This week in class we are looking at Virtual or Augmented reality and 4D cinema.

I think that for VR, in the context of storytelling and not medicine or anything else, I think that there is potential for it to become a platform for great visual narrative like cinema has. But I don’t think it’s going to happen too quickly. Cinema at the moment is based on a single plot or story, constructed as the director or studio chooses, but we follow the motivations of the protagonist(s). VR and embodied storytelling would demand so much suspense of disbelief in the audience, trying to put them into a context or a world and that might not work too well.

I just don’t think it will be that easy to get a sense of empathy out of these stories until their content is well constructed. I like the idea of challenging audiences through VR, but I believe using its full potential as an empathetic medium is going to be a very tricky thing to accomplish.

For 4D cinema, detached observation demands that an audience be held back a distance in order to actually appreciate a text. From this, we can assume that 4D cinema is breaking this idea. I think that 4D cinema is a pretty full on idea because watching a film can be a nice escape, but what if it gets too much for a viewer? If you think of Saving Private Ryan, many WW2 veterans in the audiences of the film had to leave their screenings to avoid PTSD flares. That’s not to say that 4D will give people PTSD, but considering a 2d film is emotionally powerful enough to trigger people, what if there are emotional or physical side effects to 4D storytelling. I probably sound like a soccer mum crying AntiVax, but I know when I want to be immersed in a film I still want to be present physically in the real world. I don’t want to be stuck on Sauron’s turf in Mordor and get mauled by a bunch of Uruk-hai.