"The Last Medium" is a new long feature on California Sunday Magazine by my colleague Carina Chocano on the coming convergence of virtual reality and Hollywood. As she explains to me:
"The idea was to talk to people who were interested in creating narrative experiences in VR-- how will the medium be used to tell stories? What language will it develop to tell them? The coolest thing about it for me was this idea that every new narrative medium creates its own storytelling language. The things that are great about VR (the feeling of presence, the added element of space) are also the things that present the biggest challenges. I didn't know much about VR when I started, and it was really interesting to approach it like a creative problem to be solved. Everyone I talked to had great ideas, and was passionate about VR as a storytelling medium."
Related to that, here's an interesting passage on the creation of a Game of Thrones VR experience:
Woods wanted his audience standing up. The idea faced resistance from Oculus — they thought the audience should be seated — but Woods said the company loved being proven wrong. Should you, the viewer, have a body? At first, they were convinced you should, and it was fine as long as you stood still, but being scooted forward when your actual legs weren’t moving felt horrible. Perhaps not surprisingly, a disembodied consciousness is easier to scoot around. “We learned the hard way what you can and can’t do,” Woods said. As someone who went to film school and studied mise-en-scène, classical narrative, and framing, Woods finds it intriguing that he now has to learn a whole new language: “You can’t cut. You can’t fade. You can’t move the camera. You can’t pull focus. What you can do is create an intriguing hybrid of Brechtian in-the-round theatrical stuff and game design.” If you’re going to get hit in the chest with a flaming arrow, before that can happen, three perfectly timed and directed arrows have to be released (one to call your attention, one to focus it, and one for good measure) so that by the time the fourth one hits, you’re looking right at it.
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