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Walking Through an Abortion Clinic Protest in VR

One of the most popular VR experiences at Sundance New Frontier this year was Across the Line, which is a piece that simulated what it feels like to walk through an abortion clinic protest line. It was produced by Nonny de la Peña’s Emblematic Group and 371 Productions. It contained a mixture of live-action, 360 video documentary along with a room-scale, CGI recreation of walking past protestors who are calling you everything from a “whore” to “wicked jezebel feminist.” It’s a visceral, emotional, and intense experience, and Molly Eagan was there to talk to people before and after they experienced it. She’s the Vice President of Planned Parenthood Experience, and I had a chance to catch up with her to talk about some of the reactions and how this project came about.

Getting yelled at is generally not an experience that I typically go out of my way in my life to seek out. But I did go out of my way to wait over two hours to see Across the Line at Sundance to see how VR could be used to address hot-button political issues like abortion and protests at Planned Parenthood clinics.

There’s some really powerful cinéma vérité moments in the beginning of the Across the Line experience that show an actual patient getting confronted and pressured by protestors on her way to getting an abortion. The patient is visibly shaken up when the Planned Parenthood doctor comes into the office, and she takes a moment to counsel her on how disturbing it must be to have to deal with protesters in getting there that day.

In the second half of the VR experience, you’re walking across the room-scale space and listening to protestors demean you as you make your way into a virtual Planned Parenthood clinic. You’re on a street, and you walk by about 5-6 different animated CGI characters who start to yell at you as you begin to enter within their range. One by one you walk up to and listen to what each of these people have to say. Molly says that a lot of people think that what’s being said may be scripted, but it’s actually live audio that was captured from around the country and edited into what could be called a VR montage sequence.