Virtual reality entertainment is nothing new; it's earlier, less-sophisticated predecessors featured crudely rendered animation, but technology and content have come a long way since then. The evidence supporting this claim has been made conspicuous at the Virtual Arcade at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. The event was covered by critic Neil Genzlinger in his article: With a Helmet, Who Needs Popcorn in today's New York Times Arts section. Eighteen virtual-reality "films" have been made available to festival patrons in a variety of genres: animated stories, short documentaries and short narrative films. Of course viewing is only made possible with viewing devices such as the one pictured above.
Genzlinger shares his viewing experiences, which seem wondrous, even to someone like myself who has yet to sample the technology. The article gives a brief synopsis and viewing description of the visual shorts available in the Arcade. One film is the animated short Allumette; a story about a girl in a cloud city. Genzlinger describes the virtual reality piece as such:
...and when the city appears, you are inside it. You can walk paths, look up at the sky, peer down at other levels of the city below. The film is viewed standing up, and you may find yourself ducking so as not to hit your head on that virtual bridge or stepping awkwardly to avoid treading on the vagabond sleeping under the bridge. When the ship carrying the young girl to the new land docks, if you walk over to it and stick your head through the side, you're suddenly looking at the interior rooms of the vessel...
And later in the article, he writes, "Overall, the room (the Arcade) invites you to contemplate the implications of this radical shift in how movies might be made and watched...:"
Though a full-length feature film has yet to be made for virtual reality, it's fairly clear where visual storytelling is headed. As movie theaters cede ground to cable television's copious offerings and whatever people seem to find so fascinating on their cellphones, images projected three-dimensionally in a helmet seem like a logical, technological progression. Being immersed in and being part of the story also seem like natural evolutionary steps in the movie-viewing experience. Genzlinger notes how the virtual shorts often coax a physical reaction from the viewer. He mentions making swimming motions with one's arms during a film about sea-floor exploration.
He briefly addresses the negative impact of virtual reality when he writes;
It's easy to see this depersonalizing us--we've already retreated from real life into our cellphone and tablet screens; will we next disappear into our helmets?
I don't know what impact the medium will have on our cognitive faculties or our consciousness, but I've learned people quickly overcome their aversion to technological phenomena (remember when people hated cellphones?). But he considers its positive aspects as well when he envisions a multiplayer-like scenario where participants share an experience.
As a life-long cinephile, I've seen movies withstand assaults from television, video and computer games but the medium's dominance may be at an end. It's only a matter of time before virtual reality becomes mainstream and when it does, it's easy to imagine headsets superseding flat screens in living rooms. If and when that happens, will anyone bother with movies or T.V. as we know them? Will classic cinema, like Lawrence of Arabia be forgotten; dismissed as quaint entertainment, or will it become absorbed into virtual reality? Will it be possible to ride next to Lawrence as he crosses the Jordanian desert alone? The thought of a hundred years of cinema vanishing in the wake of virtual reality "cinema" is heartbreaking. Given the Arcade patron's enthusiastic responses to the viewing, as noted by Genzlinger, one can't help but feel cinema's future is decidedly grim.
I can't help but be excited and curious about what virtual reality promises but the technology also leaves me feeling pessimistic. I'm not ready to give up The Seven Samurai or The Third Man just yet--or ever. Maybe I should enjoy the silver screen while it's still here; the future may belong exclusively to head-sets.
Neil Genzlinger: With a Helmet, Who Needs Popcorn?
No comments:
Post a Comment