‘Listen To Your Body’, ‘Change Your Life’


10/30/2019

HP uses its technology and innovation along with soul stirring real life story of cancer victim through traditional cinematography to deliver an award winning VR film on breast cancer.


Dailycsr.com – 30 October 2019 – Springbok Entertainment has created a virtual reality theatre with 360-degree experience which makes one feel like going through real experiences. It is in this theatre that the “Tribeca X Award-winning VR film” recounting the ballerina Maggie Kudirka’s story suffering “stage four breast cancer” at the age of twenty three creates a heart touching experience.
 
At present, Kudirka has turned 28 and resides “outside of Baltimore, Maryland”. She happens to be one of the eight hundred women under the age of forty who are diagnosed of “metastatic breast cancer” on an annual basis. As per estimation, nearly thirty percent of “newly diagnosed cancers in women” could be categorised in breast cancer.
 
The Head of “location-based VR entertainment” at HP, Joanna Popper said:
“This film embraces the power of VR technology to address important issues and bring people into another’s story. It has an emotional impact.”
 
The film was funded by “HP and Intel” while HP also help with its “VR hardware” with the “new HP Reverb Pro Edition headset”. The movie also celebrates the “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month”. The producer of the movie “The 100%”, as well as the chief executive of Springbok, Brandon Zamel said:
 “Our goal was to immerse the audience because you want them to feel that there is nothing else that matters other than what is unfolding on the stage. We all have cancer narratives in our lives, but we so rarely talk about it, because it has this taboo, especially for young people.”
 
While Kudirka added:
“Dealing with a cancer diagnosis is a scary world for anyone in their 20s, because we are told that we are healthy and young and can do anything we want. When I was growing up, I never heard of a dancer having some kind of illness or disease. People kept their injuries a secret.”
 
Recounting the story of the movie, Sarah Murry wrote:
“The 100% takes you on an emotional journey as Maggie transforms into an accomplished dancer and launches her career at New York’s Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, where she’s plagued by repeated injuries, but is coached into ignoring her pain. She continued dancing even as the cancer has metastasized to her pelvis to keep her coveted spot at the professional dance company. Her suffering is made apparent with the creative use of mirrors as a symbol in the film. In one magical moment, she appears to step out of the glass, like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland. During the worst of her illness, the mirrors shatter. Poignantly reflected in the floating shards are photos of her childhood dance recitals”.
 
Talking about the use of “traditional cinematography, volumetric capture technology, visual effects, and computer-generated imagery”, the Chief Operations Officer, Steven-Charles Jaffe said:
“When immersive is done well, it can tap into emotions better than almost anything. This experience can live longer and with more powerful effect in a VR headset than anywhere else.”
 
Jaffe also narrated “The 100%” who made this film partly as a “love letter” for his daughter who in her teenage suffered “life threatening non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma”. While Zamel added:
“There is his incredible power in Maggie's story that seems to give people the permission to talk about it and talk about it in a very vulnerable way”.
 
The film’s peak is represented by Maggie’s discovery of her inner ballerina in her hospital gown whereby transforming into the “Bald Ballerina” before the viewers’ eyes. Kudirka continues to take cancer treatment besides teaching dance and travelling around the world with her story to inspire other in turn. She says:
“You have to listen to your body. Because it could change your whole life.”
 
 
 
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com