Project Deafening Silence

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 3 in 4 children experience some form of abuse on a regular basis. In some regions, child abuse is viewed as a topic that is better left out of the spotlight, banishing it to dwell on whispering lips.

In the summer of 2023, a team of clinicians and nurses from the Department of Emergency Medicine in collaboration with partners from the United States Japan Foundation and the Red Cross Japan set out to raise awareness on child abuse. The format of choice was a high-quality video documentary to tell the story of a silo of individuals in Japan who are advocating for child abuse health care and policy reform. This documentary is aptly titled: "Deafening Silence."

But there was only one problem – how does a team of health care professionals produce a high-quality movie when they lack the required experience and equipment?

The production team had to pull from their varied experiences in other industries to fill in skill gaps that are required to produce a movie but are traditionally not available at an academic medical center. Generative AI technology was used to develop illustrations to storyboard the script written by the creative team. The storyboard was critical in helping the production team plan each scene. The production team also used virtual reality technology such as the Meta 2 VR headsets and visualization software such as Gravity Sketch to develop visual preview videos to determine actor placement, camera angles, camera movement and scene lighting for each shot. The team recreated iconic Japanese landscapes in a VR environment allowing the team to walk through the scene location without the need to travel to Japan during the production planning stages. AI technology was also used to develop the music score for the movie.

"Deafening Silence" is currently in post-production, and we are excited to share the finish feature soon.