Naomi Shah.
Right To Pray
Editor of VR experience
2016
Credits:
Directed by Khushboo Ranka
Produced by Vinay Shukla
Cinematography- Aroonabha Ghose
& Pourush Turel
Editing- Naomi Shah & Pourush Turel
Executive Producer- Anand Gandhi
Creative Director- Zain Memon
Editor for ElseVR- Shubhangi Swarup
Technical Information:
Resolution: 3840*2160
File Format: 4K. H264 Equirectillinear video
Duration: 00:08:10
Shot on: 8 Gopro freedoms + custom rigs
Tags: Virtual Reality, Fillmmaking, Editing
Synopsis:
In the western Indian city of Trimbak, home of the ancient Hindu temple
of Trimbakeshwar, a group of female activists fight against the regressive
institutional forces of patriarchy and tradition that bar their entry into the
shrine’s sanctum sanctorum and deny them the right to pray. This film documents one of many struggles as the women demand equality in the face of a 450-year-old tradition.
Context:
Social hierarchy in Hinduism is casteist and patriarchal. At the top of the food chain presides the male
brahmin priest. Right, duties or dharma and access is solely determined by caste and gender. Modern
India, stuck in a time-warp between the ancient past and the 21st century still holds on to a lot of vestigial
baggage. Within this lies the right to be in the presence of the deity inside a temples sanctum sanctorum.
Women, considered impure simply, by their nature of being are prohibited from entering the sanctum. However, as women begin to seize their rights all over the world, a group of women decide to breach the walls of patriarchy at the temple at Trimbakeshwar and demand their Right to Pray.
Process:
RIGHT TO PRAY is the first virtual reality film to come out of ElseVR, Memesys Culture Lab’s mixed reality channel, while also being the first VR documentary to come out of India. Not only was there no precedent on the process of editing VR in India, but several blogs and online resources maintain that editing in VR is impossible and even unethical. The challenge was to derive an editing workflow through the process of trial and error, that would serve as a framework for
the future films to follow on our platform. Several
rounds of prototyping and testing on the edit (sometimes while wearing the headset) eventually
lead to a new grammar to emerge. I struggled with
the questions of how to direct a viewer’s attention to
specific actions, the amount of time within each spatial environment required for the intended action to pan out, and how this may be aided through the tools of sound, movement, colour and contrast.
The film was directed by award-winning filmmaker, Khushboo Ranka (An Insignificant Man, 2017), with an accompanying article by journalist Shubhangi Swarup. This provided a mixed media experience, allowing
users to read the article and admire the illustrations, while the film downloaded. Viewers are given the opportunity to either watch the film with a headset, or simply navigate the spatial landscape by swiping
their fingers on the screens.
