Asavari Kumar
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A New Normal | AR Short Film

 
 

ROLE | DIRECTION, WRITING & DESIGN

'A New Normal' is a short film created using Augmented Reality, that subverts the limitations of digital intimacy, to create a story about warmth, hope and family.

Adobe Create Magazine

 
 
 
 

PROJECT OVERVIEW

This film was created for Adobe’s Festival of the Impossible 2020. Shot entirely while sheltering in place, this film is a product of remote collaboration between artists based in Copenhagen, Madrid, Mumbai and Los Angeles.

As we learn to keep social and familial connections alive amidst the pandemic and rely heavily on digital media, I realize this has been my own ‘normal’ for most of the past decade. After immigrating to the US from India, my ability to travel home and be physically present with my family became limited, particularly after the 2016 elections. Thinking about home and belonging today, my thoughts go to my sister in Copenhagen and my parents in New Delhi. Using Augmented Reality as a storytelling tool for this film, allowed me to see the evolving definition of ‘home’ through the eyes of my family. In ‘A New Normal’ my everyday digital conversations with my family are overlaid with AR versions of my parents and sister in my environment, to co-create a mixed reality experience that for the time being, is the closest thing I have to the feeling of home.

 
 
 
 

PRODUCTION

Design

Making an AR film disrupted my usual animation production pipeline. With minimal pre-production, we jumped straight into creating final assets that were animated in Adobe Aero and shot using Real time compositing.

 
 
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Augmented REALITY

A New Normal in AR

Download the latest version of Aero on iOS, and then click on the button below from a mobile device to view an excerpt of the film’s AR experience. (Aero works best with a stable WiFi connection; load times may vary.)