Darren Aronofsky on Virtual Reality Storytelling

Darren Aronofsky is one of the greatest and most adventurous indie filmmakers working today. Since his micro-budget scifi Pi was a surprise hit in 1998, he has gone on to make a series of innovative and thought-provoking films (Pi was one of the first films to be funded by crowdfunding, by the way). His directing credits include Requiem for a Dream , Black Swan and Mother!

Aronofsky recently spoke to Lauren Goode from Wired about the new VR series, “Spheres,” (which he produced), on stage at Web Summit this year in Lisbon, Portugal.

At MoMo, we’re always interested in new technological developments in film or video making. So we’re very interested to know more about this series. We’ve watched a few Virtual Reality movies and been to a seminar on the format in Winterthur, Switzerland. So far, there seems to be some major challenges in turning VR into an accessible storytelling medium.

As a director, it seems shooting in Virtual Reality means abdicating your job when it comes to camera direction. With VR, the audience decides where to look. This is why Virtual Reality films often feel like you’re playing a video game.

So we’re interested in what such a legendary storyteller and filmmaker has discovered in being involved in a VR project.

Here’s some of what he said:

Lauren: Why did you decide to pursue a project in Virtual Reality?

Darren: There was a young filmmaker behind it. A woman named Eliza McNitt. She’s 26 years old. Extremely passionate. Trying to combine science with storytelling. Which is something everyone in my company has been trying to do. My company is called Protozoa. I come from a science background so, whenever science can be part of filmmaking it’s really interesting to me. And what Eliza was doing was taking viewers in VR to impossible locations in the cosmos.

So she created a Virtual Reality that allows you to experience 2 black holes colliding, being inside of a black hole and explores the different sounds of space. And it was something I hadn’t seen before and a really good use of the medium. It definitely transforms where you are. It gives you a true emotional experience of the cosmos.

Lauren: I think that’s one of the benefits of VR that it really does put you into that environment. It can certainly trigger an emotional response. But there’s still that barrier of having to get someone to wear something on their face.

Darren: Yeah. It’s a pretty convincing world. I mean, it’s very different than storytelling and filmmaking. If you talk to the latest thinkers in Virtual Reality, there’s a clear line. For a long time, people were talking about how Virtual Reality was going to replace film. But it’s 2 different art-forms. Trying to blend them is really not working.

As a video game player myself, when you get to those cut scenes where they simply put a movie into the video game, they’re kinda cool for a little bit but then they get pretty tedious. And I think the most successful creators in Virtual Reality are establishing that they’re really 2 different worlds.

Storytelling – I wouldn’t say it’s a passive experience; but it’s a very different experience to where you’re controlling and guiding where it’s going to go.

Lauren: In a lot of ways you’re expressing that this is an entirely new medium so things should be designed and created as such.

Darren: I remember when I was in film school in the early 90s, and Jaron Lanier was talking about the “data glove”. We were all thinking about it and terrified. But I think it’s become clear, when you’re watching a movie, you’re not passive, right. It’s truly an act in empathy. That’s the great part of filmmaking is you can through close up enter the subjective experience of a character, who takes you on a journey. Where you basically experience where that character is going through your own humanity.

In VR there’s less character involved. You can stumble on some of that stuff. But it’s more about… it’s very experiential. And you’re much more yourself. You’re not transformed, I feel, into another person’s shoes.

Lauren: Do you plan to produce more projects in VR?

Darren: Yeah, I mean… ultimately we’re storytellers. So we’re interested in communicating stories in any way you can. Sometimes it’s narrative, sometimes it’s documentary, like we do with One Strange Rock. We’re just trying to put really good content out there with really good creators.

Lauren: What would you say has been the most influential technology on you as what you do as a filmmaker?

Darren: Wow. I mean, it’s funny, because when I did my first film Pi… The first time the film was downloaded on the internet, was Pi, in 2000 (citation needed ;). I remember when they came to us and said, “We want to download [Pi]”, I had no idea what they were talking about. But it’s funny because most people are going to experience film through a streaming service, at this point.

Also, Pi was the first time a title sequence had been done digitally (citation needed ;). Yet, there’s no visual effects in the entire movie. And then in a movie like Mother!, there’s probably 1400 visual effects in that film. From really subtle things to really big things.

I think the use of computers to help a filmmaker to shape exactly what he or she wants to make and create, has definitely been the biggest breakthrough. It’s unlocked the possibility of what you can do and the type of stories you can tell.

Lauren: Is there a point for you when you think technology’s influence on storytelling is too much?

Darren: Well, i think a lot of filmmakers have lost control of that. I think films have become visual effects extravaganzas. And now you have these huge teams that are creating shots for movies. You’ll get filmmakers who are really not interested in that part of the filmmaking. And they’re really there just to work with the actors. And then you’ll have these huge teams creating these incredible landscapes.

But then you have filmmakers like James Cameron, who is in complete control of everything. Creating a singular vision.

Lauren talks about a film with a screenplay written by AI she had seen, which she thinks was not a great script. Actually, Andrea and I went to a talk by these guys in Zurich and watched both their AI movies (I preferred the one written and directed by the AI). Here’s the first one called Sunspring:

Lauren: At what point do you think AI changes fundamentally what you do as a storyteller; as a writer and as a director?

Darren: It’s a terrifying thought. When jokes and humour and stories start to be able to be reproduced, and you can’t tell the difference between them and the human counterparts, it’s a strange moment. There was a big piece of art that was sold at auction, based on some code and it sold for a few hundred thousand dollars. And it was created by an AI.

Storytelling is a very tricky thing. And I’m going to be a bit of a Luddite right now and put my faith in the constant invention of individuals to do something that a computer won’t.

I know there was a documentary on the computer that beat the Go player. And the thing that was most interesting about that for me was – besides the fact that it beat a human for the first time, which everyone thought was impossible – was that, how the computer played actually ends up effecting how humans play. So the computers are actually, not just beating us, but actually teaching us.

…

The interview continues, with Darren talking more about AI. In fact, the VR part of the interview seemed to quickly run out of steam. Whereas the AI discussion really got challenging and went deep. I think this says something about VR, which itself has run out of steam, a little bit.

If anything is going to revolutionise filmmaking (and human existence in general) it’s going to be AI.

You can listen to the full interview here.

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