An Indefinite Life: 360-degree Filmmaking: Where Do We Look Next? Re-imagining the Cinematic Virtual Reality Space

An Indefinite Life: 360-degree Filmmaking: Where Do We Look Next? Re-imagining the Cinematic Virtual Reality Space

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Issue Date:: 2023

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Field	Value	Language
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-22T03:08:52Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-22T03:08:52Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/178165
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	Cinematic virtual reality (CVR), 360 ̊ filmmaking, has emerged in the past decade as an adjunct to cinema and ‘traditional’ (interactive) virtual reality. Live-action CVR is generally created by combining multiple wide-angle video images to create a single image, which, when viewed on a head-mounted display (HMD) with spatialised sound, creates the illusion of a being located within a 360 ̊ panoramic space. The immersive nature of the medium produces a heightened sense of viewer presence, which has proved particularly successful for experiential documentary and animation formats but less so for live-action narrative drama, as the viewer’s freedom to look around the unbounded CVR space limits the Director’s ability to control the narrative through conventional means, such as framing and montage. Research, or practitioner reflection, on narrative CVR has focused on technical or directorial challenges, such as guiding the viewer to key plot points through mise-en-scène or editing, the creation of point-of-view, and how different approaches affect engagement, immersion, and narrative comprehension. To date there has been little practitioner or academic research into the 360 ̊ form, particularly the potential of the HMD-viewed panoramic space to integrate multiple and varied photorealistic video formats. This creative practice research project, a CVR short narrative film titled An Indefinite Life, utilises an original dramatic screenplay to experiment with the existing CVR paradigm by using both ‘stitched’ 360 ̊ video and traditional ‘flat’ 2D video within the 360 ̊ space. This innovative approach to CVR, using more varied cinematic language and both abstract and continuity editing, creates new narrative possibilities that impact both character engagement and the viewer’s sense of presence within the virtual environment. This exegesis first addresses the background to the emerging CVR medium, providing key definitions and outlining the recent CVR creative environment. It then explores the creative practice, the video project’s rationale and methodology, and the entwining of the conceptual approach to the CVR space with the narrative approach adopted in the screenplay. It analyses the creative approach through stages of development and production and provides reflective conclusions through the framework of CVR filmmaking language.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
dc.title	An Indefinite Life: 360-degree Filmmaking: Where Do We Look Next? Re-imagining the Cinematic Virtual Reality Space	en_US.UTF-8
utslib.copyright.status	recently_added	*

Abstract:

Cinematic virtual reality (CVR), 360 ̊ filmmaking, has emerged in the past decade as an adjunct to cinema and ‘traditional’ (interactive) virtual reality. Live-action CVR is generally created by combining multiple wide-angle video images to create a single image, which, when viewed on a head-mounted display (HMD) with spatialised sound, creates the illusion of a being located within a 360 ̊ panoramic space. The immersive nature of the medium produces a heightened sense of viewer presence, which has proved particularly successful for experiential documentary and animation formats but less so for live-action narrative drama, as the viewer’s freedom to look around the unbounded CVR space limits the Director’s ability to control the narrative through conventional means, such as framing and montage. Research, or practitioner reflection, on narrative CVR has focused on technical or directorial challenges, such as guiding the viewer to key plot points through mise-en-scène or editing, the creation of point-of-view, and how different approaches affect engagement, immersion, and narrative comprehension. To date there has been little practitioner or academic research into the 360 ̊ form, particularly the potential of the HMD-viewed panoramic space to integrate multiple and varied photorealistic video formats. This creative practice research project, a CVR short narrative film titled An Indefinite Life, utilises an original dramatic screenplay to experiment with the existing CVR paradigm by using both ‘stitched’ 360 ̊ video and traditional ‘flat’ 2D video within the 360 ̊ space. This innovative approach to CVR, using more varied cinematic language and both abstract and continuity editing, creates new narrative possibilities that impact both character engagement and the viewer’s sense of presence within the virtual environment. This exegesis first addresses the background to the emerging CVR medium, providing key definitions and outlining the recent CVR creative environment. It then explores the creative practice, the video project’s rationale and methodology, and the entwining of the conceptual approach to the CVR space with the narrative approach adopted in the screenplay. It analyses the creative approach through stages of development and production and provides reflective conclusions through the framework of CVR filmmaking language.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/178165