VR and the Death of the Close-up

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.