Virtual Reality Film Making

sfoster

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I spent the day consuming virtual reality movies and here's the good and bad i've learned.

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First the good

Scale
With VR you would never meet an actor and say "Wow you're shorter in real life" because you can actually look at people and tell how tall they are. There was a great tom cruise video featuring his zero gravity plane crash stunt in the mummy and with VR it felt like i was in the room to scale with him. Something like LOTR beginning with a giant sized sauron swatting everyone in the battle would feel much more epic and intimidating in VR.

Sports
Yes sports! Speaking of scale.. you can really appreciate a volleyball match.
And have you ever sat right next to the mat for gymnastics at the olympics?
I just did and it's impressive

Dance competitions are great too - it's all talent and no camera moves or edits.
Speaking of which it also made zoolander look stupidly out of place when he was strutting next to actual runway models.. an effect I didn't experience watching the films.

Stand out!
There's not much competition in this field if you wanted to make a VR film, it would be easier to stand out.
You probably wouldn't make much money but we all know how difficult it is to find any audience in the regular youtube crowd. People are hungry for good VR experiences and there is no massive requirement for a 90 minute script.

Now the bad

When a narrator talks you spin around to see if you're missing someone. And if the movie changes viewpoints it feels like a burden having to constantly readjust your screen to turn where the action is. I'd rather just watch a movie ya know? Not micromanage the pov, that's the directors job.

An action movie where dude points a gun and you have to turn your head to see the victim getting shot is awful
Nothing about that is enjoyable for the audience member

Apparently it's hard to focus. A lot of content is soft focus.

The resolution is really bad.. it's far below 4k tv

Content

Cross fade works great for editing in VR

There's also hardly any content and most of it is very short.
The only good stuff i've found is bonus content from famous productions.

IT has a reenactment of that opening boat down the sewer drain scene with andy skarsgard and holy shit that dude is scary.

Lego Batman has many of the famous voices and will arnett fires off a lot of great jokes

It's Always Sunny has a really enjoyable 3-4 minute clip involving something that may or may not be a snuff film.

Oculus studios did some short films to promote the vr but they might as well be watched without a headset. There was no point to putting them in VR.

Until the resolution dramatically increases the only media people will be consuming in VR is the sort of media that greatly benefits from the medium.
 
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To me, VR is an interactive medium - so whilst it will have a place in entertainment it will not replace traditional movies or movie-viewing. It's more likely to take over a large portion of the gaming sector than movie sector.

There are inherent problems with trying to tell a long-form, non-interactive story in VR that are overcome or not such big problems for games.

The technology will really become mature and useful once there are truly wireless versions, and once the resolution is on-par with something semi-watchable.

Personally, I find one of the biggest problems is heat and fogging of the headset. There's only so long you can watch something with a heavy thing on your head without everything heating up and fogging up the screen. Once that happens, it doesn't matter what res the thing was recorded in, it looks <SD.
 
To me, VR is an interactive medium - so whilst it will have a place in entertainment it will not replace traditional movies or movie-viewing. It's more likely to take over a large portion of the gaming sector than movie sector.

There are inherent problems with trying to tell a long-form, non-interactive story in VR that are overcome or not such big problems for games.

The technology will really become mature and useful once there are truly wireless versions, and once the resolution is on-par with something semi-watchable.

Personally, I find one of the biggest problems is heat and fogging of the headset. There's only so long you can watch something with a heavy thing on your head without everything heating up and fogging up the screen. Once that happens, it doesn't matter what res the thing was recorded in, it looks <SD.

I would never suggest that VR will replace traditional movies but I do think that horror games are much more visceral and scarier than a horror movie could ever hope to be. I think the maturation of these horror games will impact the horror movie market because people won't be scared by pancake movies anymore.

The wireless version will be announced this september for oculus most likely.
What are you using that you have problems with heat and fog?

I've never experienced those issues but I do play with a ceiling fan on.
 
Locally we have a ‘wireless’ open-world VR experience set up in a large warehouse. You wear a backpack with a laptop, connected to a weapon, a headset and headphones.

It’s fantastic and really shows the potential of VR. Except when you’re running around shooting zombies and your headset fogs up.

Im really keen to try the Star Wars VR experience.
 
It's great fun to practice dual wielding pistols in VR and I'm getting pretty decent at it.
You hear a lot of people say that it's unrealistic when someone dual wields it in a movie but now I'm personally doing it in VR and I've always been a talented marksman.

Driving simulators and Flight simulators are also one of those things that you could never go back to a flat monitor again after doing in VR.

It's definitely an interactive medium but seeing a t-rex in VR is insane.
I showed it to my neighbor today and she had to look down at the ground when it got close because it scared her too much. There is potential for film making in VR.

I think it would be great fun to do a "choose your own adventure" style movie.

You'd probably have to edit together 24 hours of footage.. like an entire season worth of tv, and people could make different choices to experience various paths through that footage into a 45 minute film experience.
 
As a theater guy (writer and director) I have been asked to contribute
to several VR movies. The thought being everything plays out like a
stage performance.

Right now games have stories and characters and arcs and twists.
Essentially a choose-your-own-adventure movie. So far the projects
I've been involved with have not been able to provide a dramatic
enough distinction between what is available as a "game" and what
would be called a "movie".

Someone will crack it. I'd love to be on that team.
 
To me the difference between a choose your own adventure movie and a game is that one has control on a macro level and one has a control on a micro level. As soon as you're doing micromanagement it becomes a video game.

Everyone has a different definition though and (frustratingly enough) some people refuse to call 360 degree 3d movies VR unless you can walk around too... Basically eliminating entirely the notion of live action VR because the technology does not exist to film live action and walk around in VR at the same time. You can only do that for animated films.

Personally I think having a 180 degree view like a stage show is the way to go, you're right about that. You could simply put a VR camera on a broadway stage to film the last performance, and then sell that to people in perpetuity after the show stops being performed.
 
As I was watching the Deadlpool 2 audio commentary track yesterday it occurred to me how perfect that sort of thing would be for VR. they should 100% be doing all commentary tracks with VR cameras.

Instead of just listening to the people doing the commentary while you watch a movie you can virtually be in a theatre with them! You can watch the movie on the big screen and turn your head while they're talking to look at them if you want. Or be in a couch on a living room or whatever.

That sounds so much cooler to be in the room watching the movie with those people than just alone in my living room listening to them
 
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