Julia from Canada: “I’m sure VR and AR will explode in the film industry – and now I’ve gained hands-on technical skills” 

At her university back in Canada, Julia Batista learned the basics of making a VR short film - and she quickly realized that it might be the future. 

“I was observing that VR is something that will soon explode in the film industry. Therefore I really wanted to specialize myself as an advantage for the VR industry and future of the film industry,” the 20 year old students says. 

Julia studies Image Arts - Film Studies at Ryerson University in Canada and knew she wanted to go on exchange - and she chose the New Screens programme at VIA Film & Transmedia.

Appreciates staff’s effort during corona

Unfortunately, the corona virus made rather big changes in Julia’s exchange.

VIA’s campuses closed abruptly, but Julia still feels that she gained valuable knowledge and skills - even though the teaching was online.

“I felt like I was in really good hands since the New Screens staff was being very organized with their plan for continuing our lessons. It was really important for my experience in lockdown to still feel like I had school every day. It was fully understandable that they shut down campus, and I’m enormously appreciative of their effort to get our New Screens class back into school to do our final project in the hands-on form such as it was meant to be. It could have been much worse, and I think we were extremely lucky. All in all, I really didn’t find it that bad in terms of academics. I just missed coming into our classroom.”

Created an app using Augmented Reality

One of the highlights of Julia’s exchange was making an app that uses Augmented Reality to show the impacts of eating vegan instead of eating meat. 

“My app uses the camera to detect a trigger image. Once it recognizes a carnivore burger it shows the room around the user, through the camera, to reflect the environmental impact of that exact lifestyle choice. For example, with the burger it will show pollution clouds, multiple bouncing globes to represent land mass, and a couple cows. When the camera registers a vegan bowl meal, it shows a clear space from clouds, only one bouncing globe, and no livestock. I created this prototype as a representation of a gallery exhibition, where people could walk into a gallery with plinths with plates holding different fake dishes and tablets available for people to tour the different dishes and see their environmental impacts. This was an exciting project because I can see this being actually possible back home with a good enough grant and equipment to build the app in Unity,” she explains. 

Gained both skills and long-lasting friendships

Julia was not only excited about what she learned during her exchange – she was also surprised how welcome she felt. 

She continues: “From this whole experience I will take the realization of how easy it is for me to integrate into a new place. Also, I obviously take away the lasting friendships I made, and the different connections I now have all over the world for anything that I might need. Lastly, I’m also taking the new hands-on technical skills I’ve gained and I’m already looking into other outlets where I can put these into whether it’s internships, grants, collectives, or people to make projects with.”