Two different beasts.

Personally I am utterly in love with Film as an art form. But when you break it down to its simple building blocks, which are more than a century old, you discover it’s quite an artificial construct.

The different kind of shots, the scenes, the mis-en-scene, and the flow of time in film, is a language. And its purpose is to emulate the flow of the story. When you peer closer, it’s quite striking how this language differs  from the way we perceive reality, from one instant to the next.

You could make a case for the indie film which uses less cuts, wider shots, and is generally less prone to force upon the viewer author’s intention.  But even those films have a distinct vision and a multitide of artistic choices, be they more or less subtle, which force upon the viewer some kind of vision. And there is nothing wrong with this. On the contrary. It’s an art form, just like any other, with its rules and rigor.

So when you think about VR as a storytelling medium, you realise a lot of what works in film, just doesn’t make any sense in VR. The framing of the shots which is the staple of the filmatic language goes right out of the window. This one is a biggie. I mean, what simple tools generates more emotion in Film, than precise framing. This not only directs our attention to the action, but is also able to conceal or reveal true human emotions in a very subjective way. This is what makes film an art form.

But if you think about the real time rendered, open-world VR experiences, which have a freeform camera, this (the framing) is no longer valid. Although games like Fallout 4 are not yet done in VR, they are a good example of well done interactive stories, but where the camera is the viewer’s player’s eye.

You could argue that there are cut scenes, of course, and here the artist can force upon us short snippets of well composed filmatic shots.  Here he can manipulate our feelings at will, just the way he inteded it. And when you inspect interactive stories like  “That Dragon Cancer”, they resort to this simple tool as well.

But, I think these sort of storytelling tools are on their way out. And if one uses them, one misses the point with the medium. In my opinion Virtual Reality, as the name implies btw, has the biggest impact when it emulates life itself. So when you think about framing, and watching something passively, even a story well-told, you are not using the power of this medium. Once you get into the pre-made shots, where the viewer loses control of their ability to look around, you lose the viewer’s sense of free will, and the illusion that he is in a real/parallell reality.

And this brings us to another powerful tool in film. Just as framing, the passage of time, has its own tools which the public is well used to. But when you break it down, it’s again a very archaic way of presenting reality. The ellipses and shot cuts are necessary but that doesn’t mnean they work well in VR

A man by the name of Cartelmike makes a succint point:

And this brings us to the elephant in the room with the current notion of VR Storytelling. (Storytelling) It always has been. People didn’t sit around the campfire telling stories in the timeframes that they actually occurred. And i’m not aware of realtime books. Linear… Storytelling is a RETROSPECTIVE thing. Interlude narrative mechanisms have evolved to break down the constraints of time and emotive viewpoint. But herein lies the VR Storytelling anachronism.

Cartelmike continues to make an argument that VR can never succeed as a storytelling tool. Personally, I think it’s missing the point. The true power of storytelling in VR lies in its natural 1:1 passage of time. Only this true to life flow of time has the ultimate power of immersing us in the story. Anything less woul dbe jarring. Of course there will be some ways as to jump bigger chunks of time, for the sake of the story, (a fade comes to mind) but mostly we want to get the viewer grounded in the here and now.

I think that in order to batter  the viewer’s emotional heart-strings, we need to see the story unfold before our eyes, while we particpate in it in real time. Not while we watch a lengthy cut scene where the author’s tools are visible right in front of us.  But  done, “behind the scenes”, through dialog with another character, by exploration in real time, or by performing a certain story tasks, making the veiwer active. We need to feel that we are tight in the middle of the story by the way of participation. This is the true power of this medium. And we need to make him believe that what is evolving in front of his eyes, is 100% real. That’s powerful.

To  reiterate my point, I think we are missing the point with VR by emulating the tools which work so well in Film. In my opinion,the closer we get to life, and the subtler cues we can create behind the scenes of the VR narrative, in order to guide the viewer through the story, the more powerful of an emotional experience we will end up with.

As a side note, read this excerpt by Carolina Milanesi:

Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab has been studying VR for more than a decade. In 2009, the lab published the results of a study that focused on children’s memory and VR. A group of children played with whales underwater through VR. A week after the experience took place, they were asked about it. Some 50 percent of them said they remembered it as if it actually happened in the physical world.

Even more interesting was how viewers reacted to one tested story ending, where the other bunny dies. Killing the bunny triggered much stronger feelings than it would have done in a regular movie. You are in the story; you are the bunny’s companion, yet there is nothing you can do to save it. You can see how this must be much harder on children — and adults, for that matter— I cried watching “Pete’s Dragon”! — than a traditional screening, even a 3-D one.

An appeal for the future.