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posted by
Fnord666
on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:04PM
from the immersive-aliens-would-be-a-nightmare-made-real dept.
from the immersive-aliens-would-be-a-nightmare-made-real dept.
VR is about to get a creative filmmaker's touch.
Ridley Scott's RSA Films production company is launching a new imprint "dedicated exclusively to the creative development and production of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and mixed media." It's called RSA VR.
RSA VR's first project is a VR Experience for "Alien: Covenant," in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox and Technicolour.
"We have been heavily involved in VR for the past few years, and having a dedicated stand-alone division underscores our commitment to immersive media in both the brand and entertainment space," RSA Films' president Jules Daly said.
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Ridley Scott Wants to Make VR a Reality in Cinema
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(Score: 2) by Zinho on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:00PM (2 children)
You might be joking, but I think you made a really insightful comment there. Film directors have a lot of emotion invested in ensuring that they fully control the viewing experience. Allowing the viewer to change perspective or even (gasp!) alter the framing of the scene takes a lot of control away from the film director and removes a whole bunch of cinematic tools from the director's kit.
Incidentally, I think this is part of the reason that film critics are so vocal about insisting that video games aren't art - giving up control of the camera to the viewer is so foreign to them that they don't recognize it for what it is. Conversely, game authors who rely on cinematic cutscenes to tell the story are doing their craft a disservice, leaning on film-industry conventions rather than using the strengths of the interactive format to tell the story within the game itself.
I'm curious to see where Ridley Scott takes this. From the article it seems the target isn't movie theaters, but rather home use (I know I wouldn't want to be wandering around in public with a VR rig on my face, reacting to virtual aliens...). If it's well received as immersive cinema that would bode well for acceptance as "art" of other forms of computer-based interactive fiction.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:38PM
Just go to New York and join one of the shows. Sure, you can follow some predefined path, but often you find yourself on your own little adventure—and that makes it your adventure—you'll want to go back and try another aspect of the story, and lets face it: More than art, return customers are what get directors out of bed in the morning (or give them a bed to sleep in, at all).
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:41PM
You might be joking, but I think you made a really insightful comment there.
Since when have those two things been incompatible?
It's not exactly a new idea - back in the 1990s and the first VR craze, Ben Elton (in This Other Eden I think) wrote something along the lines of "The ancient Greeks could have had interactive entertainment if they'd wanted to - all they had to do was hop up on stage and join in- but they were clever bastards and realised that it would fuck up the story"... Even before that, I give you the cringeworthy interactive video scene in Fahrenheit 451.
The question tech enthusiasts never ask is "what stopped this idea catching on when it was last trending 10/20/30 years ago?" - the assumption is always that (basically) more pixels will fix it. However, look at cinema - the early movies were horribly primitive, flickery, black and white, silent, filmed with a fixed camera etc. but they became popular anyway. Ditto early computer games. I suspect that if VR had something magical to offer, we'd all have bought bulky headsets in the 90s (free packet of anti-nausea pills with every pair) and put up with the blocky graphics...
Still, if Ridley Scott knows how to do one thing, its how to put beautiful pictures on the screen... Maybe just wandering around Blade Runner's cityscape or exploring Acidalia Planitia would be entertaining enough. Not sure I want to experience Alien in virtual reality, though... but there you have a movie that generated its scares by not letting you get a close look at the monster...