Pro Moviemaker Winter 2018

MAKING SENSE OF VR

IMAGES The Insta360 Pro was pressed into service on a project for Conservation International, called My Africa , filmed in Kenya.

remarkable Shannon Gans of New Deal Studios - who wanted us to take a look at VR narrative and to consider collaborating with her on developing some serialised content for HMDs. As flawed and as limited as the tech was back in 2014, we instantly saw the huge potential for telling stories.” To make a long story short, Annie and BJ dived in head first, quickly

realising howmuch they had to learn before even trying to write a script for a VR experience. “The medium can have similarities to theatre and film,” says Annie, “while at other times it reminded us of classic radio programming. In short, it was a genuinely unique medium, so we needed to bank some hours with the technology to learn what kind of stories and storytelling would live well in an HMD. “The first stop was to buy an Oculus DK2 and try to use video games like Alien Isolation to brainstorm about framing and to explore emotional connection. Robots in that game will follow you around so we used that ‘feature’ to create primitive storyboards to share with each other. Obviously, that only went so far, and before long we found ourselves the owners of a ten-camera GoPro rig and a computer capable of stitching together small experiments in VR narrative.” In the filmmaking world things have a habit of developing their own momentum, and once word got out that Annie and BJ had a VR rig jobs organically started to come their way. Now a name was needed: “We knew the company would always be driven by tech just beyond the horizon,” says Annie, “so Vanishing Point Media seemed appropriate.”

“As flawed and as limited as the tech was back in 2014, we instantly saw the huge potential for telling stories”

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WINTER 2018 PRO MOVIEMAKER

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