Five Tenants of VR Storytelling by Julia Sourikoff

Julia Sourikoff came to MIT to tell us what makes VR storytelling great and how can we achieve good and impactful results with just a bit of creativity. Sourikoff is Head of VR at Tool of North America. Before joining Tool, Julia helped launch the annual Future of StoryTelling summit in New York, growing the company from a small start-up to an exclusive and oversubscribed thought-leadership event with an online presence of over half a million followers. At FoST, she specialized in content curation, partnership development, and experience design, working closely with the world’s leading brands, like American Express, General Electric, Google, Microsoft, and Time Warner.


Sourikoff put enphasis on the future of storytelling and how we can communicate in 360. She gave us the 5 clues to a great experience:

1. Why VR? Transcendence and empowerement

Sourikoff talked about why is VR a powerful medium to communicate and create experiences. One of the quotes she highlighted was 'The computer offers a thrilling extension of human powers' by Janet Murray, Hamlet and the Holodeck. 


2. Human centered design: Vr is a somatic medium

Sourikoff mentioned the 8 phases of enlightment and how with VR we are not watching the world but experiencing it.


3. Stop thinking in rectangles: storyboarding and scripting

Sourikoff went through some technical aspects of 360 filming and designing and how could we achieve a good result with the tools we have in hand. She explained the areas of interest in a 360 experience.

4. This is not a film shoot: production challenges

She talked about the difficulties that one can find when filming and editing in 360 and how to overcome those. She also talked about the importance of testing and iteration when filming in 360.

5. Technology influences story; Future forecasting

Finally she explained how VR is evolving and how we will use it in the future. She talked about different mediums that are getting importance amongst VR specialist such as WebVR.


It was great to have Julia at MIT. We had a great evening with massive attendance and food!! It was an incredibly interesting talk full of little tips for all of you who want to start digging into this great medium! 

Don't miss our next talk at MIT! 


Anna Fuste, VP Marketing & Judith Amores, Co-President VR@MIT