Before I start off with what I intended to write for this post, I’d like to share an article I found online on The Conversation (this has become a running theme on my blog apparently), regarding VR. The article, titled, “Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing“, caught my attention as soon as I read the headlines, as I found it really relevant, not only to this studio, but in today’s day and age. VR is used to bring someone closer to experiencing something they might desire, without having put in the same circumstances, be it, financially low on budget, safety risks, or health conditions, and more. There have been so much written about the wonders of VR, being able to be “two places” at once. (Two places in inverted commas, because technically, you’re physically still in one). How suspension of disbelief is taken to the extreme where one loses their sense of the surrounding, and is immersed into a whole different world. However, the article is one of the few, if not only, articles that I’ve read so far that disregards the whole fascination over VR. Like being a wet blanket, if you will, spoiling everyone’s fun. One of the key arguments is having “Cheap Emotions”, where one does not get the full emotional experience of being at Niagara Falls, hence the experience is cheapened, like having a game on cheat mode and your avatar can’t die. It takes the fun away from the  whole experience. I guess it’s always good to view all sides of the story, “the good, the bad, the ugly”, and see what comes out of it, how do we benefit from these views, comments, issues, feedback, and perhaps work around it or even improve on it.

Anyway, diving into the point for this post. Having taken a closer look at the VR project done on the Indigenous people of Australia, titled Carriberrie, mentioned in my previous blog post, unfortunately I could not find any access to the actual film, but only the teaser, and I don’t own any VR equipment capable of projecting the visuals. However, even just from the teaser alone, we can get a rough idea of how it’s like to be living in the jungle or desert with the various Indigenous tribes of people and learn their culture. The only thing I found a bit restrictive was the timing between cuts from one shot to another. Although it was shot on a 360 camera or made to look like it was, the viewer is still given a limited amount of time to wander before it changes to another location or shot. In terms of modularity, or interactivity, though it engages the viewer, other than panning our heads left and right, up and down, we don’t have much control of the scenery or what comes next and after.

In terms of variability, I guess you can argue how the project takes on various forms of media, photography, videos, audio (both music and atmospheric sounds) into it’s project. And all these fragments rolled into one delivers the user an immersive experience of as if they were there. Personally, I think the only thing differs this project from traditional documentary filmmaking is the fact that it is done on VR with very high-end sophisticated equipment. But then again, I’ve yet to experience the full immersive VR experience of the film to make any judgement. What I’m trying to say is, the content could be anything under the Sun, it’s the mode of delivery that matters when it comes to telling your story. Something which should be discussed with the group in the coming weeks for our Assignment 3. What are we going to present isn’t important, but how are we going to present it with the use of Korsakow.