Experiencing Cinematic VR: Where Theory and Practice Converge in the Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association Volume 2020 Article 9 November 2021 Experiencing Cinematic VR: Where Theory and Practice Converge in the Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360 John V. Pavlik Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings Part of the Communication Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Pavlik, John V. (2021) "Experiencing Cinematic VR: Where Theory and Practice Converge in the Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360," Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association: Vol. 2020 , Article 9. Available at: https://docs.rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings/vol2020/iss1/9 This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association by an authorized editor of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact . Pavlik: Experiencing Cinematic VR Experiencing Cinematic VR: Where Theory and Practice Converge in the Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360 John V. Pavlik, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Conference Paper (Faculty) Abstract Cinematic virtual reality (VR) production has reached enough capacity to support a festival. This paper offers a theoretical framework of VR narrative structure to critically examine one such festival in cinematic VR. The spotlight here is on the fifteen entries in the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360. Findings suggest that although the field of cinematic VR has advanced substantially in recent years in terms of narrative design and user experience, there is still a considerable distance for VR storytellers to travel to fully utilize the nature and potential of the developing medium of virtual reality. Keywords: cinematic virtual reality, immersion, media, storytelling, 360 video The COVID-19 Context The widespread stay-at-home orders imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have given people an increased incentive to find novel and engaging activities in which to participate at home. Among these unusual athome experiences is virtual reality (VR) or other immersive media. Immersive media content experiences can take a variety of forms, including video games, art, journalism and immersive cinema. This paper examines the domain of immersive cinema, or cinematic VR as it is more widely known. Based on a theoretical framework that outlines the nature of narrative design in immersive media, we critically examine the fifteen entries in the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360 competition. Literature Review Published by DOCS@RWU, 1 Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association, Vol. 2020 [], Art. 9 In 1901, Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum imagined electronic glasses that enabled the wearer to see a virtual “character marker” displayed on a fellow human being. Since then, musings about augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have moved from the realm of science fiction into the domain of commercial fact. Computer scientist, mathematician and artist Jaron Lanier coined the term virtual reality (VR) in 1987, the same year he introduced the first commercial VR headset (Virtual Reality Society, 2017). In 1990, Boeing engineer Tom Caudell coined the term augmented reality (AR) as a new approach to plane design and production (Vaughan, 2019). Höllerer, Feiner, and Pavlik (1999) soon developed an AR-based form of storytelling called the Situated Documentary. This form presented non-fiction, news content of past events (e.g., photos, video) displayed on a see-through heads-worn display, with digital content overlaid onto the actual physical location where events had occurred. This ARsystem used geo-location enabled by a combination of Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) and WiFI. Audio playback via headphones provided a narration track and other acoustical elements including audio recordings from past events being re-presented. Omnidirectional images (360 degree) were displayed on the headworn display and the user could turn their head in any direction to look about, or could physically move about in a threedimensional space to move to other locations and access additional AR content layers. Still, the public embrace of these emergent digital media forms has been ambivalent at best. The initial marketplace enthusiasm that in 2013 first welcomed Google’s AR headset dubbed “Glass” quickly turned into marketplace resistance and even revulsion due to privacy concerns. Some even disparaged the wearers as “glassholes” (Honan, 2013). Some three years later, Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive VR HMDs entered the global marketplace with some initial fanfare, as many thought VR had finally come of age (Gownder, Voce, Mai, and Lynch, 2016; Lang, 2019). But that promise waned amidst the high initial cost and technical complexity of the platforms, and especially the growing public realization that there was little quality content available, and most of that was limited to the domain of games. The past three decades have seen relatively slow growth in the public market for AR and VR. “AR and VR have been afflicted by the small size of their respective markets for a long time now. Last year (2019), the global shipments of VR headsets totaled 5.7 million, which compares pretty poorly to the over 1.3 billion smartphones shipped in the same amount of time” (Leprince-Ringuet, 2020). Immersive media in the form of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) may be poised for significant growth in public adoption and usage, however. Smartphones are an increasingly effective platform for AR, and there are more than 3.8 billion of those in operation worldwide (Statista, https://docs.rwu.edu/nyscaproceedings/vol2020/iss1/9 2 Pavlik: Experiencing Cinematic VR 2020). A wide variety of organizations have been creating AR experiences designed for smartphones. Among these are news organizations such as The New York Times, which since the 2018 winter Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, has been creating a growing number of news stories utilizing AR for the iPhone, with others creating AR experiences for Android OS smartphones. Likewise, there are increasing examples of media and other enterprises creating immersive content experiences designed for wearable platforms, such as the Oculus and the HTC Vive head-mounted displays (HMDs). From the BBC to USAToday, a growing number of news media organizations around the world are producing immersive news content. The Sundance Film Festival gave its top award to the immersive journalism production “Hunger in Los Angeles” (Gilmour, 2012; De la Peña, 2017; De la Peña, et al., 2010). Complementary to the immersive news arena, at least a half dozen production studios have produced cinematic VR. Cinematic VR provides sight and sound narratives analogous to traditional cinema, but designed as enveloping experiences meant for HMDs (i.e (...truncated)