Founded by Ralph Thomas Vituccio, rTv media, creates a wide range of film and media projects from traditional documentaries, informational and training films to interactive Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality projects.
Ralph Thomas Vituccio is a filmmaker and Professor of Media at Carnegie Mellon University. His documentary, “IN SERVICE: Iraq to Pittsburgh”, explored a different facet of the Iraq War as seen through the eyes of local soldiers. The film, “Ship Breakers”, explored the devastating impact ship recycling has had on the environmental and the health of the workers in Gujarat, India. His most recent film, Haenyeo, documents the women free divers of Marado, South Korea. Ralph has also produced and/or created several interactive VR and interactive documentary programs. His recent work in Virtual Reality and interactive documentary have won a 2018 Google-Tribeca grant as well as showing in numerous film festivals. He has spoken at numerous conferences including SXSW, SIGGRAPH, GDC, i-Docs, Games For Change, etc.
rv0a@andrew.cmu.edu
This short documentary follows the Haenyeo, an ancient culture of women free-divers from Marado island off the coast of South Korea, as they dive for valuable shellfish. 80% of the dwindling Haenyeo culture today are over the age of 60. Within 10-15 years the Haenyeo will have disappeared. For hundreds of years, women in the South Korean island province of Jeju have made their living harvesting seafood by hand from the ocean floor. Known as haenyeo, or sea women, they use no breathing equipment, although a typical dive might last around two minutes and take them as deep as ten to twenty meters underwater. This documentary follows the last five remaining Haenyeo from the tiny island of Marado located in the Korean Strait.
https://www.tfiny.org/filmmakers/detail/ralph_vituccio
Interviews on PBS
Jaehee Cho and I were interviewed on our local Pittsburgh PBS station WQED for their Filmmakers Corner show. It featured our latest documentary “Haenyeo”. The show is hosted by the wonderful Minette Seate.
Documenting Israeli and Palestinian Food Cultures
Professors Michal Friedman (History), Nevine Abraham (Arabic Studies, Modern Languages) and Ralph Vituccio (Entertainment Technology Center and IDeATe) lead eleven students on an intensive travel itinerary through Israel and the West Bank in March 2023. Our students met locals and shared ethnic meals to experience firsthand how the study of food cultures allows us to approach cultural intersections, conflict, and peacemaking, especially in a region as fraught as Israel and Palestine. This video trailer is a brief overview of the trip. This summer I will be producing an Interactive Documentary about the experience as well as a linear documentary as well.
SHIPBREAKERS
Alang, India. It’s called the graveyard of ships. Over a hundred ocean going vessels lined up side by side along a ten mile stretch of smoky beach. Alang recycles over half of all ocean going vessels salvaged around the world. It is one of the most dangerous industrial sites in the world.
www.shipbreakersthefilm.com
IN SERVICE: Iraq to Pittsburgh
The Iraq war has been a prime subject for documentary filmmakers. IN SERVICE: Iraq to Pittsburgh, presents a different side of the story as seen through the eyes of Western Pennsylvanians serving as soldiers, government officials, and journalists. The film weaves war footage shot by the soldiers themselves, interviews, and still photography into a cohesive narrative of how world events affect local communities and touch the lives of our friends families and neighbors. From surviving roadside bombs to interrogating Saddam Hussein, individuals recount their tales unfolding on an international stage.
The Seasnail Oracle
Andres Tapia-Urzua & Ralph Vituccio
The Seasnail Oracle (Oráculo Caracol) was presented in the 2015 Havana, Cuba International Biennial. It is an interactive video installation that, based on audience participation, simulates to provide personal interpretations of the past, present and future. It is a poetic divination games that explores the idea of the unknown and of the uncertain through a cybernetic oracle. The content of the oracle is experienced in the form of video responses (readings), generated through aleatoric data combinations that respond to the interaction (consulting) of the participants.
(Recorded at the National Library of Cuba during the XII Havana Biennale)
Journey through the Camps VR trailer
Journey Through the Camps is a VR experience that takes users through the spaces of the Holocaust, and gives them the chance to see these sites in context, hear survivor testimony, and understand the history beyond what film and books can provide. Using computer animation recreated from reference materials (photographs, videos, etc), we wanted to produce an experience that brought students into the history much in the same way that students who visit Holocaust sites in Europe do when they tour the camps. We worked closely with our client to produce a piece that inspired students to learn more about the history, and something that professors could use to augment their curriculum in the classroom. Journey Through the Camps is currently on display at Carnegie Mellon University in the Askwith Kenner Room.
https://medium.com/stitchbridgevr/a-vr-journey-through-the-concentration-camps-of-the-holocaust-d9c9fe7beed2
Poland Personally - an interactive journey
In this interactive documentary trailer you can interview a Holocaust survivor, meet a German author who discovered his grandfather was a Nazi, hear from a professor whose Jewish grandmother was a paratrooper for the Red Army fighting against the Nazi, and hear from teachers and students alike about this emotional journey. Second, in the 360-video experience, you will see documentary footage of important sites of Holocaust history in Poland, ranging from remnants of the ghetto wall in modern Warsaw to Birkenau.
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/modlang/kenner-global/current-experiences/poland.html
When Video Came
A rare look at the early video art movement through the eyes of some of the best known video artists and curators of that time.
Alfred Blumstein
A short documentary about Alfred Blumstein, one of the top researchers in criminology and operations research. He is an American scientist and the J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research at the Heinz College and Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Sisyphus Beach
During the pandemic years I couldn't start a new film project, so I went back to an older feature documentary I did with Tom Clancey, (Director of Photography), and the late great Paul Goodman, (The Richard M. Cyert Professor of Organizational Pyschology), called, "Shipbreakers", and remediated it into a short observational more poetic piece on the nature of work. I had been playing with the theme of the Sisyphus myth of endless toil for sometime. Using only visuals, no dialogue and capturing only the chaotic industrial shipbreaking soundscape with workers, “Sisyphus Beach”, takes place on the 110 degree beaches of Alang, India.
In Memoriam
Celebrating the life of Paul S. Goodman, a mentor, friend and colleague.
Pittock 2004
Pittock lies about 20 minutes north of Pittsburgh, Pa. Situated right on the Ohio River it was a destination for Italian immigrants from the Lazio, Campania and Abruzzi regions of Italy. It was known as Little Italy on the Ohio. These two first generation Italians reminiscence about growing up here.
Camagüey, Cuba
An Interactive Documentary
Ralph Vituccio, Professor of Film at Carnegie Mellon University, and filmmaker Andres Tapia-Urzua created a transformative documentary-making course that took students to Camagüey, Cuba during spring break. Students from across campus worked together to interview and capture video on a variety of interesting people who live and work in Camagüey, Cuba. The students then got to work reviewing interviews, editing video, developing user interface designs and playtesting user interaction. The course was offered through the Interactive Design, Arts and Technology Network (IDeATe) and English Department.
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/english/news-and-events/news-archive/2017/cuba-class.html
FREEING FREDERICK BURTON
This was created as a sample piece for a documentary grant application. Frederick " Muhammed" Burton has spent his entire adult life in prison. In 1970 he was dragged into a highly political murder conspiracy by a police department and a city administration determined to rid Philadelphia of “Black Radicalism”. This is a story about systemic racial bias in a criminal justice system and the fight to free an innocent man from 50 years in a Pennsylvania prison.