As San Francisco’s housing crunch continues, some residents are choosing to forgo traditional apartments and live in intentional, communal living under one roof — echoing the type of housing that emerged during the hippie movement.

This year, on the fiftieth anniversary of “The Summer of Love,” many think that tech has changed the city for the worse, but the movement isn’t dead.

“The narrative is very much around how San Francisco is over and tech has ruined the city, but actually there is this strong counterculture all over the place, where people are providing mutual aid and shared learnings and doing all sorts of interesting things, and this isn’t really seen,” said Zarinah Agnew, a proponent of communal living and a resident and founder at The Embassy.

In this 360-degree, immersive video piece, take a tour of the Red Victorian, learn about the communities that have sprung up in the Haight-Ashbury and experience what it’s like to live communally in the 21st century.

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A commune is an intentional community of people that live together, share common interests, collaborate on ideas, and often have common values and beliefs, as well as shared resources and responsibilities. A big part of it is the interpersonal dimension – communes offer an escape from the cult of individualism, by connecting you with people to hang out with and grow close and intimate with, in a society where a lot of people lack social connection. Furthermore, there are also a lot of economic benefits.

“I cook once a month and am cooked for the other 29 days of the month,” explained Eric Rogers, a resident at The Red Victorian. “I have this huge building at my disposal. I basically have the biggest house out of anyone I know. And that’s a really nice thing to have in a city that has extremely expensive real estate”

Built in 1904, the Red Victorian has been a cornerstone of the Upper Haight and a gathering place for revolutionaries, artists and travelers. Before it became a commune, the building was a historic peace and love hotel from the 1970s, and a meeting place through housing political protests, radical new ideas, artwork, creativity and conversations around creating world peace.

About 20 residents live and work together to build a rich community in The Red Victorian. It welcomes its residents to host and attend events from talks, classes and skill shares to music nights, book discussions and family dinners. It is also run as a small hotel, by renting out unoccupied rooms and making selected visitors staying in The Red Victorian feel like coming home to friends and family.

It is part of a greater international commune network, along with the flagship house The Embassy. Both communities work closely together and have great vision in bringing forth change they want to see in the world.

“I would describe our community as a very creative and diverse group of people that are very interested in improving the world and also changing some of the systemic ways in which the world operates and perpetuates culture,” Rogers said.

They are also part of the 11 houses that comprise the Haight Street Commons network, a group of communities united by geography. Every community operates differently. They make their own house rules and standards for housemate selection. Some are larger and house up to 30 residents; others are smaller and bring together a dozen people. When a new community starts, there is a lot of intention setting and meetings around what values the house should uphold and live by. As a result, you end up with a broad range of lifestyles and ‘vibes’ in these houses – whether it is creating a space to focus on art, or a place to experiment with consensus-based decision-making, or more inwards-focusing goals and creating meaningful bonds with housemates.

“Our communities are about creating tiny pockets of experiments,” Agnew said. “I think it’s a great thing that we operate differently, it would be sad if we all do the exact same thing.”

The members of these various communities connect and attend each other’s events. As a result you see a lot of crossover and friendships, creating a greater community of like-minded people, all diverse in origin, age and walks of life, but united by their choice to live their life with intention. And you really see them come together to support each other and learn from one another.

“Until now, we’ve largely had a society that has evolved and we’ve never really had one that was designed. And we’ve certainly not had a chance to vote or experiment on the kind of society that we might like to have that actually represents all of us, and I’d like to see the communes being these places where we get to experiment with how we might like to operate and sharing these learnings between us,” Agnew explained.

People have been living communally for thousands of years, whether it is with tribes of hunter-gatherers or extended families. It is only recently that atomized living became such a prevalent notion in Western society. Surges in popularity of communal living, such as the ones we’ve seen in the 1870s and the 1960s have been associated to slums in our economy, so there are a lot of dimensions at play — political, cultural and economic among others.

For communal living to thrive in the future, there are a lot of systemic and legislative challenges that will need to be addressed. Financially, it is very difficult to start a commune or to find suitable buildings. Communal dwellings are frequently inspected, according to their organizers. City officials may not understand what communal living is, since it doesn’t always fit into predefined boxes and categories. As a result, this movement has challenged the meaning of the word ‘family.’

There are two major ways that communes can compete with our notion of family. First, there is the dimension of company and emotional support, and second, from an economic perspective, shared domestic labor. Some states in the U.S. to this day, dictate that you cannot have more than four unrelated adults living in one household.

“Generally speaking, American society has been told that you do that within a family. But we’ve realized that it can be a lot more effective if you do it on a larger scale,” Rogers explained. In fact, The Embassy commune has seen families with kids among its residents in the past.

“I’m in this in the long run,” Rogers said. “I’m not doing this as a youthful thing that I look back gleefully on when I’m an old person or a person with a family. For me I’m really interested in redefining what family means.”

Rogers will be pursuing his Ph.D. at Cambridge this fall, writing his thesis on Communes in the 21st Century.

This immersive video takes you to Iceland, Norway, Greece, India, Thailand and various places in the United States, as I demonstrate concepts in 360 video such as stitching, camera placement, directing attention and motion, as well as highlighte the challenges of producing 360 stories.

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Locations in order of appearance in this 360-degree video:

Little Venice, Mykonos, Greece
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Kex Hostel, Reykjavik, Iceland
Acropolis, Athens, Greece
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, California, USA
Stanford University, California, USA
Little Venice Streets, Mykonos, Greece
Trolltunga, Odda, Norway
Santa Cruz Natural Bridges Beach, California, USA
Troll Waterfalls, River Grimsa, Iceland
Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, New Delhi, India
Lightning in a Bottle Thunder Stage, California, USA
Lightning in a Bottle Center Camp, California, USA
Stanford Immersive Storytelling lab, California, USA
Burning Man Boeing 747, Nevada, USA
Fog, Mcloed Ganj, India
Airstream at Burning Man, Nevada, USA
Mai Khao Beach, Phuket, Thailand
Boat Ride Around the Island, Santorini, Greece
The Burn at Burning Man, Nevada, USA
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, California, USA
Lightning in a Bottle Lightning Stage, California, USA
Kex Hostel, Reykjavik, Iceland
Geysir, Golden Circle, Iceland
Streets, Varanasi, India
Lightning in a Bottle Center Camp, California, USA
Sutro Baths, California, USA
Santa Cruz Natural Bridges Beach, California, USA
Santa Cruz Natural Bridges Beach, California, USA
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Trolltunga, Odda, Norway
Burning Man Sextant Camp, Nevada, USA

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I decided to focus my piece on some fellow travelers I met while staying in Oslo. Anker Hostel is a central hub for travelers and the starting point for a lot of adventures. There I met Katie and Jesse who set off on a six-week bike tour across Norway, Sweden and Ireland, with nothing but their bikes and camping gear. On a whim I decided to join them for two days. I was increadibly unprepared. I rented a bike the night before, packed my bare essentials in a plastic bag and left all my belongings with a friend/Airbnb host I had stayed with on my first nights in Norway (who was one of the most wonderful human beings I had met while traveling). It was pouring rain the entire time we were on the road (and I was insanely grateful for my waterproof hiking boots that I was cursing at in the beginning). I was never much of a biker so this was definitely something I’d experience before and never imagined doing. We biked 55 miles on the first day, camped for the night, and parted ways in the morning. I did the return journey on my own, with just the rain, the mountains and my spotify for hours on end.

After making it back to Oslo on my own, I joined another friend I’d met at Anker, Brendan (Jesse’s bunk mate!), on a journey to Odda to hike the famous Troll’s Tongue. Still sore from all the biking, we got on a bus the following morning to get to Odda for a whole day of travel. Troll’s Tongue is an arduous 13.7-mile (22-kilometer) hike round trip, which culminates at a viewpoint with a large rock sticking out on top of a fjord. We woke up at 5 in the morning to beat the crowd and booked it up. It was really steep at the start but once you got above the tree line it was pretty pleasant.

I’ve been to a lot of countries this summer and I wouldn’t return to most of them – because I’d want to experience somewhere new where I haven’t been yet. Norway might be the exception. If you like camping and the outdoors, its a destination you shouldn’t miss!

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The most common way to get around is by car. You could just start driving in any directions and it was impossible not to stumble upon something beautiful. As a solo traveler I made friends and was able to join in some road trips. During my stay I explored the South, the West Coast and the Golden Circle.

Secret Solstice

When I initially booked my stay at Kex hostel, I only booked my first two nights. I figured that I would wing it from there. What if I want to move around or go to the next town? Turns out there was a huge music festival happening in Reykjavik that weekend called Secret Solstice, with Radiohead as one of the headliners. People from all over Iceland had come to Reykjavik and all the tourists were flocking in as well. As a result everything was booked up and I wound up homeless. I found a place on Airbnb for Saturday but didn’t have a plan for Friday night. I had a hammock and a sleeping bag with me but that wasn’t very helpful as there are practically no trees in all of Iceland. The cheapest places were close to 300$ and you couldn’t rent a tent for a single night. I ended up getting a ticket to the festival and decided to stay up until I could check in to my Airbnb at 3pm the next day. It was actually an easy thing to do in Iceland because it never gets dark during the summer. It’s light out all night – that can really play tricks on you mind and body. I ended up watching netflix for a good part of the early morning to keep myself occupied. After my night at the Airbnb I returned to Kex where I remained for the rest of my trip. It was a little stressful not know where you would sleep from night to night, and there was a lot of moving around involved. I’m gonna leave you with a sneak peek of the concert (not in 360 unfortunately)

Chasing Puffins

On Sunday I took a day trip to the South of Iceland. It was a very eventful day and I got to see a lot. But I had an ulterior motive for going down south that day – I wasn’t going to leave Iceland without seeing a Puffin, and I had heard that this was the place to go to find them. I wound up at Black Beach, a beautiful beach covered in black sand which takes its color from all the lava in the area. On the beach there were enormous cliffs where the puffins were perched. They were so high up that it was hard to snag a picture or even to get a good look at them. I kept wandering on the beach until I saw him. This little puffin was sitting on a low part of the cliff right in front of me. Needless to say I grew incredibly motivated to get up close with the fellow. And I started what was perhaps a little too ambitious of a climb. You see, the bottom end of the cliff was increadibly steep and really just covered in sand and small rocks. You wouldn’t know if you could put your weight on a rock without it sliding all the way down to the bottom of the beach. I meticulously began my ascent, being very careful with each step and handhold. I got maybe about half way up to where my little friend was. But then the unthinkable happened. He flapped his little wings and flew away. It happened so fast, and both my hands were occupied keeping me on the cliff that I wasn’t even able to get a picture. I was quite disappointed and frankly a little angry at the creature and began my descent. I quickly realized that compared to this, the climb up was a piece of cake. I could not test rocks before putting my weight on them. Things became tricky. I slid a couple of times but got lucky and would catch a rock on my way down. I came back to the group of people I came with covered in black dust, both shoes drenched in water and with dirt everywhere. When asked about what had happened all I could answer was “A goddamn Puffin happened that’s what!”

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In this latest piece I decided to experiment with character development and using motion in storytelling. I’ve noticed that when people watch this video they move around less than in my more static videos. I think motion helps to direct attention and can be a powerful tool in telling a story. More on this coming soon.

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Read more about what went into making this piece here:

The Reality of Kiteboarding

My roommates and I attended LIB this year and had an action packed long weekend. Lightning in A Bottle is a music festival that takes place annually in central California. It’s somewhere between Coachella and Burning Man when it comes to the vibe.

I made a 360 video of our time at the festival and ended up turning this in for a class I was taking called Advanced Digital Media Production. I was tasked to attend some event and report on with within 24hours. Although we have been doing a lot of immersive journalism work at school, I officially became the first person to publish a piece in 360 on our Stanford Journalism Channel and on Peninsula Press. Exciting stuff!

My goal was to produce a 360 video with a 24 hour turnaround – quite the feat. I had 20 videos to stitch before I could even start editing them together in Premiere. An all nighter was unavoidable, but on the bright side I was really able to get my workflow down throughout this process.

More details to come!

Part of the reason I started this project was to really get to know the medium and to develop my skills. The exciting thing about cinematic VR / 360 video right now is that there isn’t an established language for it yet.  All the rules you see in cinema / regular 2d video that have taken decades to figure out go out the window. You don’t have a lot of tools you’re used to having to tell a story. How do you direct the viewer’s attention when you can’t carefully frame what’s about to happen? Nobody has it figured out yet. And it will likely take a very long time.

What we’re seeing here is a birth of a new art form. My plan is to run around with a stick with a bunch of go pros strapped to it and slowly try to understand what works and what doesn’t. Eventually I would want to transition into storytelling, but first I need to learn a thing or two about the medium itself.

I went to a Cinematic VR conference recently and kept hearing “Motion is bad. You want to keep the camera static”. A lot of the online resources seem to be pointing to the same thing – stick the camera in a spot and do stuff around it.

I completely disagree.

So I went out and did some experimentation with motion. Here are things that I’ve learned.

1. Motion creates an illusion of having more degrees of freedom, thus making the experience feel more real and immersive. In contrast, static shots make you feel trapped in place. You can’t actually move forward when watching these videos, but motion makes you FEEL like you can. We’ve seen panoramic photos around for a while now (think Google Maps), static 360 videos aren’t that different and won’t add that much more to it unless you have interesting characters doing something or some event unfolding.
2. Motion needs to be along a single plane with no rotation or abrupt acceleration. If you hold the camera while riding a skateboard in a straight line, the shot will look good. But if you’re also say moving the camera up and down, or rotation it out in front of you while you do so it creates an unsettling feeling in the viewer (especially watching it in a headset).
3. Camera placement needs to be parallel to the plane of motion. There exists a plane of motion in the direction of the movement, a viewer will readjust to position himself/herself in this plane of motion. Looking sideways or perpendicularly to this plane feels unnatural and weird. You will either want to look at “where you’re going” or directly behind you, at the person holding the camera for example (if they are interesting enough). I tried strapping the rig to a backpack and had a friend bring it kitesurfing. We initially wanted it to stick out at a 45% angle behind him, but had to settle with it directly above him when a part of the backpack broke. When I later stitched and looked at the footage I noticed that I felt weird looking downwards at him because I was now perpendicular with the plane of motion. I kept wanting to look up to look forwards, but there was nothing to look at. [I’ll draw some pictures and add these here soon to better explain this concept]
4. Stitching becomes a mess. You can get away with a lot when shooting static shots, but motion will expose a lot of the seams and stitching inconsistencies will become more evident. Something really important to keep in mind while shooting is to always try to hold the rig so that one of the cameras is facing directly at you – that simplifies a lot of things in post processing. When the seams are diagonal (like with the conventional rigs) something it becomes impossible to fix them. One solution I’m looking into right now is trying a rig where the cameras are vertically aligned making the seams vertical and giving me more to work with in post processing. I’ll probably end up writing a separate post about that.

Why is this relevant? Movement is a tool. It can be used to direct the audience’s attention. As I’ve mentioned before, people are drawn towards the direction of the movement, looking perpendicularly to the plane of motion feels awkward and one will only do it for so long.

As a proof of concept I’ve made a first episode. My dad was in town visiting a couple of weeks ago and we went adventuring together in San Francisco and Big Sur.