Last night, the Seattle International Film Festival opened its VR-based Festival-Within-A-Festival, SIFFX. For one weekend only, SIFF is taking over several spaces around the Seattle Center to hold a conversation about the potential for Virtual Reality, its possibilities as a mass product, and what people get out of the medium that they can’t get from other forms of media, such as traditional single-screen film.
SIFFX had its opening night gala in the Pacific Science Center’s Laser Dome, where they threw an experiment of re-working formerly 360º experiences into a half-dome projection, similar to OMNIDOME/IMAX Dome (as a side note: if you ever get a chance to see the spinning umbrella of Destiny in Space in the Dome format, DO IT). They also handed out SIFFX-branded Google Cardboard viewers to experience a faux-VR facsimile of the same videos in a much more intimate manner.
Just in case you haven’t heard about it yet, Google Cardboard is a $15 foldable device into which you can place your phone, and turn it into a mini-stereoscope (ex: novelty foldout images that turn 3-dimensional when viewed through the provided lenses; Tool’s packaging for 10,000 Days). Using Google’s Cardboard app or VRSE’s app, one can place the phone in the packaging and view a 3-Dimensional world that can also be looked around in a 360º fashion. It’s an everyman’s Oculus.
The featured video of the night was VRSE’s Evolution of Verse, an immersive world of trains, birds, ribbons, and giant babies that might want to eat you. At one point, the train comes directly at the screen, recreating the urban legend that surrounds the Lumiere Brothers film. It provided a great beginning for asking the question of what VR means, and what we can do with the technology.
VR (or immersive video) has been developing in the background for years. When I was in college, they had a giant VR room with 3D glasses where we recreated the ruins of Chichen Itza as a class project (another team recreated The Matrix‘s training modules). In recent years, news organizations have started filming odd events with a 360º camera, so when you view the video on your phone the image tilts and spins. And, more recently, news organizations have been developing video for the stereoscopic 3D image.
Most of the films features at SIFFX’s opening night were heavy news films about shootings at the Mexican border or a woman who survived ebola. One was about global warming, and put the camera at the bottom of a glacier. In the VRSE app, they have all kinds of videos, including docs and stereoscopic 360º music videos from Squarepusher (which comments directly on the dystopic fears of VR), Muse, and U2. Which brings up the question: what should this new technology be used for? Should it operate in the same manner as film, putting the audience in the center of the scene (if not in a first-person mode like Hardcore Henry). Is it useful for putting you in the center of another part of the common world for a news story? Do we want to visit other parts of the world or explore new worlds?
At the same time, what does VR mean for the community experience of film? Film is/was once a very communal act where everybody had a shared experience. At opening night, they conducted an experiment for 40 people to watch on the Google Cardboard, and for everybody else to watch on the dome. It created a strange experience where we were separated from not just the glasses people but also each other. Can we have a collective immersive experience?
SIFFX’s opening night placed these questions at the forefront of the discussion. Do we need to be immersed in Ethiopia to fully grasp the story? What purpose does it serve? What do we all want out of the experience?
(featured image is of Squarepusher’s Stor Eiglass)