In the middle of the Gallagher Centre, I walked into a bar. An old dive bar, it hasn鈥檛 seen a new coat of paint in years, but it鈥檚 filled with authentic blues and people milling about. Taking in the scene, behind my head, I hear a disembodied voice. 鈥淵ou can pick up the flyer on that stool, just teleport over there.鈥�
That was the voice of Marco Luna, Research Associate, Concordia University Research Chair in Interactive Documentary. He was there with Cary Ciesielski from Twisted Pair Productions and Daniel Cross, Concordia University Research Chair in Interactive Documentary, as they presented the Introduction to VR panel at the Yorkton Film Festival. On the main floor, computers and VR headsets were set up to introduce festival attendees to virtual reality and the documentaries they are creating with it.
Luna and Ciesielski are doing very different things with the same format. Ciesielski鈥檚 films are similar to a traditional film. They鈥檙e realistic, linear documentaries told through filmed footage. The difference is that the stories are all around you, a panoramic display that surrounds the viewer. At one point in a documentary about the north, a man points at some snowmobiles, and you spin in your chair as you watch them travel.
One challenge of working in the new format is making sure people know where to look, but Ciesielski says that if he starts the action in the center of where people are looking when they put on the headset, they can follow that action.
鈥淚t鈥檚 quite possible that somebody could just watch nothing. They could watch the back of the image if they wanted to, but I don鈥檛 find that is the case.鈥�
What Ciesielski is doing is taking people to places that they might otherwise be unable to go. One of his projects was a documentary on a traditional caribou hunt, for example, something in the far north that very few people would be able to experience, in conditions that not many people would be able to endure. Another project about paleontology and the discovery of Scotty the T-Rex was something regular people couldn鈥檛 see in person, because of where sites are and how protective paleontologists are of their dig sites.
鈥淭his doesn鈥檛 accidentally happen to you.鈥�
The challenge for Ciesielski has been how you film without the ability to hide, how to light and get a shot while having a three hundred and sixty degree frame.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e allowing the audience to be the cinematographer, they鈥檙e composing the shot.鈥�
Luna, working on a companion piece to the film 鈥淚 Am The Blues,鈥� has created a location where the viewer wanders around 鈥渦nlocking鈥� pieces of video and parts of the story. It鈥檚 not finished 鈥� at one point I looked longingly at a drum set that Luna intends to make interactive but has not yet 鈥� but the pieces are there, and the potential for the setting is easy to see.
While Luna鈥檚 project uses some of the language of video games to work, he admits that it can be difficult to pitch a documentary to a gaming audience, as it鈥檚 a slower paced experience, and it鈥檚 not a gaming instinct to just sit and enjoy an experience.
鈥淚鈥檓 a gamer, I play RPGs and MMOs, I notice that the gamer will have already acquired a mechanic where, you get inside a virtual world, and you have to collect the minimum necessary. You basically ditch information... You start putting information aside to accomplish the objective. When we start exposing gamers to this product, they don鈥檛 have the retention, they don鈥檛 stop and listen to someone else鈥檚 story, they always focus on what to do next.鈥�
The big change for Luna is that he embraced coding, something many documentary filmmakers don鈥檛 necessarily know.聽
鈥淚 won鈥檛 be fooled by a game developer when they say it can鈥檛 be done. No, it can, you just don鈥檛 want to do it because it falls outside of your comfort zone.鈥�
VR is new, and the rules are not yet known. Working through Concordia University, Luna says that they have had lots of failed projects, but that鈥檚 important for developing technology and finding out what it can do.
鈥淲e have a lab where we can really embrace error.鈥澛�
