A documentary about computer code might not sound like much of a thriller, but the 2016 Alex Gibney-directed Zero Days is just that. Now, the team behind some of the film’s visual effects has developed a 20-minute VR adaptation of the two-hour film, and it’s just as enthralling.
Zero Days recounts the discovery by two Symantec engineers of Stuxnet—a computer virus created by the United States and Israel to destroy centrifuges at Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. Yasmin Elayat, creative director at media studio Scatter, said the team decided to tell the VR version of the story from the perspective of the virus itself. After all, “the lead character is code,” Gibney explains in his documentary.
One of the reasons this approach works so well is because the Stuxnet code is so elegant. “As much as it is a destructive weapon, there is this quality to it when the people start to talk about how it leaves behind no evidence, it was perfect,” said Elie Zananiri, technology director of Zero Days VR. “It’s a hero and an anti-hero at the same time, and it was kind of fun to play with that idea and also do Stuxnet proud to write code that was actually worth representing this thing.”
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Source: PC Mag