VR – will it be DOA just like stereo 3D ?

[Andrew Kimery]

Tim,

I agree with what you are saying about narrative and video games. Video games also have the advantage of being, well, a game which can allow the game creators to indirectly direct the action via things like game objectives and play mechanics. VR for gaming I can see taking off because it puts the player ‘in’ the game like never before and more and more gaming is done as a solo experience (even if you are playing on line). The old days of 3-4 friends all getting together and gaming side by side have dwindled mightily with the rise of Interent gaming.

Speaking of 360 degree filmmaking putting the viewer in the middle of a foreign places, below are two travel shows that I think would be awesome from a 360 perspective. The first is a show that puts the viewer in a first person perspective walking tour of cities around the world, and the second is all areal photography of States in America (one State per episode) with a narrator telling the history of the State.

Somewhere Street
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/somewhere/

Aerial America
https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/aerial-america/701

[Herb Sevush]

[Tim Wilson] “I think this is the 20th anniversary of the time I first saw HD at NAB. What a fgjking joke that was! Looked terrible, insanely inexpensive, no content, no distribution channel, NOTHING.”

Here’s why I don’t think HD and 3D are comparable. Every film maker who had to work with standard def video knew it was sh*t, especially if it was NTSC. Interlacing was sh*t, resolution was sh*t, dynamic range was unbelievably sucky. There had to be something better and for years the main thing slowing it down was the lack of agreement on what the new standard was going to be – there was no question about needing a new standard. It was a problem waiting for a solution.

Photographic 3D has existed for over 100 years. It never caught on. 3D movies have existed commercially since the late 40’s, and that novelty never caught on. 3D has been waxing and waning in popularity since the days of Wyatt Earp and there is no reason to believe that pattern won’t continue for the next 100 years. While the implementation is incrementally better there is nothing really new about modern 3D – all the benefits and all the problems are exactly the same since they made Dial M for Murder and 13 Ghosts when I was a kid.

As for VR, I think it’s different than 3D in that it is genuinely new and I believe there is a market for it – in gaming especially – but I don’t think it helps you tell a story, and if it doesn’t help tell a story then I, for one, am not interested in it, and I don’t think it will justify the money being thrown at it.

As for Adobe, I think software improvements are a zero sum game – if engineers are working on VR they are not working on putting an eyedropper in the Lumetri color wheel. There are only so many coding hours in a day.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[David Lawrence]

[Steve Connor] “I’d love you to be wrong about this, It’s been a while since we had a new way to tell stories”

I don’t think it really works for the kinds of stories we tell as filmmakers. It’s for something different we’re still figuring out. It’s for stuff that wouldn’t work as film.

My favorite examples for Google Cardboard are:

Squarepusher – Stor Eiglass:
iTunes – https://itunes.apple.com/app/id990583315
Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.warprecords.squarepusherstoreiglass&hl=en

I love Squarepusher’s music so I’m biased but this one is pure fun in Cardboard. Everyone I’ve shown it to has a big grin on their face by the end.

Chris Milk/Vice – Million’s March
https://vrse.com/watch/id/31/

You can watch this in a web browser but when you watch in Cardboard, it’s like you’re there, standing in the middle of it. You really feel it, it’s different then watching a documentary.

Nonny de la Peña – Kiya
This piece is available in the Sundance collection on the NYTVR app.
https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2015/nytvr/
https://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=54eceae3-6ae7-4a6e-bd90-64de8ae2d689
https://www.ted.com/talks/nonny_de_la_pena_the_future_of_news_virtual_reality?language=en

Nonny de la Peña’s been experimenting with VR as a journalistic medium for years. I think it’s interesting stuff.

These and many other examples appearing every day give us a taste of something I think is genuinely new. I don’t think it’s the next Hollywood scale industry, but I also don’t think it’s a fad. Have you had a chance to play with it? Curious what you think.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research

linkedIn: https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
vimeo: vimeo.com/album/2271696
web: propaganda.com
facebook: /dlawrence
twitter: @dhl

[Tom Sefton]

I can see a big market for it, particularly as it becomes more and more possible to utilise VR and 3D VR via a smartphone and a cheap headset.

We’ve just assisted with a 3D VR music video which is due for release May 1st so hope to have something to show then.

As a storytelling medium the potential is huge, particularly for historical projects – like being immersed in a battlefield or inside Pompeii or whilst the pyramids are being built. The mix of CG with live action for 3D VR is going to be incredible, especially as the new lytro camera promises to change everything about CG work…

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Gary Huff]

[David Lawrence] ” don’t think it really works for the kinds of stories we tell as filmmakers. It’s for something different we’re still figuring out. It’s for stuff that wouldn’t work as film.”

Bingo.

[Nick Meyers]

i saw a dozen or so VR works at a film festival last year.

of those, only two stood out for me:
Millions March was one,
Clouds of Sidra was the other. I’d recommend seeking it out.

nick

[Tim Wilson]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since this thread began, and will be writing about it in the context of what’s shown at NAB…but this is what I keep coming back to.

Narrative filmmaking is narrative in the sense of Go HERE, look at THIS, the story is structured like THIS. No matter how far those barriers get pushed in whatever avant garde direction, that’s what it comes down. The camera points one way. What’s behind the camera is by definition OUT of the story.

In 360/VR, the story is being told in every direction. The story IS being able to see in every direction. The narrator has been removed.

That’s not to say that some clever person won’t figure how to create a 360 degree environment AND tell a story, with a UI that gives you some idea where in the environment some key elements of a variety of storylines are playing out — oh wait, they have. We call them videogames.

But for “video” content, rather than “videogame” content, I don’t see anything beyond immersive shorts as achievable…but the achievement in those so far can already be spectacular. I definitely think these will be by far the most fruitful avenues for the foreseeable future, and I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing. Quite the contrary. I think that’s the BEST thing.

[Michael Horton]

“Narrative filmmaking is narrative in the sense of Go HERE, look at THIS, the story is structured like THIS. No matter how far those barriers get pushed in whatever avant garde direction, that’s what it comes down. The camera points one way. What’s behind the camera is by definition OUT of the story. ”

At the SuperMeet we intend to cover this very specific thing. How do you get people to look where you want them to look?

Michael Horton
lacpug
https://www.lafcpug.org

[David Lawrence]

[Michael Horton] “At the SuperMeet we intend to cover this very specific thing. How do you get people to look where you want them to look?”

Our research (as well as various articles I’ve seen lately) point to two promising techniques:

1) Directed sound – Spatialized audio tells the viewer when something interesting is happening outside their field of view and what direction to turn to.

2) Directed movement – Viewers naturally lock onto and follow intentional movement around the 360 space. This suggests a choreographed type of direction ala the “oner” for the 360 space may be useful.

The more we experiment, the more we’ll learn.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research

linkedIn: https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
vimeo: vimeo.com/album/2271696
web: propaganda.com
facebook: /dlawrence
twitter: @dhl

[Tim Wilson]

[David Lawrence] “The more we experiment, the more we’ll learn.”

I’m counting on you to once again be leading the way. 🙂

I agree that it’s going to be interesting to see how to introduce authorial intent, but I think it’s also going to be interesting to see the extent to which authors can create environments untethered by narrative.

I know you remember Myst. You could spend YEARS in that thing without engaging with it as a game. It was a world that rewarded EVERY kind of exploration, or none.

So I think that THIS is the challenge. Not for the narratively inclined to find ways to shoehorn traditional storytelling structure into a medium not made for it, but for letting storytellers getting out of their own heads, to let themselves be shaped by the new medium’s new possibilities.

Which I know is exactly what you’re pursuing, David. I’m speaking more generally.

But I do continue to maintain that, for the time being anyway, the most compelling uses of 360/VR are to put us in new PLACES to let us explore, rather than to slip us into story streams that “ideally” approach conventionality.

Hence my immediate interest in the documentary potential: while no less authorial intent than narrative storytelling, and in some ways exponentially more, but also very much open to simultaneous parallel worlds. 🙂