#1075: Stereoscopic Compositing Innovations & “The Choice” Interactive Documentary Exploring Reproductive Rights in Texas

The Choice is an interactive documentary that explores the issue of reproductive rights in Texas. The team uses a special stereoscopic compositing pipeline that combines depth sensor information with a stereo camera capture, but creates a shader to preserve stereoscopic differences of specular reflections in the texture that's being projected onto a mesh. The end result is that it creates a more plausible face-to-face context to bear witness to testimony of traumatic experiences. The view is given the option to go down some branches by being able to chose which question to ask next, but the end result is trying to recreate experience of having someone share their story with you in the type of one-on-one intimacy that can be recreated within a volumetric context in VR. I had a chance to talk with collaborators Dr. Joanne-Aśka Popińska and Tom C. Hall about their technical innovations, but also the topic of reproductive rights through the personal story of a planned pregnancy that threatened the life of the mother and reveals the peculiarities of Texas politics that has cultivated an environment where doctors are either deliberately withholding or lying to patients if they believe the information they share may lead to decisions by the patient that goes against their personal political beliefs.