Combing narrative cinema and virtual reality.

I was recently at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas to explore what's new in the world of cameras and the technology that comes with them.  To no ones surprise a huge proportion of the show floor was dedicated to virtual reality.  New fully integrated cameras and combinations to combine multiple cinema cameras into a 360 degree views.  It seems VR is going to be a huge part of the entertainment industry; and not just in a distant future.  The thirst for content is about to be massive.  The first place VR can easily find itself is in sports and action environments. It's even relatively easy to do; nearly plug and play. But there's more story to tell, and that's where filmmakers and storytellers can have there chance.

The world of narrative filmmaking is one that most people are inherently failure with, even if your average person wouldn't know it.  We've grown up with movies as a society, and have become accustomed to there flow and mechanics.  As close to cinema as it seems, VR is in some ways on another planet when it comes to directorial, visual and editorial decisions.  One of the first speakers I was able to listen to at NAB described the difficulty of cueing the viewer to be looking in the appropriate direction for a cut to make sense.  Assuming the viewer was looking at a window where an intruder to a house was entering, a quick cut to the upstairs worked well. The problem was, you can't force the viewer to do so, and in tests, a third of viewers were looking the wrong direction.  Some of the proposed solutions included lighting cues and especially 3d mapped audio that can cue viewers to a specific spot.  These solutions are among many, but they are creating new and interesting ways to tackle the challenge of VR.