While I was spending my days last week apartment hunting as part of my move to a new job in Macon, GA, I was spending my nights at the Macon Film Festival. It was suggested it would be a good opportunity to check out the various theater spaces around town.
One thing I encountered that I hadn’t really seen at other film festivals I have attended is a growing number of fulldome and virtual reality films. There were workshops about how to make films for both formats.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to view any of the fulldome films, but I did see a number of VR films on an Oculus VR rig. They ranged from the psychedelic trippy to animated shorts to documentaries about prison life and all female brigades fighting ISIS.
As you might imagine, among my primary thoughts while viewing the movies was the question about whether the technology posed a threat to live performances.
Currently, I don’t think what I experienced does as the viewing rig got uncomfortable after a time and there were frequent glitches. Also, as viewers our movement was confined to spinning right and left and looking up and down. (Admittedly, more range of motion than permitted in many live performance experiences.) It is only a matter of time though before those problems and limitations get ironed out and the techniques for creating compelling experiences and narratives develop and mature.
Whether that can ever replace the tactile and social experience of live performance, I don’t know.
I was interested to see that similar questions were posed in the session description for the film festival’s introduction to VR film making session:
Can VR generate empathy? Does it isolate us or create a deeper sense of community?
I think Oculus & Co cater to very specific audience: young men with lots of testosterone.
Me, I never played games on a computer.
Last year I saw a 20 min U2 concert in an Oculus. They played. Just for me.
It was a moving experience, I have to admit – and I don’t even like their music.
But after 20 min I was sweating profoundly from and under the mask. I am talking rivulets of sweat running down my face and neck.
And I wondered about the cleaning procedure for the Oculus as I left and they set it up for the next customer 😉