VFX Voice - Fall 2017

ANIMATION
TOP to BOTTOM: A still taken from Allumette, which transports the viewer
to a cloud city in a re-imagining of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian
Andersen. (Image courtesy of Penrose Studios)
A VR experience that allows the user to be a guest in the world of Beauty
and the Beast. (Image courtesy of Disney and Tangerine Apps)
Peter Osborne situates the viewer in the passenger’s seat of a 1970s
hatchback to witness the relationship between a travelling musician and
his daughter in Pearl. (Image courtesy of Google Spotlight Stories)
“VR is about transporting you to somewhere else entirely and
AR is about putting you in a different version of the real world
you’re in,” observes Pinkava. “If you are interested in storytelling
then you have to ask, ‘What kind of story can I tell in the real world
when I don’t know what the real world is for each member of my
audience? How are they going to interact with this where they are?
What mood are they in? Are they travelling, at home or the office?
In the world of mobile VR, it’s good not to make assumptions about
that and to create whatever experience you’re offering the audience
to work wherever it is or to take them somewhere else.”
Combining the technical and creative resources of ILM,
Skywalker Sound, Lucasfilm and Magic Leap is ILMxLAB in San
Francisco, overseen by Executive-in-Charge Vicki Dobbs Beck and
Director, Content and Platform Strategy, Mohen Leo. The goal is
to produce immersive entertainment and experiences for theaters,
theme parks and social spaces that include a series centering
around Darth Vader and collaborating with Alejandro González
Iñárritu on Carne Y Arena.
“We try to put storytelling and the creative vision front and
center, and figure out what we have to do with the technology in
order to bring that to life,” states Dobbs Beck. “Someday we’re
likely to have a single device where we’re experiencing all shades
of reality from the real world in its simplest form all the way to
fully virtual reality and everything in between. If you believe
that trajectory, it’s important to understand how to create those
different kinds of experiences even now when we haven’t reached
that state.”
“The next step for captured virtual reality, if we’re talking about
real-world content, is the light-field acquisition,” remarks Mohen
Leo. “It’s early days for that but it’s something we’ll see over the
next 10 years. It’s interesting progress on not just capturing the
single view point, but being able to capture a full volume of reality
in which you can then move around.”
Skydance Interactive CEO Peter Akemann seeks to produce
original interactive and immersive gameplay commencing with
mech battle tale Archangel. Other projects from the Marina del
Rey-based company include Life VR, based on the sci-fi thriller
which places the user inside the International Space Station.
“Seeing your face and hands, and this complex high-dimensional
presence that you have in the world, is compelling,” states Peter
Akemann, “as it is compelling to see another person there, even
in that avatar form, or when people can chat or type in ‘dance’
to make their avatar move around. That being said, much like
in standard games, the single-player experience is always going
to be an important and powerful thing. A lot of individuals are
alone a lot of the time and don’t always want the social pressure
of being with other people. They just want a great story. You’re
going to see a future that has both of those things.” Akemann adds,
“Technological questions are always divergent culminating to
a broader and richer future with more different kinds of
experiences in it.”
Kel O’Neill and Eline Jongsma form the award-winning
Dutch-America filmmaking duo Jongsma + O’Neill and produce
interactive documentaries. The Ark VR enables viewers to witness
44 • VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2017