Digital pioneers

Co-founders of Vanishing Point Studio, Charles Anderson and Allan Walker.

Friends and business partners Charles Anderson and Allan Walker are breaking new ground in immersive storytelling. The award-winning duo at Vanishing Point Studio are getting global attention for their work. They talk to Paula Hulburt about their rise to recognition.

Amid the background chatter of fellow wedding guests, old friends Charles Anderson and Allan Walker are deep in conversation. An idea they first batted between them as 15-year-old schoolboys is again up for discussion. Wine glasses are set down and forgotten as the chat takes a more serious, weighty turn as the dream of digital storytelling finally waivers on the brink of becoming reality. The pair grin at each other as they shake hands. With Charles, now an award-winning journalist and Allan a celebrated interactive designer and developer, Vanishing Point Studio was born. Fast forward five years and behind a nondescript door on a small Blenheim street, a flight of stairs delivers visitors to the hub that is home to Vanishing Point Studio. The space is bathed in morning sunshine and Charles and Allan are bouncing jokes and good-natured barbs across the desk as the smell of coffee lingers. The setting somehow seems too pedestrian for a duo who are setting the standard in digital storytelling across the globe. Digital storytelling can be used to explain a concept, to reflect on a personal experience, to retell a historical event, or to make an argument. Digital stories can combine audio, images, video, data, interactivity and gamification to immerse audiences in an experience. For award-winning journalist Charles, the move to digital platforms was a natural one when it came to storytelling. It was a way to bring a fresh approach to narrative, he explains. Their first project came in the form of an interactive documentary on New Zealand’s growing housing crisis. Funded by NZ on Air, the challenge was to tell the story in a fresh way, to capture interest. “Duncan Greive [founder and publisher of The Spinoff] wanted to do something in-depth on the housing crisis and wanted to know what we could do to make it less of a dull affair,” Charles says. “What could we do to make it interesting for people who don’t want to read more about the housing crisis?”

Give Kate a Voice, created for Suffrage125, brought prominent New Zealand women together in an interactive historical experience reciting Kate Sheppard’s words. The Living Flowerwall was an interactive memorial allowing users to place digital flowers into a 3D wall that would live on in perpetuity.

Mana Moana was an immersive digital art exhibiton that transported users to a 3D digital ocean to view artworks despite launching in the height of Covid-19 lockdown.

The answer was a clever meld of video, using personalised data visualisations and interactive design that breathed new life into a well-worn subject. The result was informative, attentiongrabbing and fresh and Vanishing Point Studio began to catch the eye of others eager for a new perspective. Now they have had clients ranging from global fashion house Giorgio Armani to multinational NGO Greenpeace. Charles and Allan, the technical and design genius behind the company, are using their respective talents to create something special. It is a partnership that is working well with their work placed alongside Vanity Fair, CNN and Fortune at the Oscars of the internet - the Webby Awards. They have also created an interactive memorial to the victims of the Christchurch attacks where users could place digital flowers into a living wall that would live on in perpetuity, as well as immersive art exhibitions where users found themselves floating over a digital ocean to experience multimedia artworks.

Their most recent project, launched in May, saw Vanishing Point build a package of digital content for nine different publications across the South Island – all visualising what a predicted Alpine Fault earthquake might do. Allan looks after all things technical, leading a team of developers and designers across the country. Charles leads the development of content and building talented teams capable of doing extraordinary things. Their first ever hire Arpo Deer (Ngāi Tahu, Koukourarata) is still at the company, based in the Blenheim studio and is passionate about bringing his developing innovative skills to traditional Māori storytelling. “It’s an area that has huge potential – especially in reaching younger rangatahi in understanding where they came from,” says Arpo. Arpo’s role in the company has led it to form a partnership with his rūnanga, Koukourarata. This was solidified when Vanishing Point, led by Arpo, created an interactive digital history of Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s journey through the South Island, which was launched on Waitangi Day this year. Vanishing Point also had a clean sweep in the ‘Innovation in Digital Storytelling’ category at last year’s the Voyager Media Awards. While it would be easy to let the success swell heads, the pair remain pragmatic about what they’ve achieved, juggling family commitments and work to best effect. Choosing projects that are a good fit is important, Allan explains. “We set our boundaries early on to figure out how we can create the best project possible for each of our clients. As we’ve matured as a business, we have learned to really pick our battles

Allan Walker, Charles Anderson and Arpo Deer (Ngāi Tahu, Koukourarata), Vanishing Point’s first ever hire.

with that and tell the story with a wow factor. You want a really good, high-quality result all the time.” A recent success for the pair was their tribute marking 125 years of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. The project, Give Kate A Voice, was an interactive video project featuring well known Kiwi women, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, reciting from parts of speeches given by Kate Sheppard, a leading light of the suffrage movement. Set against a backdrop of different drawing rooms as they would have been seen over the passing decades, the piece features modernday women in period costume. The audience was able to flip between videos and uncover deeper context for the speeches as they were unveiled. The overlay of classical music and simple direction is striking and emotive; the viewer cannot help but be drawn in.

It is the immersion that makes digital storytelling so effective, Allan says. “Our goal is always to create digital immersive projects that leave the viewer having had a great experience.” With Charles based primarily in Nelson and Allan in Blenheim, the very nature of their work lends itself well to remote access. But the pair do meet up most weeks in Blenheim, keen to catch up in person. From a local Marlborough-based winery to clients on the global stage, distance is no object in the digital age, says Charles, with their reputation for creativity slowly spreading across the world. “People find us. We’ve had requests everywhere from Los Angeles, New York and Europe. “At our heart we are about helping various brands and organisations rise above the online noise, by creating digital content experiences that audiences love to interact with.

“But at the start of our venture, that was a bit of a hard sell because people didn’t always understand what was possible and you were trying to convince them of something that wasn’t widely understood.” The duo, who first met in the same art history class at school in Auckland, have travelled a long way from those early days, with life taking them on divergent paths. The friendship remained however and, meeting up at mutual friends’ weddings occasionally, the spark for Vanishing Point Studio was ignited and burned for a while before they made the dream a reality. They agree being in business with a friend made their leap of faith less daunting. It is a partnership that works well – with their respective skill sets creating a seamless combination. The future looks promising for the digital entrepreneurs and expansion is next on their to-do list, says Charles. “They say not to go into business with your mates but for us, being good friends for so long means we had been through a lot already. So, this works too.”

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