The team then figured out a way to make the connection to the friendly fuzzball even more immediate. “The bunny hides behind you. People were surprised at how much they cared about this bunny. They felt the need to protect her. You’re not worried about what the filmmaker wants you to do, but you’re still completely absorbed in the story.” This extraordinary sense of culpability is just one innovation makes VR unique.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

To create their stories, studios like OSS and Baobab have developed new tools and methods that help them shape their ideas more freely.

“One of our guys built an engine [that allows all of us] to be in the scene at the same time,” Fan says of one of Baobab’s more innovative tools. “We can scrub through the animation, mark [things off]. We’re moving things around in VR together so that we can work inside [the scene].” Essentially, the team can inhabit and shape the virtual spaces they’ve created in a hands-on, almost godlike way. It’s kinda freaky, and it’s really, really cool.

The viewer’s freedom to swivel their heads and look wherever they like during VR movies like Invasion! is a liberating thing, but it naturally creates issues for the filmmakers. “It’s challenging because you don’t get to control composition,” says Fan. “Some people think you can’t do traditional storytelling in VR, but we believe you absolutely can. It’s about having content that’s interesting enough to get people to look where you want them to look. If you can’t get them to look where you want them to look, it just means you made really boring stuff.”

Directing the viewer’s eye is key to the VR moviemaking process, but with a bit of inventiveness, it’s completely possible to direct the viewer’s attention. In Invasion!, for example, Baobab uses some clever set design to guide our eyes to a specific spot. “There are these islands on the ice,” says Fan. “They’re purposefully put there because they create natural frames in the image.” Deceptively simple techniques like these blend seamlessly into the story and “point” to objects and characters of interest without us even noticing.

CUTS OF DOOM!