But I thought it might still be a good idea to share my experiences with viewing and creating 360 film.
Week 11 & 12 (14.11.16 - 25.11.16)
Workshop VR by Nienke & Frederik
For our last workshop (time has flown!!!!) I teamed up with Kevin, Edwin and Diana.
So all the previous workshops were about how to engage the audience in different ways. But in VR it's perhaps less about narrative, and more about (creating the illusion of) physically being somewhere.
After a short introduction on the possibilities of 360 Film/VR we were all given a Ricoh and were basically free to mess around, with VR.
I have to say I was quite sceptical about 360 film at first. I'm not really attracted to recreating/imitating reality, and reproducing its (real) experience in a virtual(artificial) medium. Although I realize there's a lot of potential in this, (creating virtual training grounds for real life situations, transporting someone to another place, creating empathy by literally placing the viewer in someone else's shoes) it still doesn't look or feel right to me.(perhaps that's also because the technology isn't advanced enough yet, and the visuals are always slightly pixelated.. or perhaps I'm just not used to VR itself!)
But what does interest me, is creating an altogether new reality, in VR. Or the reality of the virtual itself?
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For most of my group it was our first time working with a 360 camera. So we just messed around and filmed random stuff.
After getting to know the Ricoh and filming these random tests (which weren't that great), we went to St Joost and experimented there with a few other things; If the viewer is free to look wherever they want in VR, how can we still guide their gaze?
- With light and movement?:
We also wanted to make the viewer question reality (what is up? what is down? huuuhhhh?), aiming for something Escher-esque:
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I personally wanted to create something non-sensical and slightly trippy (inspired by the Vaporwave aesthetic) in VR, so we used the greenscreen at St Joost and experimented with that. I didn't have much time to edit this but it was still a lot of fun, as the 360-film editing process was completely new to me.
A few things I learnt during this workshop:
- Treating the 360 camera as a person, and not a camera, can really make the viewer feel like they're physically there.(e.g. talking to it, looking at it, etcetera)
- Mise en scene in 360. Placing stuff in the setting, that can only be seen if you turn around, can create tension.
-Direct the viewer's gaze with movement, or light.
We also visited IDFA (in Amsterdam) to experience some VR projects. There were a lot of impressive pieces, but they didn't necessarily make me feel "immersed". For example, if the story didn't appeal to me, I lost my engagement pretty quickly. I also found the film documentaries in VR a bit uncanny. But VR projects like "Notes on Blindness" really appealed to me, mainly because the audio (which told the story of an author going blind) really touched me, and the visuals accompanied the story well, and spoke to my imagination. In this case I did feel immersed. So I still stand by my opinion that the story is more important than the medium for immersion..
In short; I had a lot of fun experimenting with VR, but I don't think it's the ultimate go-to medium for creating immersive stories. It's useful, as it can make someone feel like they're physically there, but it's a lot harder to tell a story. You never have full control over where the audience looks, so it's easy to miss out on information.
Would I try VR again? I think I would as it's certainly got potential, but only if it was necessary for my story.
