Here you see a CINERAMA screen, from 1952.
CINERAMA was a big hit in that year. A standard film of the time would fit in the middle screen only. So you can see what an impression it must have made. I’m interested by the kind of films that bloom with any new technology. There must be a roller coaster film. It’s likely to be the very first thing that gets shot in the new (cumbersome) format.
And close behind are what we now know as a “Go Pro movies”. Sporting feats.
And aerobatics.
Once these technical demonstrations are done it’s time for a few experimental works by corporate funded artists, some stadium sports and a slowly wilting realisation that a good story works just as well on an old analogue TV, so what are you going to do? George Pal did good business with The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm in 1962.
Eventually the name CINERAMA became more important than the process. By the late 60’s it was a 70mm print stretched out. But the stories were better for it.
I would have liked to have seen a CINERAMA print, but standard Super Panavision was pretty cool. (My folks took me to see it soon after it came out.) This film isn’t right on analogue TV.
So instead of just going through this cycle, maybe we can think about it. What benefits can be found in the VR format? Obviously there’s interaction, but I’ll just leave that to one side for now please.
Consider this – no one can stand behind a spherical camera. There is no behind.
People working in VR are keen to point out that the frame is no longer there, and so the idea of composing an image in a frame is lost. So you cannot center the image, show something to one side – any of that. Edits are OK but you cannot know which direction the audience is facing. “Cut to:” is rendered useless when they could be looking at the sky for all you know.
The standard of ‘reversals’ – over the shoulder conversations – is dead. Next time you watch a film count how much of it is reversals. Then realise – that’s gone, all gone.
Nausea – it’s about the hairs in your ears that detect acceleration. Not movement – a scene in a moving train is fine – but the ease-in and ease-out motion of a standard motivated camera move. When the ears detect that you’re doing something impossible it’s time to prepare for emergencies and up comes lunch.
VR is about sound.
If this sounds as if VR is more problem that potential, and if you are a standard film maker please go elsewhere and let the experts take over. By experts I’m speaking about sound designers who have dealt with 360º for a very long time. We build realistic spatially coherent environments out of the materials of sound. We turn your head to the events you then watch. We signal that something is occupying a point, an arc, all of space. We signal that something went by, causing a Doppler. Our Foley gives substance to things in all directions.
VR demands that the old equation of vision first / sound second be turned on its head. Because you are not going to be able to navigate the worlds that you’re filming without first realising the air, the tone of the room, the placement of all the sound sources. If your set has three walls and relies on a particular orientation to work – you’re in deep shit.
But if you are a sound designer for film – don’t be smug because the game is going to get considerably harder. Get a VR helmet, learn how it works. Then start to build soundscapes that work in 360º. 5.1 won’t work any more there is no front/back. Listen to your mixes as somebody would in a room. What size room? Round? Carpeted? You are suddenly required to not only capture the air, but to construct it. I can’t tell you how we are going to do that. I can tell you that if we want to get past the demonstration films it’s going to be up to you.
