Having spent a few hours with the VR machine, I was left thinking about media other than gaming for the device.
Gaming works really well because of the assumption of so very many games that whatever you can see on the screen is in your field of vision anyway. Not just First Person kinda games (think Doom) but also games where the camera is over the shoulder (think stuff like Tomb Raider or Grand Theft Auto).
Part of the fun of those games is the stuff that is going on when it’s behind you. “Dang. I died. Again.”
Movies, however, deliberately do *NOT* work like that. The director, if s/he knows what s/he’s doing, knows that you are sitting and looking at a rectangle. If they want you to look at an actor’s hand, dang it, they’re going to block the scene so the actor’s hand is prominent. Shine a bright light on it! Put a sparkly bracelet or jangly watch on the wrist! ZOOM IN!
In VR, the viewer could easily be staring off in the far corner of the room trying to figure out if the plates in the cabinet are the same kind that Aunt Sally has in her apartment. Staring at the poster trying to figure out if the writing is in Spanish or in Portuguese. “Oh, I was supposed to be looking at the actors?”
Maybe there will be something like tight focus on conversational scenes (you can look 15 degrees this or that way but not turn around) and the full 360 experience for the combat scene or the march on city hall or the chase scene or what have you.
Heck, maybe it’ll result in a new kind of genre of the evolution of the form… in the same way that the movie evolved from the stage play, VR will evolve from the movie.
But, at this point, I doubt it. The ability of directors to say “no, look *HERE*” will be too great to leave to chance.
But I’m looking forward to seeing what inspired amateurs do before everybody gives up on trying, though.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
On the other hand, I could see someone writing a letter to the newspaper saying “movies will never take off… people are used to seeing actors act in three dimensions! Seeing flat pictures will give the viewer nausea and cause imbalance in the humors.”Report
Live theater and certain kinds of events have a similar problem, and they have a set of solutions and live with the rest. You know, flash mobs, parades, and so on.Report
I’m reading the Three Leaps of Wan Lung by Alfred Doblin, its a fictional telling of the Yellow Turban Rebellion by the White Lotus Sect in 18th Century China.
As an immigration lawyer, many of my clients were Chinese Christians who experienced persecution in by going to non-state churches. The Chinese government is capable of getting very heavy handed against the non-governmental churches. In January, they destroyed a non-governmental church by aerial bombardment because they could. Meanwhile, Chinese Catholics are terrified at the deal that the Chinese government is working out with the Vatican because they don’t want the Chinese government to control their churches. From a human rights perspective, its very easy to hate the Chinese government.
From a historical perspective things are a little different. Much of the internal disturbances in Chinese history were caused by what you can call off brand religious movements. Things like the Red Turban Rebellion, the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion, and the Fists of Righteous Harmony Revolt. These off brand religious rebellions caused deaths in the millions. When you take that into consideration, you can gain a more sympathetic view on why the CCP is really wary of seemingly harmless groups like Falun Gong or the underground churches. They don’t want a repeated theme regardless of how unlikely that appears to us in the West.Report
For my nonfiction reading, I’m finishing Wonderland by Steven Johnson, which is on how play made the modern world, and starting either Hasidim: A New History of American Empire: A Global History next.Report
An interesting way to do this might be to make a short film that has to be viewed several times at several different locations and angles to get all the pieces of the story. Like maybe you have a *Clue*-like VR movie where you have to observe everything going on with all the characters in all the different rooms of the mansion before the story comes together. But I guess at that point maybe you’re making something closer to a game than a movie.Report