Oculus Premiers 'Henry' And Signs Of Things To Come

[FritzEiv]

Oculus made a charming VR film as it continues to develop a VR content ecosystem in its march toward a Q1 2016 launch.

Oculus Premiers 'Henry' And Signs Of Things To Come : Read more

 

[AnimeMania]

In what ways does a VR movie differ from a 3D movie?

 

[Pedasc]

In what ways does a VR movie differ from a 3D movie?

VR allows you to look around and makes it easier for the world to react to you a bit more realistically. Basically it can make you a bit more of an active observer rather than a passive one. As the article said they are trying to break the fourth wall.

 

[AnimeMania]

That might be fine for an unscripted movie, looking at a beautiful landscape or similar, but if there is a script, how will you know the person is looking in the right place to advance the story. Say that you are looking at a park bench when behind you the aliens are destroying the city. If you don't have access to the rewind controls, you might miss the most interesting parts of the VR movie.

 

[Pedasc]

I'm not sure how it would work, I'm mostly guessing here but in most cases I would think it would be fairly obvious where you should be looking and they would probably give you obvious clues so you didn't miss anything. It might also lend itself to a more varied experience each time someone watches. That said this definitely would have a number of challenges that we wouldn't have seen before.

 

[surphninja]

Traditionally, studios have released a video game to accompany a movie release. Now we'll have movies that also double as their own video game! Crazy.

I know I'm coming across as not being able to think about this outside of the context of game, but I do get it. This is an insanely monumental shift in the way we experience stories. It's neither a movie nor a game. But it's cool to think that you're watching this "movie," and then maybe you could stop the story and take control of characters, or go back to scenes after the credits roll and see how those scenes are now levels. Even that is probably small thinking, not even touching where this technology will take us. Hard to imagine.

I'd like to see a thriller story, similar to Heavy Rain or Momento or Se7en. Some kind of murder mystery where you can jump between scene locations or explore a small city. Your understanding of the story would depend on which scenes you witnessed, and repeat viewings but in different locations may give you further clues or different perspectives. Where you organically progress to the end of the story, following your own path, and the "ending" of the story depends entirely on what location you ended up in. You could compare notes with your friends, suggest which locations to be at during such and such time of the events, and each person might have a totally different experience.

Imagine watching Se7en, but you're with Kevin Spacey instead of the detectives at the beginning of the movie. A totally different experience.

 

[surphninja]

'Scene Select' at the menu would take on a whole new meaning, as it would actually take you to another location.

 

[FritzEiv]

Wow. These are all great observations. I kept thinking, while listening and watching, but also in writing this, that I needed to suspend my biases toward the current cinema experience. It's often difficult to imagine something that hasn't been created yet. Film makers tell a story, focus your eyes and attention and point of view through artistry. An immersion might let the viewer choose a limited but different set of focal points, which means there could be things the artist intended us to see, but that we've actively chosen to miss. Hard to wrap my head around that. I do think it will require a completely different creation process, perhaps -- as has been pointed out -- more like a game. But once again, we're seeing this coming virtual reality through our existing story-telling lenses: the film, the game, long form and short form, 3D. I keep thinking what if VR story telling is something entirely different than any of those.

 

[SeeLukeBair]

You are forgetting a VR movie is rendered realtime which allows you to do stuff like pause the explosion of aliens that is about to spill forth behind you untill your attention is in the correct place. VR knows where you are looking and where you have been looking. To get you to stop looking at the bench you may hear a sound behind you or something may just fly past your face to get you to turn around. A 3D movie is just a linear shoot without this ability.
A VR movie may also include the ability to explore different parts of the set (say to check out what the villains evil control panel really looks like), depending on what the director wants to allow.

 

[surphninja]

For real. Obviously, it's hard to be anything but naive about this. The whole experience is completely uncharted territory, and real visionaries are going to take this to places we couldn't even brainstorm here. The evolution of VR as a storytelling device will take decades to fully mature. It took quite a while for film to develop beyond just filming a play.

 

[AnimeMania]

You are forgetting a VR movie is rendered realtime which allows you to do stuff like pause the explosion of aliens that is about to spill forth behind you untill your attention is in the correct place. VR knows where you are looking and where you have been looking. To get you to stop looking at the bench you may hear a sound behind you or something may just fly past your face to get you to turn around. A 3D movie is just a linear shoot without this ability.
A VR movie may also include the ability to explore different parts of the set (say to check out what the villains evil control panel really looks like), depending on what the director wants to allow.

So a VR movie might be completely computer controlled in real time like a video game. Can possibly be filmed with one of those round balls containing multiple cameras all stitched together so that you can see the movie in 360 degrees. Might suspend certain actions until you are focused on a specific area, which suggests that a VR movie can be variable in time length and that VR movie watching is an individual rather than a group activity.

 

[uglyduckling81]

A virtual reality program where you put on a virtual reality helmet? Hhmm.
What if we are already in a VR world and none of us even know it. My god....
What if everything I'm writing is just your VR experience? What if I don't even exist?
AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

 

[Unknownoz]

As has been said it will mainly involve ques given to the user.

You're just looking around and you hear a ..... something not sure what it is, where you arn't looking so you turn around a little... you still arn't looking at quite the right place so now in the corner of your eye you see something glimmer so you turn more to look to see what that is and BOOM a plane crashes into the ground and you didn't miss it.

With the park bench aliens destroying city example then you'd simply hear all this crap shooting or getting blown up behind you so you'd turn around to see what it is and see the aliens attacking the city.

As above if they don't want you to miss any of the action then they can just put the alien invasion on hold, play a sound maybe of the ships entering the atmosphere and just keep playing those sounds until you turn around to see what it is and then start the alien invasion. Doing it this way would also mean they don't have a "length" like traditional movies since someone may respond to everything right away and have it over in half an hour while someone else may be enjoying the environments too much and not notice the queues for a while so it's been 3 hours by the time they finally finish the movie which could also lead to different experiences for the same movie for people as some may have experienced it as quite a fast paced ride while someone else though it was rather slow moving (but enjoyable) because of all the time they spent "exploring" being discovering the ques.

As far as how they differ from 3D movies besides what has already been said which is mainly you interacting with the movie I think the main difference is a 3D you just "watch" and it looks like it's popping off of the screen.

With a VR movie even if you just "watch" it and choose not to interact/explore much, you arn't simply watching it on a screen it seems like you are actually there. If you are somewhere looking up at a 100m tall robot its just that, it seems like you "are" there looking at a 100m tall robot that is really 100m tall and not just sitting there looking at a 1 or 2m tall image of a robot popping off of the screen.

 

[surphninja]

Might suspend certain actions until you are focused on a specific area, which suggests that a VR movie can be variable in time length and that VR movie watching is an individual rather than a group activity.

I think this is a case of trying to apply traditional movie ideas to VR, and while understandable, it's kind of missing the point.

It makes sense to have a certain place the audience should look in a movie, since you can only point the camera at one spot at a time. That's not 'how things are supposed to be done' so much as how things had to be done because of limitations of the technology. But with this tech, why even have a specific place they're supposed to focus?

If you're watching a VR movie (maybe "event" or "experience" are more appropriate terms?) about the sinking of the Titantic, is there really just one spot you should be looking? What about a VR movie about d-day at the beaches of Normandy?

In the Titanic or D-Day example, there's not just one story worth telling or watching. There's many thousands. Maybe you follow along with the story of the captain on the Titanic, or the people trapped on the lower decks. Maybe on D-Day you're watching the story unfold of a young recruit or a hardened commander.