In the first part of the project we will be working with demos provided by WeMakeVr. Our job is to tweak the demos, for example by adding 3d binaural sound to make the experience as immersive as possible. Today a journalist of the Volkskrant, who is writing an article about the future of cinema, joined us on a tour of the VR demo’s made by WeMakeVR. When you first experience virtual reality it’s a jaw dropping experience. As soon as the Oculus slides in front of your eyes, you can feel your consciousness shifting to a different location. You’re not sitting in a chair in Amsterdam anymore, but you’re standing in a beautiful garden in Tuscany.
The second demo was shot with a special camera system made by WeMakeVR. The camera can film 360 degrees, horizontally and vertically, so you can see everything around you. In the demo you sit in a boat that’s navigating through the canals of Amsterdam. Even though the footage is shot with a camera, the depth perception is perfect; once again you feel present in the virtual world. When a tour boat passes by your first impulse is to wave to the people in the other boat.
What is a user scene
As a first assignment we made a user scene, a short movie that depicts a day in the life of some of the problems of our target audience.
User Case Interactive Cinema from MediaLAB Amsterdam on Vimeo.
User Scene explanation
We know it looks a little rough, but we think the message is quite clear.
It’s about two young adults who are fed up with the current style of storytelling. While they are watching the first movie they are still gripped by the story, but they soon lose interest. We’re not saying that movies can’t grip an audience anymore, however we think it’s getting harder and harder to impress the current generation. We are ready for something new and we think virtual reality(VR) could be the answer.
Today we had our first meeting with the stakeholders: WeMakeVr and Avro/Tros.
It was great to meet people that are just as excited about VR as we are. We mostly talked about their expectations of the project. There is a lot what they want us to research. Some people experience sensations such as wind during a demo just through the power of suggestion, we are going to look into increasing the number of people who undergo this.
