Virtual Reality. It’s finally here. Or so I keep hearing. Neither I, nor anyone I know actually owns a VR headset. But as anyone connected to our lovely industry knows, it’s coming. And it’s not just for gamers, apparently.
I must admit, when I first heard about virtual reality possibly falling into the creative video realm, I was skeptical. Where do you hide the crew? How do you get the audience to look where you need them to look? What would a transition look like? How about a straight cut? What editing tools would I need? Most importantly, what makes it more than a gimmick?
Let me state right away that I don’t really have answers to these questions. But I do have questions. That’s what makes the prospect of VR more exciting to me than it was six months ago. Before I go on about VR, let’s look back to the origins of cinema.
It all started as a gimmick. Thomas Edison had invented a moving photograph. But the technology was limited, requiring subjects to remain in one place. Specifically, they stayed inside a “studio” known as the “Black Maria”. The films played in a device called the Kinetoscope, which could only accommodate one person at a time. It functioned as a true “moving picture”, rather than a mechanism for storytelling. Later the Lumière Brothers projected their films. The camera remained stationary, but film became a shared experience, if not yet a storytelling platform. What followed was a vignette-style medium, where small stories (more similar to poems than actual stories), could be told. Georges Méliès famously incorporated these vignettes into his magic shows. Alice Guy was also among the first to flirt with storytelling in film (see The Cabbage Fairy in 1896). Then, in the wake of 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, there was an explosion of creativity in the medium, especially among filmmakers like D.W. Griffith, who created and expanded film grammar.
Since the birth of the film medium in the silent era, there has not been a fundamentally new genre to tell stories (except for perhaps video games). That is where I think the excitement lies in Virtual Reality. VR is to film what film was to the photograph—similar in appearance, but another medium altogether. In the next year or two, we will have VR’s Lumiére Brothers, Georges Méliès and Alice Guy. Innovators who will take it beyond a diverting novelty. More exciting than that is the possibilities that await when VR gets its D.W. Griffith.
But until then, us editors have more pressing questions. Is this going to be something I have to learn to stay relevant? After all, it was nearly 20 years between Alice Guy’s Cabbage Fairy and D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, when the film industry began in earnest. Will I have answers when the inevitable barrage of questions come from first-time VR producers? Will I be able to adapt my skills to the new editing tools? Most importantly, will I be able to forget all the filmmaking rules I know, and invent some new ones?
There are some exciting possibilities in the horror and science fiction genres. I believe it could take documentary filmmaking to a new level–imagine running with a herd of zebras, or being immersed in a massive protest. These genres thrive on producing surprise, fear and curiosity–emotions well-suited to VR. The real test will be in drama and comedy, the genres where complex emotion–joy and heartbreak–are key to drawing the audience in.
I don’t have answers to my questions. I only look forward to the day I get to find out. After all, Griffith was a washed up thirty-something writer and actor when he revolutionized the film business.
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