The Wild West of Media

VR and the Future of Storytelling

Theres a giddy excitement in this room of over a thousand. The Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference has grown 3x since last year, and the palpable buzz is a direct result of the breathtaking pace at which this technology is surging forward: both in complexity and creativity.

Most industries, and I’d count ‘traditional filmmaking’ as one of them, mark progress at the pace of years, maybe during a particularly high growth time, quarters. VR’s progress is measured in weeks.

In Film, for example, one can point to the birth of HD DSLRs in the fall of 2008 as the start to a really profound shift in media — suddenly, with a substantial increase in the availability (and decrease in cost) of quality, full frame sensor cameras, the perceivable gap between consumer / hobbyist filmmakers and mid-range production companies shrank considerably. Plenty of iterative cameras were released after the 5D MKii of course, but it wasn’t until the Sony A7s was released in last year that I again felt that excitement for a breakthrough imaging technology. (Featuring truly remarkable low light capabilities, the A7s is able to capture beautiful images in completely unlit, nighttime environments.) Both camera systems, released 6 years apart, unleashed a set of new story telling capabilities and their adoption heralded a wave of beautiful new narratives and documentaries. However, for inhabitants of the Internet Age, 6 years is a really long time.

Virtual Reality on the other hand, currently in a pre-consumer, pre-inflection point space, is increasing its technical capabilities and story offerings at the pace of weeks. It’s common to hear at this conference that ‘the last few weeks have been really exciting’. Now, by no means will April / May 2015 go down in history as particularly important in the history of VR. Improvements in exponentially growing technology look like this at such an early stage. Relatively small improvements will look like doublings of capabilities because everything is so new still. Keep in mind, the modern VR industry is really less than 2 years old — the first Oculus Rift was only released in late 2012. The VR industry has experienced triple digit growth since then — a rate expected to increase in the coming years as the technology goes ‘mainstream’.

So, its understandable that the level of excitement here is palpable, but theres an element of caution too. With the lessons of mobile and 3D cinema all around, the hardware and software innovators here know that fancy hardware and gimmicy techniques don’t drive user adoption — fantastic content (story) does. They’re desperate for ‘killer apps’; this is a world that CRAVES content right now.

Coming from the rectangular video world (online, mobile, theatrical, TV / Broadcast etc.), let me tell you: those are saturated environments. Sure, savvy filmmakers can squeeze a bit out of the system and exploit an niche, and I’ve been a part of successful film projects to do just that. You win a few hundred thousand views, screen at dozens of film festivals, use the medium to attract real attention, but unless you’ve made Gangnam Style, you’re extremely successful if you’ve reached only 1% of internet users. The competition for attention is just too fierce.

Never have I seen, since the birth of YouTube 10 years ago, people begging story tellers to create content — alongside the real expectation that quality content will be seen by a large portion of the audience. Right now, there are something like 1 million VR capable sets out in the wild today. Capturing 10,000 viewers (1%) seems particularly achievable.

Like previous innovative periods, the early content-pioneers in this world will have a real advantage: easy publicity, large percentage of audience viewership, access to a welcoming community of developers, distributors, and brands.

So, here is my advice: You may feel that you’ve missed out on the golden age of internet video (debatable), but now’s not the time to give up. Content makers, start your engines. I can’t wait to see what new fictional and documentary stories will be told — and I’m really excited to get in the scrum.

As the brilliant Kevin Kelly writes, You Are Not Late.