Trafficked
For the next 8 minutes you will become Maria.
Trafficked is an immersive VR experience created for BBC News which follows the true story of a woman who was abducted in Central America and forced into sex slavery in Mexico.
Trafficked was created by myself and creative technologist Owain Rich, in partnership with BBC journalist Lourdes Heredia.
It is an animated 3D experience built for the Oculus Rift, and the first project of it's kind to be developed in-house at the BBC.
An immersive installation
Trafficked premiered as an installation at the BBC’s 2016 100 Women Festival at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, at Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK, and at the Future of Storytelling Festival in New York.
It also featured as part the Realidades Alternativas / Alternate Realities tour, a partnership between the British Council and Sheffield Doc/Fest to take established and emerging practitioners in VR, AR and Interactive Media to new markets in Latin America.
The experience was also screened at the UK embassy in Mexico City, and in Mexico's parliament to encourage awareness and policy change.
Become part of the story
Trafficked is a fully animated and voice acted production.
Created in the Unreal Engine, each scene is a 3D environment complete with characters brought to life using a combination of motion capture technology and keyframe animation.
A global audience
We produced a 360 video for the BBC News Youtube channel, making the story available to audiences who were unable to view the full VR experience with a headset.
For Latin American audiences, a Spanish language version was produced, voiced by voice actors and journalists from the region.
