Loxa is a short 360 film I produced for Foundation Escalera. The film follows 14-year-old Loxa as she takes you on a tour of her daily life from making tortillas in the morning with her mother, hanging out with friends at school to taking care of her sheep in the fields.
Loxa’s family has lived for generations in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. They speak Tzotzil, a Mayan dialect. Loxa’s mother doesn’t speak any Spanish and Loxa only recently starting learning the language in school. The family has been subsistence farming for as long as they know. It’s a generational cycle rooted in tradition and bound by extreme poverty. Loxa’s father teaches his son how to farm just as his father taught him. Loxa’s mother teaches her to make tortillas, watch the sheep and weave wool just as her mother taught her. But this generational cycle is changing because of the new middle school built in Loxa’s village. Now she is getting an education and will be the first female in her family to go to high school.
Making this film had a myriad of challenges. To begin, finding the right subject for the film was crucial. Foundation Escalera’s in-country team scouted out the village with the strongest relationship with the organization — Pajalton Bajo. Escalera has had a presence in this village for nearly a decade and has a good relationship with the local elders. The Escalera team worked with the school teachers in Pajalton Bajo to identify candidates for the film and Loxa became an evident choice.
Myriam from the local Escalera staff headed the efforts to find Loxa and develop a relationship with her. In these villages, the common belief around cameras is that a photo takes part of your soul away. While I don’t disagree, the premise of entering someone’s intimate family life with a camera is on its own a tall order. And to ask the villagers of Pajalton Bajo to open their homes to foreigners with cameras is an insurmountable request. So Myriam’s ability to connect with Loxa, make her feel comfortable and help her see the vision of how her story will be able to help others in her situation was impressive, to say the least. She became Loxa’s confidant and friend and without Myriam none of this would have happened.
We had five days planned for this shoot with the first day being strictly for developing a relationship with Loxa and her family. Up to this point, Myriam had been making weekly trips to the village to prep for our arrival. Yet despite our strict no-camera rule, Loxa and her family were weaving wool when we arrived and it was a shot we were hoping to get. So after introducing ourselves and making a few jokes, we asked to set up the camera. Loxa, her mother and sister surprisingly agreed. The Insta360 Pro has six lenses and on the side with the screen and buttons, the two lenses resemble eyes. I had taped a smile underneath the two lenses to make it look even more like a face. I told Loxa and her mother and sister that the camera was named Sammy and pointed at the funny face in the camera. They laughed enthusiastically! A mundane joke but it made a substantial difference. The VR camera is intimidating and feels alien. By humanizing the camera and giving it a character, Loxa and her family had positive associations with the camera from the beginning. It established our working relationship and more importantly let Loxa and her family know we were interested in them and not just the shot.
I’ve filmed with Foundation Escalera for nearly a decade. This was our first VR project and it was different than any other video projects we have done. When filming villagers with a “2D” camera, its presence is invasive. When I point the camera, the response by villagers is to close up and stop what they do — indicative of their perception of the camera. It definitely feels like it extracts a part of their soul. For this reason capturing candid moments were always a challenge. And entering a home with a camera was impossible.
Now with a VR camera the presence is different. The foreign nature of how the camera looks is both good and bad. Bad, because it looks like a more intimidating camera and, like a regular camera, triggers the same response. However, it’s good, because of its unique alien shape, Loxa and her family seemed a little bit intrigued by it. There was a little bit of curiosity about it and that was enough to let the camera into their lives. Secondly, filming with the VR camera is drastically different. You don’t lurk around pointing the camera at subjects. Instead you set it up and leave the scene. At first the camera is intrusive, but after five minutes Loxa and her family would forget it was there. And after ten minutes they were doing whatever they were doing before we interrupted with the camera. The scene in the film inside the kitchen is evidence of the subject-camera relationship. It’s a unique scene because after a decade of filming, we have never been able to capture the action inside the kitchen as authentically as we did with the VR camera. The kitchen is one of the most intimate spaces for these villagers. It’s where they prepare meals, eat, talk, share stories. It isn’t common to enter the kitchen area as a foreigner and very rare to be able to enter with a camera. We placed the VR camera in the kitchen and let Loxa and her mother and sister do their morning routine — making tortillas. The result is a scene where you get to watch them interact and talk. You see their process. You get to be there without disturbing. It’s an extremely precious moment to have. Later in the film during the credit roll, you see Loxa’s entire family enjoying a meal together. This is another rare scene to be able to observe. The VR camera enabled us to capture scenes while still being sensitive to their culture and lifestyle. And it produced more intimate footage than I’ve ever gotten with “2D” camera in these situations.
Now about being sensitive. The challenge with any documentary is to be authentic to the stories and people you’re depicting on camera. The very existence of the camera is separation from authentic representation. The VR camera shortens this separation distance both by how it is consumed via headset and how it is recorded as an observation of a scene. The immersive quality of VR is the sense of presence. Feeling like you’re there. The shot doesn’t need to be moved, directed or focused in the same sense as a “2D” camera does. It’s just there, present and observing. And that was important in the making of this film. We needed viewers to feel present but not fed with a filter on how to view Loxa’s life. You observe and immerse yourself. We chose the VR medium to let the viewer be present and moreover sensitive to Loxa, her family and their way of life.
