Today we meet Marion Burger and Ilan Cohen, directors of Emperor, an interactive and narrative experience that, since its première at the 80. Venice Film Festival, has traveled the world, visiting countless festivals and as many events.

Emperor, with its poetic and touching black and white, in its aesthetic minimalism and surrealist tone takes the user on an emotional yet delicate journey through the personal story of Marion Burger herself and her father, who suffers from aphasia. In doing so, it helps us open a window on this condition and the repercussions and frustrations that follow it. 

A year ago, Emperor won the Venice Immersive Achievement Prize. After such a long and rewarding festival run, what does this experience represent for you?

Marion Burger – When you work on something for so long, you have no idea what to expect once this production goes out there. You don’t know what’s going to happen, whether it’s going to be liked or not, whether it’s going to be successful. And if that work means something important to you, and is related to your personal story, as Emperor is to me… then you are even more on edge and uncertain. 

Neither Ilan nor I honestly expected all this success. We hoped the public would like the piece, of course, but we are thrilled, today, to know that Emperor has toured all over the world and that people have loved it so much. It had the best life we could have expected, and it’s very satisfying, because we created it together. It was a huge step for us and in a direction that was different from the one we had always walked in. In my case, it’s the first time I’ve directed a work of this kind. I think that finally, after a year of presentations, of meetings, of people recognizing us as the directors of this work, I feel finally comfortable with the idea of doing new things, of pursuing new projects on my own. 

Ilan Cohen – It was a very powerful experience for me to witness people trying the work and getting feedback from them. To realize that some of these old ideas that we hoped- we were betting would work, actually did. It was almost touching, in a way. But I think we needed some distance from this production to see it all more clearly. 

On my part, it’s really been a long time since I’ve tried it, and I’m honestly curious to see it again, even though I’m almost nervous to do so. Emperor has a life of its own now, after all. It keeps getting selected for new exhibitions, new events in different places, and we keep receiving constant feedback. It’s a beautiful feeling. We feel like proud parents! 

During this year of touring, how did you perceive the audience and the relationship it developed with Emperor?

I.C. – The audience’s reaction was really quite varied. There are two kinds of audiences, in my opinion, and they respond very differently to works like ours. If the user is extremely analytical and uses their left brain, they may be puzzled by such a work. Those who are not sensitive to poetry may get a little lost in this puzzle, that is not a particularly satisfying puzzle to solve. From that point of view I think some people feel a bit left out of work like this. 

Those who are sensitive to our language, on the other hand, are generally very sensitive to it. And so, on the other side, we had some intensely emotional reactions. 

What aspects of Emperor most affected these people, in your opinion? 

I.C. – The medium we used was an important factor. Of course, there’s a combination of elements- the personal nature of the story, what the piece tells us about Marion’s relationship with her father, the nevertheless universal element that characterizes the content. But the immersive medium is really able to create an extremely powerful empathic reaction in some audience members, and that makes all the difference. 

Another interesting factor, then, is that the relationship to the story, to the medium, to the experience evolves as you go through it. Users do not immediately understand that this specific approach is intended, that frustration is what we’re actually trying to convey. I remember one person, a big man, who looked so angry as he tried the experience! He was huffing, forcefully attempting the interactions, and retrying the actions… he was so physically intense! I was convinced that at the end of the experience, he would take off his headset and punch me in the face…. But then the end came, he put the headset down, came straight to me and said, “That was incredible.” He had no problem with all that frustration. He understood that what made him uncomfortable was part of the experience. Instead of distracting him, it made him more emotionally available because it sort of put him in the situation of the father of our story. 

M.B. – After all, the meaning of Emperor is all in the final sentence, with the man pointing with his finger in order to communicate. In that gesture is the meaning of an action that you, as a user, have also done over and over again up to that point, but of whose meaning you were not aware until you contextualized it in the man’s actions. 

We wanted to give this key to interpretation only at the end and I think most people reacted to this stimulus in exactly the way we hoped.

I.C. – I agree, this piece worked for most of the audience. It’s just that their response was hard to read in real time.

Is this something that as authors you often do? Observe and interpret the reactions of your audience? 

M.B. – Something I’ve been surprised about is realizing how much we, as creators, watch people doing our experience and how much we try to interpret their reactions. Coming from the film world, this is not something we are used to doing. We don’t spend the two hours in the theater watching how other people react to the movie- but we do that systematically during an immersive experience like this one.

I.C. – We do feel a strong desire to observe them all the time, but consider that we have to monitor the situation for technical problems as well, such as those related to positioning in space: VR technology and head tracking sometimes reset the user’s position to the wrong place, and we have to be ready to fix that quickly. 

M.B. – It is also true that part of you wants to make sure that people do exactly what you imagined they should do. You have a certain expectation about their reactions, but the truth is that the story and the medium have a life of their own depending on who’s approaching them. 

It’s something very interesting to deal with as creators. You have to accept that things don’t always turn out exactly as you planned or would like. Yet people can still come out of the experience very happy and satisfied. 

It must be frustrating, especially when you consider that, working in films, you are used to determining very clearly the path the audience will take.

M.B. – It certainly makes things interesting! (laughs) However, with Emperor we have tried to direct people in a very precise but at the same time subtle way. I think overall it works, and we are satisfied with the direction we took. We just have to accept the fact that sometimes some people won’t see some details we care about, or they won’t do the things we expected. But that’s okay too.

Emperor literally traveled the world, as you said. What would you recommend to creatives who want to follow the same LBE distribution routes?

I.C. –  I think the answer is simple, and it is: think of your medium and create for that medium.

M.B. – I agree. It’s crucial that the story you’re talking about is really related to the way you present it and the way you want people to experience it.

I.C. – It all comes down to two words, in the end: why VR? If you really find an answer, you can get the most out of this medium and, of course, even outperform the competition a bit, because unfortunately not everyone is asking themselves this question seriously. Of course, some luck is involved as well…. But I think that what happened for us happened because we were really trying to espouse what we thought was specific to the medium, as much as we could, within the scope of our specific story. 

At the same time, the medium also appeared to us in all its potential precisely because of the story we had. We knew that it had powerful emotional content and would be very personal and universal at the same time, and from there we just focused on how to maximize the use of this medium to bring all this out in the best way.

There is always the right medium for the right story.

I.C. – Indeed. We are not making an animation. We’re not making a film. We’re not even making a video game. We are making an immersive narrative experience in VR. We tried to focus on that aspect and built everything with that in mind. 

We did not retrofit Emperor to VR. It was designed from the ground up for VR. And I think that’s the key: every project has the perfect medium. Once you choose the medium, you have to respect it. I think that makes all the difference.

What’s your perception of immersive production and distribution today? 

M.B. – I am in the CNC committee in France for state funding of immersive projects. This gives me the opportunity to learn more about many of the projects currently in development, and it gives me a pretty good idea of the direction the artists are moving in. In these past few months, for example, I noticed a prevalence of multi-user projects as well as live performances. I also saw more works related to domes-related projects. 

In general, my impression is that more and more work is using this kind of media and this kind of venues, with the goal of having more people in the same place to try the same immersive production. 

I think this basically depends on one fact: people want to share their experiences. That’s what happens when you see a movie: you always stop afterwards with friends to discuss it. It’s also what happened when we presented Emperor in group screenings: we would show our work to five, six people at the same time, and immediately we saw the dialogue between them open up. And more than with us as authors, they wanted to confront each other, to share what they had seen and felt during the experience. 

To me, this sharing moment is fundamental not just for fruition, but for the project itself: the user often has doubts about what they are doing or should be doing when wearing a headset and are alone in there with their thousand questions. To be able to talk about it with other users, actually helps you understand the story better… and your role in it. 

I.C. – Much of Cinema consists of debriefing after the film. In the immersive field, we are not really offering that experience of debriefing, at least in the current setup of events. So I think that’s something that could be rethought a little bit.

What would you suggest to venues and events to facilitate these moments of discussion among users?

I.C. – An example… I think it would be interesting, in a festival or a place that hosts a group of collective works, to have two screenings at the same time: project A on some headsets, project B on others. The screenings should take place at the same time, so that people can finish the experience at approximately the same moment. This would facilitate a more theater-like fruition, reducing those moments of communication gap when two people are confronting each other and realize they cannot say anything to each other because they have watched different works. 

This approach would be absolutely feasible because it would not change the setup of the event per se, but would simply require a different organization.

M.B. –  Another thing that is very relevant for venues, in my opinion, is to work on effective user reception. At some events I went to, I happened to find facilitators who were running 8 or 10 immersive pieces at the same time and they hadn’t even tried them all…. The user may feel disoriented, might even skip some of the experiences they might be interested in because the facilitator has not seen the work, and therefore cannot convey it in its salient features. 

The welcoming moment is crucial: the person who does it must have already experienced the work and be able to tell you what it is about. From this point of view, organizing an event with the same schedules, and the same experiences would facilitate this part as well, ensuring a generally better viewing experience for everyone. 

I.C. – We should envision new venues that can accommodate these moments of discussion, not just with the creators, but with the rest of the audience. A place with an adjacent lobby, maybe, where we can have coffee and discuss what we have seen. And I think it is important to have this moment of decompression not only after the experience but also before it begins. 

At Cannes, this year, I had the opportunity to try Evolver. There was a moment at the beginning of the experience when users were taken through a simple guided meditation, no headset on yet. You basically had to spend a few minutes with your eyes closed to synchronize yourself with the other people participating in the experience. 

Being forced to meditate for ten minutes before having that VR experience was actually great! It opened me up to what was going to happen next. 

It’s like the movies: when you walk into the theater, your mind is somehow polluted by everything that has happened to you up to that point and you need time to prepare for what you are about to watch. I think of the Hollywood classic films. The opening credits, in their length, did just that: they helped to ease your mind, to make you slowly forget the rest of your life and prepare you for the movie. 

I believe there is some value in trying to create these introductory moments in our field as well, so that immersive experiences are not consumed almost like technical demos, but enjoyed properly.

M.B. – It’s the sacralization of the moment. And it is necessary in the immersive world as well.