Are We Ready for VR Movies?

The virtual reality world is once again collectively losing its mind. Several years ago, James Cameron ruffled some feathers when asked his thoughts about virtual reality. “There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly.”
What he failed to make clear was the context, but luckily he’s at it again, using the term yawn but this time with the context baked in. “Look I think… you know VR is kind of a yawn to me because I’ve been… our method of authoring the Avatar films… I work in a VR environment all day every day. When I finish with these interviews, I’m going to go work in VR for the rest of the day.” VR isn’t a yawn because the technology isn’t interesting, because it doesn’t have promise, or because he doesn’t think the next generation of movies will use the technology. It’s a yawn because this generation of movies is already using the technology — just not in the ways we imagined.
It’s not as sexy as a theatre full of people slipping on headsets and watching the latest blockbuster, or as pulse-pounding as line-ups out the door to see the latest trailer in VR, but the reality is that VR is common in Hollywood: it’s just behind the scenes. As a part of ILM’s Virtual Cinematography work on Doctor Strange, the team designed and 3D-printed a camera to capture 360° footage of the sets that the FX team could view inside of VR headsets. Rogue One’s director, Gareth Edwards, used VR to direct the digitally created scenes (like spaceship battles). And, of course, James Cameron has been using VR since the first Avatar movie came out, to help visualize complex 3D scenes.

So VR has come to the movies. But why hasn’t it come to the movie watchers?
3D was once seen as the saviour of the movie-going experience, but in 2016, 3D revenue hovered at $1.6 billion, 8% lower than 2015 (while overall box-office revenue hit an all-time high of $11.4 billion). While some audiences are still 3D evangelists, an equal number of Americans refuse to see any 3D at all — 20%. The majority of watchers will shell out the extra money to see a movie in VR, but only if they think it’s “worth it” for the extra cost. 3D films are more expensive, and they’re less comfortable — those glasses might not be as challenging to wear as a HMD, but they’re not exactly frictionless. Doctor Strange, for instance, earned 46% of box office revenue from 3D, while an acting-based film like Moonlight wasn’t released in 3D at all.
The trick to getting audiences to pay for an expensive, uncomfortable experience is to give them something they really, really want. (The magical landscapes in Doctor Strange, for instance, were mind-blowing in 3D.) VR long-form narrative needs to bring something that a traditional 2D or 3D movie can’t. VR films need to be experiences, something halfway between a movie and a game. Users want a world they can interact with, affect and control, to make it worth the cost of entry. Right now, people are still experimenting with the ability to do that.

Gnomes and Goblins is an excellent example of a responsive VR experience, but so far it’s just a demo (no word on when, or if, the final result will be released). Other creators are toying with the idea of “choose your own adventure” style shifts, where choices the user makes shunt them into different storylines. That involves a whole lot of planning, though, and most importantly, way more footage. Where an average novel might clock in at 60,000 words, a choose your own narrative game will need 100,000 just to make a slightly shorter story work. Considering a film like Avatar cost $237 million, adding half again to that is a daunting prospect.
And unfortunately, though game engines are becoming increasingly capable, rendering a film with block-buster level visual complexity in real-time simply isn’t possible with today’s technology. So having a shorter experience where scenes aren’t “pre-filmed” but rather rely on gaming mechanics isn’t yet possible — or at least, isn’t possible with the high standards of Hollywood blockbusters.
The age of VR movies is coming. Headsets are getting more comfortable. Rendering power is getting less computationally expensive. And Star Wars is bound to end up in VR one day. We’ll be waiting.
Originally written by Wren Handman for www.hammerandtusk.com.
