The acclaimed mind behind 2007?s "Helvetica" talks to Curbed In the not so distant future, you may find yourself watching a documentary from inside the film itself ? that is to say, standing inside the Parthenon (for example) while still in the comfort of your own home. And when that happens, you will have Gary Hustwit to thank.
Hustwit?s virtual reality content studio, Scenic, launched earlier this year and has a number of projects in the works, but that?s only one of the many plates that the documentary filmmaker is spinning: He?s currently finishing a documentary on the legendary industrial designer Dieter Rams, which will be his fourth feature-length film. The first three?Helvetica (2007), Objectified (2009), and Urbanized (2011)?were all met with critical acclaim. While virtual reality may seem like a leap from those types of projects, the truth is that whatever Hustwit does, he?s always at or near the forefront of something. He was, as he tells to us, "crowdfunding [movies] before that term existed," and of his first and most famous film, Helvetica, he explains how it coincided with the rise of fonts as a thing that everybody knew about:
My mom knew what a font was, suddenly. And ten years before that, in the nineties, people didn?t. It was only a thing if you were in the trade or in design. So, it was just that moment when people were becoming interested in fonts and using them all the time online.
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