Several difficulties that VR film production will face.

At present, the most interesting thing about VR movies is that when you remove all the gimmicks, all the marketing words and all the self-righteous truths, all we can grasp is the appearance and limitations of this new media working mode.

Last week, I was lucky enough to watch a lot of movie experiences specially designed for VR. The first is the introduction of a new Nokia OZO camera. Then I watched the preview of one of the films, which will be shown at Sundance Film Festival in June+10, 5438. During this period, I learned a lot about the production art and development trend of VR movies.

The most interesting part, perhaps what I witnessed, challenged the traditional cognition of 360-degree film making.

VR movie editing

Mission VR, a VR short film with the theme of World War II.

At the launch of Nokia OZO camera, I saw the movie Rebellion produced by New Deal Studio. The New Deal is no stranger to panoramic production. I started filming the unreleased "Mission VR" with Jaunt a year ago. The directors of these two films are Matt Gratzner, one of the co-founders of New Deal Studio, who made incredible remarks a year ago.

Matt Gratzner said at the VRLA party hosted by New Deal Studio that editing is feasible-conventional editing-and so is conventional editing in panoramic movies.

At that time, Glatzner's views were not recognized. When I talked to other filmmakers about this point, everyone thought that editing in VR would seriously interfere with the audience's sense of direction. There is no problem with cross-fading, erasing and overlapping, but jumping clips are not easy to be accepted by the audience. It took me about a year to discover the visual basis of Glatzner's view. I am glad to report that his point of view is correct, although in order to ensure the screening effect, a specific way is needed to realize editing.

The battle between two pirates in the mutiny. One pirate knocks down the other side, and then the camera switches to an angle to surround the knocked-down pirate. The most important point is that the defeated pirates need to keep their position in the film, but the world around them has rotated.

Try this: hold the pen in your left hand. Half-stretch your arm. At this time, the pen is just the center of your left line of sight. Suppose this pen is a knock-down pirated copy, just look at this pen. Now turn your head slightly to the right, but keep your eyes on the pen. The parallax behind the pen-the world moves behind the pen-is that the brain is adapting to it. Because your attention was on the pen, you didn't pay much attention.

Pirate shooting works like a pen.

Reflections on VR movies jumping out of the limitation of visual boundaries

This may seem trivial, but the ability to move the camera-jumping in perspective or time-is a crucial means in the eyes of producers. I saw this behind the scenes and found that the narrative advantage brought by tone sandhi actually exceeded the loss of sense of direction brought by editing. However, this technology is not omnipotent and certainly has more limitations than conventional editing, but it does bring us to a brand-new field.

In other words, the most interesting thing is that its positioning of objects ensures the feasibility of editing. It reminds me that an important milestone in children's development is that babies' intelligence can cope with the concept of object existence. So in addition to editing, we should think more about how VR narration should be completed when the narrator stops thinking about the images in the picture and thinks about the objects in the field of vision.

field of vision

For me, another great inspiration of Nokia conference night was that I experienced Starbreeze's StarVR headset for the first time. Although I have watched the clip of Rebellion with the prototype of Oculus Rift's Crescent Bay head-mounted display device, I want to watch this clip again on StarVR.

You may just have heard of StarVR. If you are lucky enough to experience the StarVR headset, you will find that your vision is very different after wearing StarVR. When I introduce VR headphones to people who have never heard of them, I will hold my mobile phone in front of them. Tell them that "the ordinary VR screen is like this", and then I slide the phone to one side, so that the back of the phone leans against their heads, with one end facing their noses and the other end facing their ears. "This is the effect of StarVR."

Of course, you can also try it at home.

Broadening your horizons is like upgrading from a 4:3 screen to a 16:9 screen. Or jump directly from the academic level to IMAX. The audience doesn't need to turn their heads to see what's going on around them, just turn their eyes, just like we normally see things.

This provides more possibilities for producers to show their actions, but it also brings a series of restrictions. In other words, if producers don't know what headphones their content will be watched on, they can't show the whole scene to the maximum. After wearing StarVR, the action in Rebellion looks much smaller than wearing Crescent Bay. This is because these actions are not done according to the framework of StarVR.

I know it seems crazy to talk about framing now, especially if the user can control the viewing direction of the camera. But art lies between where the producer wants the user to look and how the whole environment around him guides the user's attention. The flexibility of attention is the main difference between VR film production and conventional film production.

I'm sorry if you prefer panoramic production, but I prefer to use them interchangeably. When we go far enough along this road, most of the scenes we see can generate realistic images through programs based on actor motion capture. Most people will not be able to recognize the difference between the generated real image and the image captured by the light field device. That day may be a bit out of reach for me, so at the same time, let the old people choose what they like. )

Knowing where the boundaries of flexibility lie-how far you can put participants in your field of vision-is crucial. Otherwise, when shooting a scene where a child hits you with a plastic baseball bat, you may have to guide while holding a pillow. But if you know how big the box in the field of vision is, you can play some tricks at the boundary of the field of vision. You can play with the audience's attention, guide them, mislead them and surprise them.

Rubber band

Let's continue to discuss how far you can arrange the actors. Because the significance of showing a drama clip is-to put it bluntly, VR photography is more like rehearsing a stage play than shooting a movie-creating drama tension in the physical space of the actors.

Part of it depends on the actors' acting skills and how they cooperate with each other emotionally, but the other part depends on the director's skills and how clever the director is in arranging the relationship between two or more actors-or a person and an object-to stimulate the tension of the drama.

I watched the movie "Visitor" made by some heavyweight directors with VR. The film will be exhibited at the first digital interactive game exhibition of Sundance Film Festival.

There is no editing for The Uninvited Guest now. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear the dialogue in the clip, because we saw the preview in a particularly noisy corridor. But it also prompted me to regard short films as silent films. This special experience focused my attention on the relationship between design elements and actors, as well as the scene layout.

Nowadays, producers are very witty-James Kelan and Eve M Cohen, wishing Yan to put the camera in the corner. In other words, when I turn around, I will know that nothing will happen behind my head.

When the picture slowly lit up, a man stood slightly to the left in front of me, and a woman stood on my right. If I reach out to them, my arms will be at a 90-degree angle. So I can look at them back and forth, because the border of Gear VR is very small, and they can just be in my field of vision. This is the running-in between the producer and the bounding box. The producer's application of borders is good, at least for beginners.

Do you remember the conversation I couldn't hear because of hearing interference when I watched the preview of "Uninvited Guest"? At first, I liked the actor on my left. In most clips, the actor is closer to me than the actress. From the stage point of view, he is in front of the stage and she is behind it. All cinema directors will tell you that the actors in front of the stage are better. It's interesting that the actors in front of the stage will turn their backs on the audience when they leave the stage. At this time, the audience's attention will shift to the actors behind the stage. )

However, the image of an actress is more noticeable than that of an actor. Her figure appeared many times in the mirror on the ceiling and the reflection on the glass desktop. Although the response was not so enthusiastic, it was fascinating. I was guided by the actor and felt that he was closer. Perhaps because there is no sound, my attention always comes back to him.

If the field of vision can be larger, these problems will be solved. After wearing StarVR, I can look back and forth between the two. But interestingly, I found that for moving objects, the objects in the foreground can attract my attention more. I don't know if you think so, but I can't help wondering what role the distance between the active actor and the observation point plays in the calculation of attention in the scene.

Let me say one more thing about "Uninvited Guests": The film perfectly proves that the time spent on excellent scene setting is not only for users, but also for the whole exploration team (or the whole construction team). Because excellent scenes can not only attract the audience, but also bring the audience an immersive experience, and at the same time encourage the director to use the shooting space more flexibly.

abstract

This article is very long, I hope it can be thought-provoking, just as our holiday is coming, so we can think about it when we have time.

I know that many movie master, such as ed catmull of the famous Pixar Animation Studio, have doubts about whether virtual reality can become the medium of the story theme.

In this regard, you can look at game making. In electronic games, the best way to tell is not linear narrative, but linear narrative should be incorporated into the way to build more complex interactive and nonlinear narrative with the help of linear narrative. This year's Tomb Raider: Rise presents these. In terms of games, the highest achievement of VR narrative is to cover linear narrative and transcend the limitations of linear narrative. In order to make the story more popular, some films choose high-end agents, while others superimpose the details of the story location, so that the audience can see the complex scene at first sight.

A real narrator-whether it's a novel, a comedy or a movie-can do this. I believe that in order to make the time spent in Oculus Rift more worthwhile, VR narrative must lay a good foundation from the beginning.

We still have a long way to go. Citizen Kane entered the cinema 46 years after the Lumiere brothers' first film was broadcast. I don't know if we have to wait until the era of VR stories and show you the colors that the screen should have. Will it take that long?

Vr movies are cool and difficult to make.