelling’s impact positions it closer to radio however. Little wonder that after the end of ‘Trafficked’ I started pondering what other stories you could tell and how quickly they could be produced.

• Watch a non-VR, 360 video version of the story ‘Trafficked’ on YouTube