- Best XR For Change – 2019 Games for Change Awards
- Audience Choice Award Winner – VIFF Immersed 2018
- By Paisley Smith, Jam3 and the NFB Digital Studio
- Produced by the National Film Board of Canada
Inclusive Storytelling
Homestay
Every year, Canada receives hundreds of thousands of students from around the world. To make the most of their Canadian experience, many opt to live with a host family. Homestay is one family’s story of life with international students – a look at how complete immersion in another culture can create a clash of expectations and change our understanding of family, hospitality, nationality and love. This 15-minute creative non-fiction narrative was designed for an interactive room-scale VR environment.
Homestay is a multilayered experiment that incorporates the latest in VR technology to expand the practice of interactive narrative in an audiovisual environment. The folded papercraft world represents the garden that narrator Paisley Smith visited while grieving for the loss of a friend and “family member,” and signifies the failure of cultural symbols to fully represent people in all their complexity. As users move through the paper garden, they have control one moment but not the next. Just when they think they’ve deciphered the symbolism of the floating boat, it unfolds and drifts away, out of reach. Paisley’s narration is that of a young person who’s discovering much of the world for the first time. But ultimately, she delivers the mature insights of someone with a more seasoned understanding of universal subjects and themes such as family, culture, empathy and tragedy.
Awards
