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Would you watch a virtual-reality Casablanca?
The question is ridiculous, but usefully so. VR will never be like the movies, culturally or aesthetically, and the best way to understand why may be to imagine you're experiencing the 1942 Warner Brothers classic not as a linear story viewed from a theater seat, but as an immersive world accessed by a digital headset.
Most of us would never leave Rick's Café Américain. We'd go behind the bar with Sascha, hover by Emil the croupier at the roulette table, hang out with Sam as he played "As Time Goes By" again. Me, I'd be following Peter Lorre's sniveling Ugarte. But the central drama of Rick's rekindled love and sacrifice for Ilsa Lund? We'd probably never get that far. Director Michael Curtiz and the Warner Brothers elves did such a brilliant job imagining the world of Casablanca that we'd be content to explore it until we bumped up against the walls, like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show.
[...] VR will never become the new cinema. Instead, it will be a different thing. But what is that thing? And will audiences trained in passive linear narrative—where scene follows scene like beads on a string, and the string always pulls us forward—appreciate what the thing might be? Or will we only recognize it when the new medium has reached a certain maturity, the way audiences in 1903 sat up at The Great Train Robbery and recognized that, finally, here was a movie?
Movie critic Ty Burr goes on to review and discuss several VR productions and how they succeed or fail at using the new potential of virtual reality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:35PM
What is VR? That hasn't been nailed down yet.
Now what I am thinking Hollywood will sell that might actually work is stream out multiple HD (Maybe 3D) streams and you get to pick your character to watch and switch during the movie. That fixes that whole PITA moving position and rendering thing.
If you watch it in a theater you get the directors cut. Or if you want to piss people off the projector could randomly switch every scene cut or so, such that nobody ever sees the same movie twice, which is interesting to think about WRT revenue.
Some stories like mysteries, some dramas, and pr0n will work pretty well. Some action flicks will work pretty well.
I think The Hobbit and LOTR would work pretty well. Most idiotic reality TV would work pretty well with one camera team per person. There will be issues, I mean can you insert enough filler and special effects to make the Harry Potter series watchable by anyone but Harry? Does batman or superman or spiderman make much sense from any perspective other than the leading dude? Then there's the in between stuff like most Trek.
My guess is this will lead to an atomization of the experience yet if done well a lot of repeat business. Imagine watching all of Tolkien from Gandalfs perspective and trying to talk to someone who watched the whole thing from Legolas perspective.
There is a little problem in that people only have $X to spend per year on visual entertainment or whatever you want to call Hollywood swill. That means if production costs go up by a factor of ten, you have a little problem with BAU economics. In reality, Hollywood is likely to follow a top40pop trajectory of extreme narrowcasting of formulaic junk until its exclusively consumed by perhaps 15 year old girls and no one else cares. My guess for extreme narrowcasting of movies is it'll settle on 16 year old teens as the sole target demographic and they'll shovel formulaic crap until they fade into obscurity. The formulaic narrowcasting model doesn't have room for "VR" so it won't go there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:46PM
pr0n will work pretty well
Which medium of communication doesn't it work well in?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @05:50PM
Morse code?
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:23PM
And semaphore.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:12PM
. - .. -- ... --- .-.-.-.-.-.....------------
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @10:48AM
Decoding: E T I M S O [Garbage]
I cannot see any porn in that.
You should have tried something like:
--- .... .... .... -.-.-.-- -- --- .-. . -.-.-.--
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:04PM
theology texts? feminist propaganda? childrens picture books?
I'm not sure its ever been tried in university level math and science textbooks, I'd like to participate in that research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:41PM
theology texts?
Try reading the Bible. Or something older, say, Greek legends. Significant amount of theology texts are slashfics :)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday February 20 2017, @01:22AM
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος.
But, seems it is all about the Λόγος, and not about the εἶδος, so the βίβλος are not so big on the interactive visual stuff. Think more like D&D, or Pascal's Wager.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @11:14AM
Well, it says the word is in the beginning, doesn't it? Well, that's also true for movies: It starts with a script. The filming happens later. There obviously have been some alterations of the text, to make it fit better in a religious content, but if undo those minor changes, you get a pretty good description of film making:
It all starts with a script, which them becomes life (i.e. gets filmed and ultimately shown in the cinema). And it is artificial light ("the light of the human race") that, in the form of a projector lamp, brings the film to life. But it only works if the projection is into a dark room ("the light shines in the darkness"), but of course the screen is not at all dark ("and the darkness has not overcome it").