10 questions for VR funders

Immerse on 2017-07-09

10 Questions for VR Funders

In Immerse issue #8, we heard from Diana Barrett of the Fledgling Fund about how and why she supports nonfiction VR. To continue the discussion, we asked producers and researchers what questions they’ve got for funders of the field.

Many thanks to Heidi Boisvert of futurePerfect lab, Caty Borum Chattoo of the Center for Media and Social Impact, Sasha Costanza-Chock of MIT, Wendy Levy of The Alliance, Brad Lichtenstein of 371 Productions, Jennifer MacArthur of Borderline Media, Molly Murphy of Working Films, and Lina Srivastava of CIEL for weighing in:

  1. Are arts (and non-arts) funders getting together to devise pipelines of support for VR and scaffolding for access, training, creative innovation and distribution pathways at the community level? How might we encourage this?
  2. What discussions are happening among media funders to support creators and industry infrastructure in lesser resourced regions globally?
  3. How can we create a more efficient marketplace for filmmakers to find and assess VR/immersive technologists, and how can those technologists find more challenging and creative media projects to work on?
  4. What’s being done to help support and provide financial infrastructure for independents in this field — creators, strategists, advocates — especially those who are more vulnerable in this moment of political violence and blatant prejudice?
  5. Are you gathering, and making publicly available, data about the demographics of who you are allocating funding to, especially race/ethnicity and gender — and do you have a specific strategy to support VR projects led by makers of various ethnicities, genders, classes, etc.?
  6. Could foundations partner with venture funds or angel funders to broaden the range of immersive artists and producers who receive support? How can early investment in distribution and branding models for independent VR just as the economic model for it forms help to insulate makers against some of the pitfalls of the marketplace for independent documentary?
  7. As the hype cycle about VR as “empathy machine” begins to wane, have you begun to look at the dangers of VR as a “voyeurism machine?”
  8. Is the field of interactive/immersive documentary contracting and consolidating? Feels like there are far fewer opportunities for support in general for R+D, iteration, impact strategy, etc., but especially for “new media.”
  9. Why fund VR without a thorough understanding of long-term socio-cultural & neurobiological effects? And if we fund projects, can we also fund related empirical research and conversations around ethics?
  10. Should we sink a ton of resources into what could be a transitional technology? What are the costs of investing in another “shiny thing” vs. more meaningful modes of engagement?

Immerse is an initiative of Tribeca Film Institute, MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund. Learn more about our vision for the project here.