World War 1 epic "Soldiers' Stories" gets virtual reality release ahead of Veteran's Day and New York Times' distribution of Google Cardboard VR headset, ConVRter reports

Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/23/2015 -- Just in time for Veterans' Day and the NY Times' unprecedented Google Cardboard release, there is now a VR experience of WW1 available. The VR film, titled "Soldiers' Stories," features narration by Academy Award winner Mickey Rooney and the Academy Award-winning production team of Nick Reed and Jonathan Kitzen. Set in the trenches of WW1, the film uses restored original stereoscopic images taken over 100 years ago to tell the story of the bloodiest battle in human history, the Battle of the Somme, from the perspective of the soldiers who fought it. "This is an epic film about an epic engagement, so what better way to see it than in its original 3D glory and with the immersive quality that only virtual reality can bring," said Nick Reed, of Kallisti Media (http://www.kallistimedia.com) and producer of the film.

While most people think James Cameron invented 3D with the film Avatar, in reality 3D goes all the way back to the 1840s. When WW1 broke out there were thousands of 3D images taken by all sides. The trick was finding and restoring them. The filmmakers were able to locate over 9,000 images by enlisting the help of a network of private collectors who had a treasure trove of original images never before seen by the public. In the end, the process took over two years and thousands of hours.

Although the film is a series of technological firsts, one of the biggest hurdles was figuring out how to tell intimate veteran stories without resorting to actors reading diaries, in the style of Ken Burns. "When making the film we wanted the story to be personal, but the last of the WW1 vets died in 2011, and I wanted to create something different to the Ken Burns documentary," explains the film's director, Jonathan Kitzen.

In the end the novel solution was to have veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars speak of their own personal experiences in battle and, in so doing, intertwine past and present through the timeless accounts of the soldiers. "There is not much difference in the experience of being a soldier back then or today," says Kitzen, "For the film we just removed the parts where the soldier said 'Iraq.' The result is a film that explores the emotional experience of war from the grunt's perspective. It relates the intimate war lived by each soldier, not the blood, guts, and glory version of the larger political and social scene."

Kitzen --a bit of a tech nerd with a tech company and a background building gear and creating code to facilitate stories-- built a completely custom tool kit for converting the film to Stereoscopic VR. It worked so well that he spun it off into its own company: ConVRter (http://www.ConVRter.co), based in Vancouver, Canada. ConVRter was the recipient of a 2014 National Research Council of Canada technology grant for its work, which helped to make the film and the technology possible.

When people think of Virtual Reality, they most often think of something modern, but with Soldiers' Stories audiences can now step into the world 100 years ago and get a personal experience for their mobile device via Google Play, Vimeo, and the iTunes store (http://www.ConVRter.net for links) and for all formats from Cardboard VR to Gear VR and Oculus. "I hope that VR can be more than just a game," said Kitzen, "because it has the potential for so much more."

"We wanted to give something back," explained Reed, "and WW1 seems to have been mostly forgotten even though Veteran's Day was created to commemorate the tragedy that was WW1. 'Lest We Forget,' they said. But today, most people have no idea what WW1 was about or what it was like for the people who fought and died there. It is time to correct that, and perhaps Virtual Reality is the vehicle to make it happen."

About ConVRter
ConVRter is a system of multiple proprietary visual technologies that converts a traditional program into a virtual reality experience. ConVRter uses a blend of software and software-driven Artificial Intelligence to identify and transform regular images into stereoscopic virtual reality, where the viewer can look around a frame, experience full head tracking and see content in a new and novel way.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

World War 1 film from Academy Award winning team, rejected by American museums for being too intense and honest, is now available in Virtual Reality via ConVRter, producers report

Hollywood, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/20/2015 -- While documentary films are commonly labeled as untruthful, few are ever condemned as being too honest, especially by museum directors. Yet that very objection was repeatedly raised against the new World War 1 documentary "Soldiers' Stories."

"To say we are disappointed in the response from American museums is an understatement," said Academy Award winning producer Nick Reed, whose film Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life won an Oscar in 2014, "Whatever business museum curators are in, it is clearly not educating the public about topics it needs to understand."

Soldiers' Stories was presented to the museum film market just in time for the 100th Anniversary of WW1 in 2014. "Countless WW2 films came out but, as far as I am aware, ours was the only one about WW1. It's as if nobody wanted to acknowledge this crucial piece of our collective history," said Director Jonathan Kitzen.

Because the last WW1 veteran died in 2011, the filmmakers used unscripted interviews with real veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq to narrate the film. That is where the problems started.

"We had the vets talk about what it is to be a soldier. The stories they told were incredibly moving," explained Kitzen, "We used their contributions to depict the reality of being a soldier 100 years earlier, because the experience hasn't changed, only the politics has. Many museum directors complained that the 'actors' did not sound realistic enough, and that they sounded too young."

"When it was later revealed to them that there were no actors, just actual veterans describing real, personal experiences of battle, the museum directors were unwilling to admit their error or their own biases," Kitzen hypothesizes, "I think we all grew up seeing so many WW2 documentaries that we have become used to hearing either a very old veteran speaking or an actor playing an over-the-top, scripted part."

The producers next showed Soldiers' Stories to Mark Katz at National Geographic, whose review was: "While emotional, informative and important, we feel the film is too realistic and even perhaps too brutally honest for the museum cinema market." NatGeo passed.

The team went on to enlist the help of veterans and veteran groups, all of them supportive. The American Legion offered to promote the film to millions of their members, instructing them where they could see it.

The producers offered to pair the film with local Veteran volunteers who would do a Q&A after showings in order to talk about the reality of being a soldier, but the museums remained unmoved. "The Smithsonian stopped returning our calls, even when we offered to give them a free test screening," Kitzen recalled.

In the end the film was critically acclaimed by the press and by audiences. It also received great scores at film festivals and was hand-picked by Michael Moore for his Traverse City Film Festival, where audiences awarded it an impressive rating of 4.25 out of 5 possible stars.

Leases were signed, but they were for theaters outside North America. The message was clear: Museums in North America wanted penguins more than Veterans, even on November 11th, a day that was supposed to honor their memory.

Realizing the film needed to reach American audiences, the filmmakers settled on the novel idea of converting it into a Virtual Reality production. Because the film used original 3D WW1 images taken on large format 15/70mm stock, the VR film had a head start.

"We were lucky that our film had a very large image that was originally 3D, so we were able to translate that into multiple formats, including Virtual Reality with head movement," explained Producer Nick Reed.

Soldiers' Stories is now available as a passive VR non-app experience for Google Cardboard on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/soldiersstories), and as a full-blown VR App on Google Play and iTunes (see http://www.ConVRter.net for links).

"The biggest thing I learned was about the amount of self-censorship in America today," Kitzen explained, "Being silent is not patriotic; passivity can mean proliferating propaganda. It is, at its heart, the denial of what these courageous men and women went through. What is even more disheartening is that our museums perpetuate this culture of denial as well."

About ConVRter
ConVRter is a system of proprietary visual technologies that converts a traditional program into a virtual reality experience where the viewer can look around a frame, experience full head tracking, and see content in a new and novel way.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm