AlexanderPorter

Love Child

RGB-D cinematography for lives shared with virtual worlds.

Original RGB-D cinematography shot in South Korea placed people and rooms inside Valerie Veatch’s HBO documentary as three-dimensional data fields.

Watch the trailer ↗
Period
2014
Status
Complete / Archived
Form
Feature documentary / experimental cinematography
A seated figure appears as overlapping silhouettes of warm sky, blue scan data, and dark shadow.
Layered seated figure

The project

Love Child is Valerie Veatch’s documentary about South Korean internet and gaming culture, told through a 2010 child-neglect case and the legal argument around internet addiction that followed. Original RGB-D cinematography made in South Korea placed people and rooms inside three-dimensional data fields. Ryan Whittier Hale collaborated as an animation consultant.

Production notes

I spent two weeks filming in South Korea, visiting immersive gaming environments and internet cafes, interviewing game designers, and filming city life in and around Seoul. I also made a series of Depthkit sequences to illustrate the complicated convergence of real and virtual worlds at the heart of the film.

What others saw

“Love Child tells a more subtle story, one that is both specific to South Korea but that might profitably influence our discussions here at home.”
The Washington PostWhat Love Child tells us about the debate over video game addiction
“To represent the emotional vortex that ensnared the couple, Veatch used RGBD… developed by experimental cinematographer Alexander Porter and creative programmer James George.”
RealscreenSundance '14: Love Child examines technology's tangled web
Three seated figures appear as dense gold and blue point clouds beneath a turbulent sky.
Point-cloud family group
Point-cloud figures appear against a red-and-blue field in a Love Child visual-effects study.
Point-cloud figures

My role

I led the visual-effects work and served as an experimental cinematographer. I spent two weeks filming gaming environments, internet cafés, designers, and city life in and around Seoul, and developed the RGB-D sequences used throughout the film.

Selected credits

Alexander Porter
Visual Effects Lead / Cinematographer (Korea) — developed and shot the RGBD/volumetric sequences
Ryan Whittier Hale
Animation Consultant/Collaborator (brought in by Alexander Porter on the RGBD-derived sequences he led)
Valerie Veatch
Director

Links & presentations