Darkness. For a few brief seconds, the world around you disappears completely.

Then, a single point of light flares up. It bobs up and down, left and right ever so gently, like it's caught in a breeze. It's only when the light drifts closer that you realize the truth: this is a digital representation of a firefly.

These are the opening moments of Lost, a minimally interactive Oculus Rift experience produced by Oculus VR's Story Studio. It's a short film created by this new internal Oculus team that has dedicated itself to better defining the methodologies for VR storytelling.

Being at the forefront of an exploding technology, it's in Oculus' best interests to help others leverage the new medium in creative ways. That thinking is what led to the birth of Story Studio. As the team's supervising technical director Max Planck — a Pixar veteran — wrote in an introductory blog post, "It is in our best interest to share our process as well as our end product. And so it is our mission to leave breadcrumbs behind as we progress."

Director Saschka Unseld, creator of the Pixar short The Blue Umbrella, led the development on Lost. Speaking in front of an intimate Tribeca Film Festival gathering on Thursday, Unseld laid out Story Studio's approach — arrived at after much trial-and-error — for bringing participants into an all-encompassing virtual landscape.

It was born initially out of a challenge.

"I remember the first time we showed an early version of Lost to people who had never seen VR before," Unseld said. "We started playing the experience and what happened is they were just completely overwhelmed. In a good way. Everything is exciting [in VR]."

The feeling of "presence," as Unseld puts it, of being instantly transported to another place, is distracting. And a distracted audience is an inattentive audience. It's hard to tell a story when the the viewer's attention is consumed by the simple fascination of looking around. When we go to the movies, we sit down and get comfortable. The lights dim, the credits sequence plays. We settle in.

"We wanted to find how to get the audience there [in VR]," Unseld continued. "What gets you into the experience? Especially right now for some people, this might be the very first thing they see in VR, ever. So finding that thing that takes the audience by the hand and, step-by-step, shows them into the world of VR [is important]."

That's where the firefly — her name is Fee — came from. Fee is roughly analogous with a video game's control tutorial. She flies side to side in the otherwise pitch-black space, encouraging viewers to turn their heads as they follow her movements. It's a subtle-yet-active process that's designed to impart a simple lesson: you can look around freely.

There's an important divergence here from film. When you're watching a movie, what you see on the screen in front of you is a product of the past. No matter how many times you watch, no matter how inventive or clever the presentation is, it's always exactly the same.

Lost works differently. Fee's appearance is part of the program, but it's also a reactive presence. It's programmed to remain in your field of view, so if you step to the side or turn around, Fee works her way back to where you can see her. She teaches you how to take in the VR space, but her behavior is always anchored to the viewer's behavior.

As helpful as it is for the viewer, this also creates a difficult challenge for the storyteller. Especially one such as Unseld, who comes from a filmmaking background.

"In VR, there is no camera. The audience decides where they look. And that means that the storyteller, we lose control over what the audience sees," he said.

Instead of pushing against it, Unseld decided to use the unpredictable "camera" that is the viewer's perspective to immerse them more completely in the virtual space. After a minute or so of playing around with Fee, Lost's primary setting fades in, a forest at night. It's not a direct dive into the story, but rather a gentle introduction to the world that the story exists in.

For roughly one minute, viewers are free to look all around and take in their surroundings without interruption. Similar to a film's establishing shot, this period of soaking in creates that all-important sense of presence. Then, very gently, credits fade in, overlaid on top of the forest scene.

"This is just a soft nudge that the story is about to start," Unseld explained. "You can still look around and do things, it's quiet and there's music. Up until now you had control, but we slowly want to drag your attention back to [the fact that] we're telling a story."

Mashable's Tech Editor Pete Pachal experiencing the Oculus Crescent Bay prototype. Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

As the credits fade away, a more abrupt story cue arrives to startle viewers: a shrieking bird flies in from behind, coming to rest in the forest clearing that serves as Lost's primary stage. The loud caw and fluttering of wings cuts through the idyllic nighttime scene in a way that's impossible to ignore.

"That bird actively grabs your attention. It kind of acts as a storyteller saying, 'Hey, pay attention. Things are about to happen.' It's kind of what we call our call to the story," Unseld said.

"We continue this call afterwards with the very first thing that happens in the actual story that Lost tells. It's a strange sound that we hear from somewhere deep within the forest. A sound that disturbs the bird that just landed there."

This goes back once again to the reactive nature of Lost. Thanks to the capabilities of the Oculus Rift's positional audio, viewers can pinpoint the source of the sound Unseld referred to. Here's the catch, though: nothing actually happens in the story until the viewer turns and looks in the direction of the sound. The events that follow — which we'll avoid spoiling here — are part of the program, but once again, it's in the viewer's hands to propel the story forward.

"Getting to that point was really important, where we have your attention. What is the first thing you see, what is the thing that grabs your attention in VR," Unseld said. "And then it's letting go of that control we know as filmmakers. Giving you the time to settle in, time to explore, time to relax. And then calling you back to the story and saying, 'Now let us tell you something. Now that you're ready, come with us on a journey.'"