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Is Virtual Reality the New Cinematic Frontier?

By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)

I remember when I was a kid visiting Disneyland for the first time and one of my favorite attractions was CircleVision. This was a classic Disney attraction where they showed a movie in the round shot with a series of cameras that covered a 360 degree spectrum. I’ll never forget being in San Francisco and seeing people lean as the camera went down Lombard street and during the fire engine ride.

It was an e-ticket ride that didn’t go anywhere. And it may have been one of the pioneering efforts at virtual reality without even realizing it. Now VR films are making a comeback thanks to digital advancements and cameras like GoPro. Could Virtual Reality be filmmaking’s next great cinematic frontier? It is if JauntVR has anything to say about it.

 

The concept was to try and use the JauntVR camera to try and tell the story in a narrative form and put the audience virtually in the move, as if someone had the ability to step into the movie. – Matthew Gratzner, Director

Back in the 60s, Disney mounted nine 35mm film cameras pointing up through mirrors to cover the 360 degree spectrum they were shooting. It was absolutely massive. But it provided for stunning results.

But now, in the digital GoPro era, users can mount cameras that are far smaller, lighter, and you can use far more cameras to cover more of the spectrum. Hell, at this point you could even do a spherical setup.

There’s a good piece of still image technology known as Motrr Galileo for the iPhone that takes a spherical picture and then as you view it, the image will move as you do. It’s very cool. And I’ve seen videos shot with multiple GoPros mounted on a race car that let you do the same thing in video.

Jaunt VR is being developed by New Deal Studios, and with Disney (of course) they are producing a short war film called “The Mission,” which will be watched using virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and give audience members the ability to immerse themselves in the story like never before.

Director Matthew Gratzner says that filming with JauntVR will allow the audience to look in any direction in the round. Also at this stage, JauntVR doesn’t give users the ability to choose lenses either. So you really don’t have the ability to pull focus or have great depth of field or even Bokeh at this point. But I’m sure that will happen in time. Heck, it happened with GoPro as third party lens add-ons and cages are popping up everywhere. So I can already envision the possibilities.

Gratzner says, however, that even without a choices of lenses, the real challenge includes the need to have action going on in every direction.” You see 360 degrees in the round … and every perspective has to have action or something going on at all times.”

He also points out that it changes the way he’s shooting because you can’t have the infamous 4th wall with the camera crew on the other side watching the acting. The acting has to go on all around, so the crew is, in essence out of the field of view, a long way off. And that poses challenges for camera movement, sound gathering, lighting, and a host of other cinematic activity that we take for granted on the set.

So what’s the payoff? The audience becoming a character in the movie. I silent observer in a virtual world being able to look wherever in a scene where action catches your eye. And that’s bound to create a whole new way of being entertained. It certainly did to a 10 year old boy in the 60s watching CircleVision and it takes us one step closer to that holodeck from Star Trek.

Hat Tip – RSN

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