Virtual Reality Filmmaking by Tricart Celine

Author:Tricart, Celine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Katy Newton and Karin Soukup’s study highlights a fundamental aspect of virtual reality storytelling: when surrounded by a 360º sphere of potential information, participants are less likely to catch the subtleties of the story, especially when those subtleties are delivered through audio. Instead, they find themselves more connected to the characters’ emotions and the tone of the narration. The sense of presence increases empathy compared to traditional media, where the distance between the viewer and the rectangular screen creates an emotional safety net. Presence is a valuable tool for storytellers but also raises the question of responsibility and ethics when it comes to certain extreme VR experiences.

Katy Newton and Karin Soukup, Filmmakers and Experience Designers

Over ten weeks, we conducted sets of experiments with over 40 participants and interviewed experts from multiple perspectives, from design-thinking, theater, gaming, architecture, journalism, science, and film.

To explore the audience’s experience in VR, we partnered with Stanford’s d.school Media Experiments, the National Film Board of Canada, and independent filmmaker Paisley Smith. To anchor the testing, we used scenes and locations from Paisley Smith’s VR documentary, “Taro’s World.” The documentary explores the death of her Japanese exchange student brother, Taro, and the impact his suicide had on the people around him. “Taro’s World” has been released in 2016 for mobile VR  –  Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR.

We mimicked the constraints of VR technology, restricting our participants’ movements and interactions to match the affordances of Google Cardboard. We created “magic goggles” (actually made of plastic, paper, tape, and a front-facing camera) that limited the audience’s peripheral view while simultaneously recording their head movements.

When participants wore the magic goggles, their head movements replicated those of someone in a mobile VR headset, compelling them to “stitch” the scenes of the 360° story-world together themselves.

In one of our tests, participants were placed in the center of a room simulating Taro’s bedroom. While wearing headphones with 360° sound, they watched a scene play out in the room. The participants were divided into three groups with three varying degrees of restriction on what they could see:

Figure 6.4 Photo: Karin Soukup

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