AlexanderPorter

Zero Days VR

Inside the hidden machinery of Stuxnet.

A twelve-minute immersive documentary using volumetric performance, spatial environments, and data visualization to make invisible infrastructure perceptible.

Period
2017
Status
Complete / Archived
Form
Immersive documentary · 12 minutes
A blue-lit human face emerges from dense vertical strands of digital data.
Figure in data strands

The project

Inside Zero Days VR, you move with Stuxnet through an Iranian nuclear facility. Adapted from Alex Gibney's Zero Days, the twelve-minute immersive documentary lets you experience the invisible world of cyber warfare from the perspective of the virus. Archival material, data visualization, spatial environments, and volumetric performances occupy the same sequence, placing the high stakes of cyber warfare at a human scale. Stuxnet was the first known cyberweapon built to cause physical destruction, sent by a clandestine US-Israeli operation into Iran's nuclear program.

Documentary field notes

While making Zero Days, I sat beside Alex Gibney and built the film’s 3D camera movements in custom software. I also helped the production use the same system on set. Later, I asked Alex if we could adapt the material into VR. He gave us the rights on the back of that collaboration. I co-wrote and produced the new piece, shot its volumetric performances, and worked on the installation design. I also negotiated the rights for the project with Participant.

What others saw

“Zero Days VR is one of the most powerful VR documentaries that I've seen so far.”— Kent Bye, Voices of VR
Voices of VR#543: Visualizing An Invisible Cyber War with Zero Days VR

Process studies

A Network Becomes a Landscape

Stuxnet altered centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility while hiding what it had done. Zero Days VR follows that operation from network traffic into machinery.

A blue-lit human face emerges from dense vertical strands of digital data.
Figure in data strands
01 / 04

Directed by Yasmin Elayat. Alexander Porter served as executive producer, producer, co-writer, and Depthkit director of photography.

  1. 01 / Starting point

    How could a viewer follow a cyberweapon from code into physical damage when much of its operation had no image?

  2. 02 / How it worked

    We built an impressionistic spatial model from documentary testimony, archival material, animated data, industrial architecture, and volumetric performances recorded with Depthkit. The viewer moves through streams of code and network structures before entering the Natanz enrichment facility. Human testimony appears within the same environment as the systems it describes, connecting software, machinery, and political decisions.

  3. 03 / What it opened

    The same environment held testimony, code, and industrial machinery. Moving through it connected a human account to the systems and political decisions it described.

Across the Table

The coda of Zero Days VR used a live Intel RealSense capture rather than another prerecorded volumetric performance.

Installation photo of the Zero Days VR live setup: two people seated across a table in a dark room, one wearing a VR headset with hand raised, the other reaching toward a small illuminated object on the table, lit by a single hanging lamp overhead.installation documentation
Installation, two-person VR table setup

Zero Days VR directed by Yasmin Elayat. Installation developed by Scatter. Alexander Porter served as executive producer, producer, co-writer, and Depthkit director of photography, and contributed to the installation design. Elie Zananiri was Technology Director.

  1. 01 / Starting point

    The piece centers on a whistleblower captured with Depthkit. The coda needed to make that person’s risk legible as a human position the viewer might occupy.

  2. 02 / How it worked

    An Intel RealSense camera captured the headset wearer during the installation. In the coda, that live depth image appeared across the virtual table at the corresponding seat. The viewer faced their own captured body, now occupying the narrative position of the whistleblower.

  3. 03 / What it opened

    In the final scene, the viewer found their own captured body seated in the whistleblower’s place across the table.

My role

Executive Producer / Co-Writer / Depthkit DP

Scatter

Co-Founder / Immersive Director

This project emerged out of my VFX work on the Zero Days film. After completing that work, I proposed an adaptation to Gibney & Jigsaw. I was inspired in part by a comment that Alex made while we were collaborating where he said he was excited to be able to use Depthkit because it allowed him to film un-filmable things and treat infrastructure as a place. They agreed and after a rights negotiation with Participant and a genuinely interesting fair use letter, Zero Days VR was born. I co-wrote and executive produced the new piece, shot its volumetric performances, and ran the installation design.

Supported by

Selected credits

Alexander Porter
Executive Producer, Producer, Co-Writer, Depthkit Director of Photography (Volumetric Capture), Installation Design
Yasmin Elayat
Director / Producer / Writer
Alex Gibney
Executive Producer
Sarah Dowland
Executive Producer
James George
Executive Producer / Scatter Co-Founder
Mei-Ling Wong
Producer / Scatter Co-Founder
Elie Zananiri (Dpt.)
Technology Director
Bradley G Munkowitz
Design Director

Links & presentations

Volumetric capture systemDepthkit / Tool

Depthkit turns a depth-sensing camera into an accessory for an HD video camera. The two cameras record color and shape together, so a person can be rephotographed from another angle after the shoot. James George and I began with RGBDToolkit, released publicly in 2012, then rebuilt the workflow as Depthkit in 2014. Artists carried it into documentaries, virtual reality, performance, visual effects, installations, and live concerts.

Related volumetric documentaryBlackout

A generative volumetric documentary that places the viewer among real New Yorkers whose inner monologues surface during a subway blackout.

Source film and production collaborationZero Days (Film)

Custom software and fabricated camera hardware let us block and revise three-dimensional moves through the film’s representations of Stuxnet.