ASU team creates immersive images of LA fire destruction with new technology
Ashley Buschhorn, a student in the Narrative and Emerging Media master's program, wore protective gear while she took images of the destruction at fire sites in Los Angeles in January. Photo by Mary Matheson
When several Los Angeles neighborhoods started burning in January, Nonny de la Peña grieved over the devastation of her hometown, but she also knew it was a hands-on educational opportunity for aspiring journalists in the Narrative and Emerging Media program she leads at Arizona State University.
Even as the fire sites were smoldering, students and staff in the program hurried out to deploy cutting-edge technology that created astonishing before-and-after and 360-degree images of the destruction.
The team carried a rig with four cameras that captured different angles of one spot simultaneously and then used artificial intelligence to organize the images. This new “Gaussian Splat” technology creates high-quality, three-dimensional images faster and more efficiently.
The heartbreaking photos show lovely homes and the charred aftermath, scorched personal items like toys and kitchenware, and objects that remained strangely untouched by the flames.
De la Peña, a pioneer in virtual and augmented-reality media, had ordered the equipment a few months earlier and knew it could capture the fire scenes in a new way. In just four years, she has built the Narrative and Emerging Media program, based at the ASU California Center Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, into a one-of-a-kind convergence of film and journalism technology and innovation.
As the fires waned, the first student de la Peña called was Ashley Buschhorn, a graduate student with a strong background in journalism. Buschhorn didn’t hesitate to head out, even though she had evacuated her apartment, which was near the Sunset fire.
“It was the chance to be one of the first on the scene and to be able to capture something in a way that other people weren't,” said Buschhorn, who had never used the Gaussian Splat rig before.
“That’s inherent coming from a journalist background — when breaking news happens, you just figure it out.”
Two fires that started on Jan. 7 — the Eaton fire in Altadena and the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades — destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 30 people, according to Cal Fire.
De la Peña said the fire scenes were horrific and excruciatingly personal. She grew up in the Altadena area and many of her friends lost their houses.
“It was so tricky trying not to step in glass or risk your own welfare while trying to use these new technologies and troubleshoot the cameras,” she said.
“And for me, I would have waves and waves of emotional reaction because it's so unimaginable when you see the big landscape. There were hundreds and hundreds of houses in the area where I grew up.”
In all, students, staff and faculty from the Narrative and Emerging Media program recorded images in Altadena and Pacific Palisades for a total of about 10 days — “from the morning until it was too dark to shoot anymore,” de la Peña said. “On weekends, any extra minute we had, we were out there capturing stuff.”
The images and an accompanying story were posted in the Times of San Diego and other Newswell outlets, with a shared byline by Buschhorn, de la Peña, Mary Matheson, a professor of practice and expert in immersive media, and Jet Olano, a learning technology specialist in the program.
The team started out wearing just face masks, but the air was so polluted that they switched to full protective jumpsuits.
Buschhorn said the first few days of shooting were eerily quiet.
“It was oddly peaceful, and yet you're surrounded by all of this destruction,” she said.
Buschhorn and Olano shot a lot of 360-degree video, trying to choose spots that they could later line up with photos from Google Street View for the before-and-after images.
“The big thing for me was, if I'm going to be taking up space here and taking these images of people's lives essentially burned to the ground, there needed to be that bigger notion of what were we trying to do.
“And my goal was to give people the context to really understand the depth of the destruction.”
The Gaussian Splat images allow the viewer to spatially “walk” around the scene.
“I think being able to actually step into it allows you to start to understand a little better,” she said.
View full-size version. Captured by Jet Olano
Like any journalist at a horrific scene, compartmentalizing emotions was hard.
“There was a notion of, ‘I have a job. I know what I'm doing.’ Kind of like tunnel vision,” Buschhorn said.
But after shooting for several long days, they came across families who were sorting through what was left of their houses in Altadena.
“That was the first day that the job felt equally less important and more important at the same time.
“It hit harder that every burned house, every burned block, every burned car that we saw, was someone's life, someone's community.
“But I think there's power in the work that we're doing because it captures the destruction in a way that is more total because you can see each element.”
De la Peña would like to eventually create an immersive documentary. In the meantime, she said the images not only allow viewers to experience the depth of the destruction, but also provide practical help: Fire victims can use the photos in filing claims with insurance companies.
As an undergraduate, Buschhorn had followed de la Peña’s work, and jumped at the chance to learn from her in the Narrative and Emerging Media program, located jointly in the Sidney Poitier New American Film School and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“It's a program that really allows you to carve your own path,” Buschhorn said.
“I'm really passionate about where immersive journalism can go.”
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