Nicholas Rubin’s 01 FAV production company, Dirt Empire, recently supervised the animation work for The New Yorker’s immersive V.R. documentary “Reeducated.”
Directed by Sam Wolson, with reporting by Ben Mauk, illustrations by Matt Huynh and animation by Dirt Empire’s Nicholas Rubin 01 FAV and Oliver Carr 20 FAV, “Reeducated” takes viewers inside the secret world of a “reëducation” camp in Xinjiang, China. Dirt Empire supervised all of the animation production of the project with a core team of visual effects artists to bring the project into stereoscopic virtual reality over the course of one year. Their goal in executing the highly technical animation was to make a hand painted world in keeping with Matt Huynh’s visual style, Sam Wolson’s directorial vision and Ben Mauk’s deep reporting—all in service to the gravity of the story while leveraging the immersive power of VR storytelling.
“Reeducated” premièred at SXSW in the Virtual Cinema category, and received the film festival’s Special Jury Recognition for Immersive Journalism, as well as prizes at VRHAM!, and NewImages. The critical response has been overwhelming, with Indiewire’s Eric Kohn stating “Reeducated” seems like an obvious frontrunner for the Emmy in Outstanding Interactive Program.”
About “Reeducated"
In the spring of 2017, authorities in Xinjiang began detaining thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim minorities in secret extrajudicial detention camps. By 2018, as many as a million people were held in a vast network of “reëducation centers.” Guided by the eyewitness accounts of three men—Erbaqyt Otarbai, Orynbek Koksebek, and Amanzhan Seituly, all ethnically Kazakh—who were imprisoned at a facility in Tacheng in 2017, the film illuminates what is likely the largest mass internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the Second World War.
Drawn from hours of firsthand testimony, survivor sketches, and satellite photos, the V.R. film uses Huynh’s hand-drawn pen-and-brush illustrations, brought to life by the animators Nicholas Rubin and Oliver Carr, and spatial audio, composed by Jon Bernson, to reconstruct the men’s experiences in a stereoscopic, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree space. Viewers can watch the film on desktop on newyorker.com or on mobile via YouTube. Use a cardboard viewer, or a headset such as an Oculus, for the full V.R. experience.
“Reeducated” was supported by the Pulitzer Center, the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism, and the Online News Association, and accompanies the interactive New Yorker feature “Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State.”
You can learn more about the making of “Reeducated” in Ben Mauk’s The Making of a Fugitive World and the XR Must article Decoding XR - REEDUCATED.
Recognition
"Reeducated" received an Emmy in 2022. The V.R. film was also was recognized with the Peabody Award in 2023.
