Storyteller Sarah Hill leaves Veterans United for virtual reality start-up

Sarah Hill has spent her entire career bringing audiences face-to-face with powerful stories. As an interactive news anchor at KOMU 8, and later as a chief storyteller at Veterans United Home Loans, she’s been everywhere from mid-Missouri to Sri Lanka; from Guatemala to Vietnam.

But now, Hill thinks bringing an audience face-to-face with the story isn’t enough. She wants to put her audience inside it.

“For decades, as a storyteller I’ve tried to use words and video to transport people to places,” Hill said in an email. “Now with virtual reality headsets becoming available to the average consumer, the technology is available to actually simulate real immersion.”

At the end of August, Hill will leave Veterans United to focus on her virtual reality company, Story-Up360. She said the technology is “at the intersection of journalism and gaming.” Viewers can look up, down and around to experience multiple angles of video and sound.

Her first VR project will debut later this year. Partially funded by the Veterans United Foundation, the project is called Honor Everywhere 360: with the immersive technology, Story-Up360 will give terminally ill and aging World War II veterans VR experiences of war memorials. Central Missouri Honor Flight and other volunteers will bring specialized headsets to the veterans’ bedside so they can see the memorials without leaving home.

“Pretty soon, all of our World War II Veterans will be gone,” Hill said. “Honor Everywhere 360 captures these heroes in a way that will make it seem like you can still reach out and touch them long after they’ve passed.”

After Honor Everywhere 360, Hill plans to travel to Zambia, where she will document people with disabilities who lack adequate mobility devices and are left to crawl on the ground. Hill plans to create a 360-degree story from their perspective.

“VR storytelling is an empathy machine,” Hill said. “To me, it seems like illustrating the problem and placing people inside it might motivate the masses to contribute to the solution.”

Hill describes her “demographic” as people who want to help. Willing to travel around the world for a story, she hopes to find charities and causes without access to this level of technology.

“Giving a charity money is important, but giving them a story is even more powerful, as it’s a gift that can be shared over and over again to raise support,” Hill said. “Donations are spent; a story really never ends.”

Different projects require different technology, but many of the short VR experiences can be seen on a smartphone or PC. Interested viewers can also purchase head-mounted displays such as Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, or Zeiss VR One. Many of these displays use iPhone or Samsung apps to project video.

Hill thinks these projects are about to explode across the market. She sees a use for virtual reality in every corner of the world: teenagers unable to afford concert tickets could view a 360-degree Coldplay show from miles away; sports stations could broadcast 3D football games, where viewers watch from the first-person perspective of the players; people with physical disabilities could experience the sights and sounds of cliff diving without leaving home.

With the amount of technology and innovation required, getting to that future requires full-time commitment: Hill said, “creating in a new digital medium could not be a side project.” She believes the entire world needs to be filmed again, using virtual reality technology.

At the beginning of the summer, Hill decided to leave Veterans United and focus entirely on her startup. Story-Up360’s website updates as Hill creates and refines new projects.

“Sarah is a true pioneer,” said Kris Farmer, chief marketing officer for Veterans United Home Loans, in a press release. “Her passion to tell the stories of our nation’s heroes has been incredibly contagious, and we will miss her very much.”

For the time being, Hill will work from the Missouri Innovation Center, on Providence. Hill is working on filmmaking with Google and Jaunt, a VR venture partially backed by Google. With Story-Up360, she hopes to prove that the world isn’t flat: it’s round, and should be viewed as such.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Hill’s company name. The company is named Story-Up360, not Story-Up. Also, Honor Everywhere 360 is partially funded by the Veterans United Foundation, not Veterans United Home Loans.