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Virtual reality TV is edging closer, with producers, manufacturers and broadcasters trialling the technology for music, sport, natural history and even news.
Facebook’s $2bn (£1.3bn) purchase of Oculus Rift last March returned the decades-old technology of virtual reality (VR) to the spotlight, but what has galvanised interest among film and TV producers is the recent release of Samsung Gear VR, co-developed with Oculus.
Gear VR and similar headsets, like Google Cardboard, turn smartphones into mobile VR devices for less than £150. VR consultant KZero estimates there will be 171 million VR users worldwide by 2018. Today’s 2 billion smartphone owners make for an enticing distribution prospect, but VR producers are itching for that breakthrough moment.
“It’s like waiting for DVD players to come out, having struck the DVDs,” says Atlantic Productions chief executive Anthony Geffen. “We’re waiting for devices to get our content out there on a regular basis, which in turn will drive the business model.”
Atlantic has transferred its expertise in stereo 3D production to the new medium, creating a series of VR shorts with distribution intended for VR headset brands.
Samsung, Oculus, Sony and Google all have their own VR content stores and are funding content.
Samsung, for example, has commissioned Red Bull Media House, music brand Boiler Room and The Walking Dead producer Skybound Entertainment to create VR films for its Milk VR platform.
Over the past two weeks, the Sundance Film Festival has shown nine VR films in a section devoted to innovative film-making. Oculus’s own film-making division, Story Studio, staffed by CG artists from ILM and Pixar, screened its animated short Lost. VR trailers have also been made to accompany studio releases including How To Train Your Dragon 2.
However, this is not yet a gold rush. In the current Wild West of experimentation, there are many technical and creative issues to solve, not least the type of content to which the intimate, interactive yet potentially claustrophobic format is best suited.
Sky is testing VR on a range of content including drama (Critical; Fortitude), comedy (Trollied) and entertainment (Got To Dance). Last year, it sent a team to the New Zealand set of The Hobbit to shoot a 90-second VR promo coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson’s latest film.
Involvement in virtual reality is handy PR for the broadcaster, which likes to be seen as a technology pioneer. For now though, it is playing down any suggestion that the tests are more than toes in the water.
“These are three- to five-minute pieces intended as workflow concepts,” explains Jens Christensen, founder and chief executive of Jaunt, the US producer and tech developer behind the tests. Sky has invested £400,000 in Jaunt and taken a seat on its board.
Jaunt’s work includes coverage of Sir Paul McCartney and Jack White concerts, WWII-themed The Mission and horror short Black Mass.
“All these are fairly short pieces,” says Christensen. “We don’t feel it’s time for long-form yet. This is a time to develop best practice.”
Jaunt’s aim is to scale up content production. “Our technology is now at a stage where we can record and produce VR experiences in a fairly quick turnaround – days not weeks,” he says.
Christensen dubs these experiences ‘cinematic VR’ to differentiate them from computer game VR, but there are strong parallels between the two, not least in the blurring of narrative with interactive storytelling. The catch is that conventional fi lm and TV production skills don’t easily translate to the 360-degree medium.
“Every rule you take from film into VR has to be relearned the hard way,” argues Mike Woods, who runs Framestore’s VR Studio. “No one has established what those rules are. You can literally do anything to anyone when you’re in a virtual room with them.”
Among the conundrums are: should a VR story be told from a fly-on-the-wall – the way most filmed content is told today – or first-person point of view? To what extent should the user interact with the action? How is audio best used to direct attention to part of the scene? How do you bring other senses into play? And how can you prevent nausea?
“The basic film language that has been finely honed over decades won’t work in VR,” says Henry Cowling, creative director of UNIT9, which launched a VR division last autumn. “The popularity of VR for narrative content is going to live or fall on how we solve these storytelling problems.”
There are questions for actors too. Christensen likens the transition to that of theatre to cinema in the 1920s. “There was a period of overacting as performers adjusted to the intimacy of the camera,” he says. “With VR, the actor’s performance needs to be even more subtle, as the viewer is right there in the scene with them at all times.”
Woods says Framestore encourages its clients to break from thinking of VR as a marketing tool or second-screen support: “Our big goal is to make content that stands in its own right.”
The facility has established a 40- strong VR department on the back of expertise in real-time rendering engines for games, and has completed a dozen projects including trailers for Gravity, Game Of Thrones and Interstellar.
“We are used to a model where writers and directors come to us to solve issues, but we’re finding that model is being turned upside down,” says Woods. “There are no writers and directors who know more about VR than we do. We are technically in pole position to make these photorealist experiences.”
Framestore has even coined new job titles for core production skills. These include a virtual director of photography to advise on grading a scene “no matter where you choose to look”, and a UX (user experience) specialist. “They need to understand how people react to things and how narrative cues are best delivered,” says Woods.
Because VR relies so heavily on specialist technical skills – motion capture is another important building block – producers feel that working through the issues internally delivers the best results.
Atlantic fused 3D production with VFX wing Zoo to form Alchemy and even builds its own 360-degree camera rigs; Drive Worldwide, which acquired VR tech firm Figure Digital last June, is to launch VR-focused R&D lab Drive Technologies; and UNIT9’s ambitions include an expanded SFX capacity, 3D and motion-capture facilities.
“The cost of VR production is at least 50% above the norm,” says Drive chief executive Ben Fender, who believes it will be 18-24 months before VR will have any kind of deep impact. “Every project requires a different way of thinking from script to production pipeline."
Woods says VR production is not hugely different to conventional setups, albeit that capture is more time-consuming. “There is a lot of data to process but the workflow is not dissimilar and the mark-up is not astronomical,” he argues. A two-minute CGI spot is roughly equivalent to the cost of a two-minute VR experience.
While travel and nature programming seem obvious fits for VR’s immersive potential, Christensen suggests that news reporting too could be given fresh objectivity. “You could deliver a live feed from a VR camera in a particular hot spot, such as a riot, to give people the feeling of being present,” he suggests.
Development is already under way in this area. Project Syria by Nonny de la Peña, research fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism, uses news footage and stills to recreate an attack in Aleppo to give viewers a sense of the effect of the conflict on those living there. “There are parallels with large format film-making,” says DJ Roller, co-founder of NextVR.
“You are not going to dive deep underwater or climb Everest, but VR can trick your senses to give you the experience of being there.”
For example, the company recently filmed a Coldplay concert to be viewed on the Samsung Gear VR headset, and US basketball league NBA has trialled NextVR’s live VR recording system, which is based on stereo 3D compression technology.
This week, the company staged what it claimed was the first live VR test broadcast when a reporter was ‘transported’ from Michigan to California’s Laguna Beach.
Roller claims to have had interest from sports bodies and broadcasters in the UK. “Live VR experiences can put the viewer in the front row,” he says.
Others are experimenting with putting rigs onto players. “We’re exploring ways of miniaturising the kit by using multiple mobile phone-type cameras,” says Fender.
During last year’s Commonwealth Games, BBC R&D live-streamed 360-degree video to Oculus Rift headgear as part of a series of tests that also included music performances.
Natural history could be next. “Live VR has particular challenges around synchronising the visual and audio elements and the sheer data rate,” says Graham Thomas, section leader, immersive & interactive content, BBC R&D. “The jury is out on the extent to which VR will become more than niche.”
From a consumer point of view, strapping hardware to one’s face may seem even more antisocial than wearing 3D glasses, but the ability to interact with friends within virtual worlds is considered key to mainstream adoption.
Christensen is not convinced that avatars – graphical representations of users displayed invision – are the answer, but says using voice to communicate and share a VR experience is already compelling in VR gaming. Many are looking to Oculus owner Facebook to integrate a social experience within VR.
“I would hesitate to say VR will eclipse 2D media, but it is a richer experience,” says Cowling. “If I were a TV producer, I’d be looking to learn the new skills. Even if all the productions for it are short-form, it will still be a significant platform and will still drive a significant audience.”
Another short, Micro Monsters VR, revisits assets from Atlantic’s 2013 Attenborough-fronted 3D series and will be available on the Oculus platform. “Because the storytelling is already so strong in 3D, we decided to build a VR world that puts the viewer inside the undergrowth to interact with the insects,” says chief executive Anthony Geffen.
“That is the added value of this experience.” Note will be taken of audience response to the release, with a view to creating new VR episodes.
A third short, still in production, is based on the laser-scanning techniques used to create digital 3D models of the Egyptian pyramids, originally commissioned for National Geographic series Time Scanners.
“It’s a way of freeing up worlds and building on assets we already have,” says Geffen. The indie has conducted VR tests on sport and drama and shot footage from submersibles thousands of feet below the sea for a VR experience to accompany a TV special later this year.
“You don’t have to create an entire project in 360 degrees,” says Geffen. “2D linear content looks fantastic in a VR headset, and combining 2D footage with VR sequences is one way of extending the length of VR beyond short-form.”
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