How long before vir­tu­al real­i­ty takes over from film?

A girl’s bed­room at night. Jes­si­ca lies on her bed, a pen in her hand, writ­ing a let­ter. Her TV glows, almost float­ing near the end of her bed, and the night sky out­side tints every­thing in a tran­quil blue sheen. Crick­ets croak in the under­growth outside.

A sub­lime vir­tu­al real­i­ty film called Dear Angel­i­ca, by Sasch­ka Unseld, takes the view­er on a jour­ney through dreams, thoughts and fan­tasies. It’s an ani­mat­ed work made up of still images giv­en life and motion by the flu­id­i­ty of the art. Brush­strokes drift as if they are breath­ing with young Jes­si­ca, who is in the depths of slumber.

These lines are both clear styl­is­tic ele­ments of the design, yet fine detail­ing lends them a phys­i­cal qual­i­ty. It’s uncan­ny to see what is clear­ly an artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a bed have a three-dimen­sion­al pres­ence. You could, if you want­ed, crouch down and wrap your hands around the appari­tion of a bed post.

As a point of com­par­i­son, you might recall the huge shark holo­gram that attempts to take a bite out of Mar­ty McFly in Back to the Future Part II​’s vision of 2015. This pixel­lat­ed effi­gy seemed fan­ci­ful at the time, but look­ing back, it’s one of the film’s more prophet­ic touch­es. The aug­ment­ed real­i­ty adver­tise­ment for Jaws 19 hasn’t come into being, but instead we have some­thing far more riv­et­ing and immer­sive. The emer­gent tech­nol­o­gy of Ocu­lus Rift and its sib­lings offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take on dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, explore new worlds and expe­ri­ence the atmos­phere of a fic­tion­al space.

Dear Angel­i­ca tru­ly comes alive when we hear the voice of Jes­si­ca (Mae Whit­man) who begins to nar­rate her sto­ry. As she speaks her words are writ­ten in the air. Her moth­er, Angel­i­ca (Geena Davis), was an actress, a star of films that ranged from fan­ta­sy to sci­ence fic­tion to crime dra­mas. As if step­ping into her dreams, we see Jes­si­ca accom­pa­ny her in these dif­fer­ent sto­ries, while her nar­ra­tion describes how these roles defined their rela­tion­ship, from rap­ture to calamity.

The act of step­ping inside an unfold­ing sto­ry is an appeal­ing one, but is it any­thing more than a gim­mick? With regard to Dear Angel­i­ca, Tera Ran­dall, Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor for Ocu­lus, thinks not: ​“Peo­ple who come out of it have a range of emo­tions”, she said, ​“from hav­ing tears because the sto­ry real­ly speaks to them in a per­son­al way, to artists who are just real­ly curi­ous about how it was built and how it was created.”

As VR is still a rel­a­tive­ly new medi­um, most new work has an exper­i­men­tal edge to it. Tera explained that the lead artist on Dear Angel­i­ca, Wes­ley Alls­brook, hand-illus­trat­ed the ani­ma­tion with­in the Ocu­lus Rift, using a paint­ing tool called Quill: ​“She could manœu­vre all the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and see what it’s going to look like in the final stages”. This is worked into the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing the VR film, as this dynam­ic art­form sim­u­lates the feel­ing of being inside the cre­ative process.

While most­ly a pas­sive expe­ri­ence, there are sub­tle tech­niques employed to fur­ther engage a view­er and make them feel like a par­tic­i­pant in the nar­ra­tive. The use of sound is the only guid­ing hand in Dear Angel­i­ca, and what Tera refers to as a ​“crit­i­cal piece to engage­ment”. With images emerg­ing and mov­ing around you, you decide what to focus on. You can tell the direc­tion the nar­rat­ing voice is com­ing from, mean­ing you can always return to the cen­tre of the sto­ry after stray­ing off-track. It was only revealed after­ward the film had end­ed that, ​“in some scenes ele­ments only start to come to life when you look at them, or when you get close to them”, mean­ing fur­ther view­ings could reveal dif­fer­ent aspects of Allsbrook’s design.

Yet, not every VR film is a peach. Ramiro Lopez Dau’s Ocu­lus short Hen­ry, an ani­ma­tion about a hedge­hog who wish­es for a friend on his birth­day, cre­ates an envi­ron­ment and allows the view­er to watch as a silent spec­ta­tor. It’s impres­sive to be able to see the design of the house, but you only real­ly watch the char­ac­ters inter­act with the space in the same way as you would out­side of VR. Sim­i­lar­ly, Sasch­ka Unseld’s Iron Giant-influ­enced Lost has you watch­ing from the bush­es as a gigan­tic anthro­po­mor­phic robot­ic hand search­es for its body. After they are reunit­ed, the giant bends down and spots you, acknowl­edg­ing you as a pres­ence with­in the sto­ry. Both are exam­ples where­in the VR ele­ment is inessential.

These expe­ri­ences are more akin to watch­ing a video with con­trol of a 360° cam­era than a true VR expe­ri­ence. The most inter­est­ing thing about wit­ness­ing a scene from a fixed point is that you can in effect take on the role of both the view­er and the direc­tor. There’s temp­ta­tion to choose angles based on flu­id­i­ty, com­ic tim­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion. Dur­ing Eric Darnell’s com­ic alien short Inva­sion! your focus is drawn sharply to the right to fol­low the move­ment of a space­ship, not because it was going out of frame, but because of the instinct to make a direc­to­r­i­al decision.

This kind of rudi­men­ta­ry inter­ac­tion has much in com­mon with video games, where you often act as nat­u­ral­ly as pos­si­ble when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a non-playable char­ac­ter in an effort to avoid break­ing the immer­sion of the scene. This new crop of VR shorts often feel like they exist on the bound­ary between film and gam­ing, where the def­i­n­i­tions of both are blurred.

Some­thing like Dear Angel­i­ca doesn’t can’t sim­ply be equat­ed to known chan­nels of art, but steps into a dif­fer­ent realm entire­ly. ​“You could take some of the things we’ve learned and used in tra­di­tion­al film­mak­ing, but most of what we’ve done in movies doesn’t apply”, Tera explains. ​“We’re learn­ing some­thing new”.

What’s excit­ing is that Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty film­mak­ing is still in its infan­cy, with much ground to cov­er before it can begin to chal­lenge film as the dom­i­nant visu­al medi­um. This moder­ni­ty that is fre­quent­ly men­tioned by Ocu­lus and its com­peti­tors some­times makes it feel more like a nov­el­ty, or a stunt that grabs your atten­tion but is ulti­mate­ly a hol­low expe­ri­ence. Yet it is pos­si­ble to use the medi­um to cre­ate a dis­tinc­tive and pro­found expe­ri­ence that sug­gests great poten­tial going for­ward. For sto­ry­telling and art, Dear Angel­i­ca rep­re­sents the first words of a new language.