Actual Reality, Nonfiction AR

The world's first AR app, dedicated to news & current events series.

Brought to you by the team at McClatchy New Ventures Lab, "Actual Reality" (currently in beta) is an experiment in storytelling, and the world's first AR app dedicated to serialized non-fiction storytelling. Now playing: our two launch series American Food & What They Carried.

What They Carried 

Produced by Cassandra Herrman and Nani Sahra Walker.

"What They Carried" is based on the photography series "El Sueño Americano" (The American Dream) by Tom Kiefer. This three-episode AR experience features confiscated personal items from undocumented migrants who'd been apprehended trying to enter the US. Through the technical power of the Actual Reality application, audiences can place these intimate objects in their homes, examine them from every side and discover the hopes, fears and stories imbued in them by the migrants who carried them. The story also brings viewers face-to-face with three dimensional "volumetric" interviews with characters like "dreamer" Karina Ruiz. Finally, original commissioned artwork by Micah Milner adds an interpretive layer to the story, illustrating meaning, history and memory.

American Food 

Produced by Eric Howard and Stanley Okumura. 

The series explores the cuisine and culture of four ethnic enclaves around America: the prep, the chefs and the food's history. Through the lens of the Actual Reality application, viewers order virtual take-out from these culinary treasures. By placing delicious 3D multi-course meals on their tables, viewers will find themselves inside kitchens, across from patrons and restaurant owners. They'll even peer down into dollhouse-sized neighborhoods. Each course is packed with facts, stories and videos that give the audience a virtual foodie tour of the communities that the audience is invited to visit.