How a VR Doco About Two Young Muslim Skaters Almost Literally Puts You In "Someone Else’s Shoes"

Producer and co-writer Leo Faber tells us how Storm Riders came to life.

The image of two teenage Muslim girls skating down Bondi Beach is not a common sight for many, but it’s one that is central to newly-released VR documentary, Storm Riders, now playing at the Sydney Film Festival and available on the SBS VR app.

The 25-minute doco follows the journey of two young Muslim girls as they ride through London and then head to Bondi to reinterpret a famous video artwork.

Leo Faber, producer and co-writer of Storm Riders, told Student Edge that the idea came through a mysterious email from his friend and acclaimed artist Shaun Gladwell, who now lives in London.

"He sent me some photos of a Muslim woman with a [VR] headset on with rainy park backdrop," Leo describes.

After replying to him, Shaun explained that this was his friend, Chadnee, who he had been teaching to skate and had shown some of their VR work.

He’d mentioned to Leo that he wanted to remix his most famous work, Storm Sequence, a video artwork from 2000 of Shaun skating at Bondi Beach during a storm.

But this time, instead of featuring Shaun, he wanted to bring Chadnee and her friend Farhana out to Bondi to be the stars and shoot it in VR.

Why virtual reality?

Leo explains that SBS and Screen Australia asked him the same thing when he pitched the idea to them in the first place.

"To be able to truly communicate what life is like for these Muslim women, we want to put the viewer in their space," Leo answers.

"To isolate [the viewer] within this headset so they can’t break out, they can’t check their phone, they can’t go make a cup of tea. They’re locked in there.

"It was about feeling like you’re living in someone else’s shoes and getting a sense of their life."

In order to achieve that even further, Leo and Shaun equipped Chadnee and Farhana with small 360 cameras, which can be seen in the opening sequence as they skate through London.

"We felt like that got us moments we might not have ordinarily captured," Leo admits.

It was a relatively straightforward story until something unexpected happened during filming.

On 22 May last year, a terrorist attack rocked the United Kingdom, claiming the lives of 22 attendees at an Ariana Grande concert.

"We were able to get some insight into the impact of those sorts of events from the view of a Muslim woman," Leo explains, regarding a sequence where Chadnee films herself talking about the incident.

"I hadn’t seen [that] yet before in a virtual reality, or immersive documentary."

Leo says this addition extended the documentary from its intended 15-minute run to 25 minutes.

"It became less about a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the artwork and more about what it means to be Chadnee and Farhana," he admits.

With the documentary’s look at Chadnee and Farhana’s faith and their insistence that the Quran doesn’t say Muslims can’t skate, the remixing of Shaun’s artwork almost becomes an afterthought.

That is, until the final shot of the young women skating near the crashing waves of a Bondi sunset.

It’s then that you realise the beauty of this experience is just as much about the aesthetics of a slow-motion shot of two young women skating as it is about introspection.

You can catch Storm Riders and other VR experiences at the Sydney Film Festival until July or see it on the SBS VR app if you own a VR headset.

Photo: SBS