Uncoded high-definition personal experience - the era of VR movies has arrived

I believe that anyone who has been to a movie theater will be familiar with 3D. Whether it is a Hollywood blockbuster or a domestic youth drama, it must have the word 3D, although some of them only have 3D subtitles.

Like in The Matrix, people live in nutrient tanks, their spirits interact and fight with others in the virtual world; in Avatar, people's consciousness can communicate in another world... One thing is certain now - it is quite easy to arouse people's empathy in VR - watching VR videos is not like "watching" but "experiencing it in person". Imagine that you are sitting on the sofa in the living room, choosing the movie you want to watch, putting on VR glasses, and then you enter a movie, and your friends who are thousands of miles away experience the movie together with you.

No matter how wild the vision of the future of this emerging medium is, it has definitely arrived. Oculus, a virtual reality device manufacturer under Facebook, screened its first VR movie at the Sundance Film Festival. The content of the movie was made with CG animation rather than footage shot by a 360-degree panoramic camera. The movie was only 4 minutes long, so it would be more appropriate to call it a micro-movie.

VR movies are coming

The current press conferences have shown that consumer-grade VR headsets will be available in the first half of next year. VR technology is developing very fast, and research related to VR film production is becoming more mature. How to use VR to shoot, how to choose the perspective of VR movies, and how to achieve an immersive viewing experience have become hot topics for filmmakers walking at the forefront of technology.

If there is anything that can disrupt the global film industry in the next five to ten years like Uber disrupted the global taxi industry, it is VR.

Justin Lin, the director of the previous Fast & Furious series, brought people the VR short film Help!, in which the audience can adjust the viewing angle to find the narrative clues of the story in the film and "see" the whole story; the Ghost in the Shell series starring Scarlett Johansson also announced recently that it will have "VR-related content, and VR-related elements will be added to the movie"; the Warcraft movie to be released next year has launched a VR version trailer, which allows a panoramic tour of Stormwind City.

Although there are no official live-action VR movies online, VR technology has shown its huge potential in the film industry.

Movies or Games

The highly interactive nature of VR itself will in turn give rise to a VR movie in which the audience can interact with it and influence the course of the story. In essence, such a VR movie is actually a game with a cinematic structure and drama.

Take Ghost in the Shell as an example. In its world view, human consciousness can enter the digital network. Some things that are not related to the main plot and show the world view can be done by the audience - such as connecting to the network and exchanging information in real time. This is only part of the functions that VR can achieve. In the future, the boundaries between VR movies and VR games will become increasingly blurred. In a few years, when the Ghost in the Shell movie is released, VR may have entered the mainstream.

Industry insiders predict that in the VR era, cinemas will face unprecedented challenges, and traditional theaters with rows of seats may lose their meaning; at the same time, IP will become more important, and the promotion of new technologies requires super IPs that dare to try new things to attract fans; the placement of peripheral products will become more intuitive, and you can have a 360-degree intimate contact with the surroundings while watching a movie.

The emergence of VR short films and VR micro-films is not only an attempt, but also a demonstration of the narrative potential of virtual reality technology to filmmakers. It is expected to bring new changes to the current film industry.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.