New Narrative Opportunities
VR narrative will be different if for no other reason than
it will lend itself to certain manipulations as a medium, that previous media
could not achieve. Just as the
addition of sound radically changed cinematic narrative, so will go VR
narratives.
It is far too early to say for certain what those new
narrative ways might be, primarily because we haven’t yet seen how the mass
market will use this new computer interface. When personal computers first appeared on the market they
did not catch on fast. Computers
were kind of nerdy and testy to work with on a daily basis (let’s face it, Mac
or MS DOS, it didn’t matter). And
they were not connected to anything except maybe a slow modem that choked
passing text back and forth. VR
today is sort of in that early, geeky stage. Computers themselves, however, have become ubiquitous and
are used in ways neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates imagined in 1984. It will be interesting to watch this
platform develop.
With that caveat, I have three general observations about VR
narrative: location based stories, genre, and the death of the close-up.
Location-based stories
Stories like the early James Bond series that took American
audiences to exotic locations, where the location is part of the narrative,
will be more popular. Think
immersive story-telling, where the landscape/environment take on conflict
building opportunities. This is
great for action, although action could be the most difficult to translate into
VR.
Eclipse of a genre?
Having run a software department at a major VFX house in
town, I can tell you action sequences are heavily dependent on the single point
perspective you get with a camera used from multiple angles and a digital
reality that is still expensive and difficult to create in 2D for theaters. What does an action sequence in VR look
like?
Sure, movie “stunts” will be digital, not practical,
primarily because it will be MUCH cheaper and makes any view possible, but what
is the experience of the genre in VR?
Part of the rush of action movies all the way back to silent films is watching
the lunacy of stunt men and women who were willing to do crazy things in order
to get a great, sometimes one and a half second, moment.
Action fatigue
Once everything originates in a green screen room with
mocap, everyone will know that no one took any life threatening risks to get
the character in the situation they might be in. There may be moments where the audience can feel the
experience of the hero, say, leaping from a tall building, but what does a car
chase look like in VR? Car chases
in 2D can be exciting, but perhaps VR will lend itself to some other type of
chase that will become a standard expected sequence in the genre. VR might hit the action genre hardest do
to its dependence on the adrenaline rush of a safe, cinematic peril. Seems counter intuitive since VR has
survived and developed the last two decades primarily by the game industry, but
FPS VR games may replace the action genre entirely.
For the moment, I’m pitching a VR/2D love story set in
Mexico.
Love stories
Love stories are great for VR because of their heavy dependence
on at least two people in most scenes—the action genre tends to follow the lone
hero and thus gives you less to work with in a 360 environment.
And of course, the use of romantic locations, giving the
audience a “true” sense of those places—all the beauty and none of the humidity
or insects . . . location-based stories are a natural for love stories. And these are stories meant to be
experienced in a passive mode with directed VR.
Directed VR narrative
Humans have enjoyed being told stories in a passive mode as
entertainment for a long time so it is unlikely that will change any time soon. Only a small percentage of the market
will want to use VR for FPS action.
Most VR entertainment will be consumed passively, primarily
as a break from what will undoubtedly become an active data frenzy of VR
navigation as part of our work and daily life. A massive audience out there will prefer to be “directed”
through a 360-ish narrative with limited interaction.
Imagine working with a 160 degree wide canvas—roughly what
you can see naturally—with a true stereoscopic experience of 114 degrees
designed for someone who wants to sit back, maybe even close their eyes, or
check other media with the story as a background, “desktop image” to use on
old, 2D metaphor.
Standards will emerge that will codify a new visual rhetoric
of trope-based shorthand conventions that are most powerful.
One 2D visual tool that will go away is the hero close-up.
The Death of the Close-up
While powerful in 2D, in VR, the close-up will feel “too
close”—one of my arguments for love stories: they largely depend on two-shots,
although the close up is certainly used in all love stories. In VR the close up would feel somewhat
creepy—well, to most people. So
the close up will go away except . . . in horror, maybe? If it does, the star system will go
with it.
The star system is built around the close up. If you diminish the value and use of
the close up in standard practice, then the power of the star machinery loses
its stock in trade to draw audiences.
And if anyone can be mapped onto a mocap character, what will be the
value of “real-life” stars? When
the mocap is one person and the “face” is a licensed image of someone else, how
do you generate fame of any great value?
It won’t be your “fifteen minutes of fame”, it will be your “fifteen
dollars of fame”.
And that does not make for a career. Fame can, in fact, be brutal. If the star system collapses, you won’t
even get paid much for it.
Producers will license the image of whomever they think has the
“perfect” look for the part in each particular story with no need to reuse
images except on cheaper, lower budget projects for less and less pay, until
you’ve licensed out all your options.
It will be all about finding the unique image for that character and
that story, never to be repeated.
What genres work well in VR remains to be seen. How the industry responds to a
dissolving of the star system and what will take its place will certainly be
interesting to watch develop.
