Aiyouteng loses money, cinemas close down, and the movie's way out lies in the Metaverse?

This year's Cannes Film Festival will come as scheduled in late May. Are you looking forward to the VR films?

The shortlisted films of the 2022 Cannes XR Immersive Video Unit have been announced on the official website of Cannes. From May 17th to 28th, audiences can use mainstream VR head-mounted display devices such as MetaQuest or VR application platforms such as Steam to log in to Cannes XR official screening platforms VeeRVR and Alexandria watch for free.

Since VR films entered the Sundance Film Festival for the first time in 2012, no less than 33 film festivals around the world have opened VR units or VR screenings.

Che Lin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cultural Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, once said: "This not only reflects the film festival's acceptance of the VR art form from the perspective of film art, but also reflects the close relationship between the film form and the VR form."

Judging from the role played by the film festival in the history of film, VR is not only a window, but also a forward-looking engine, which promotes the exploration and development of film in its possible direction.

VR movie is virtual reality movie, which is a kind of human-computer interaction mode produced by the innovation of three-dimensional environment constructed by virtual reality relying on computer system and sensor technology. There are considerable differences between VR movies and traditional movies, the most typical of which is the difference in narrative methods.

Different from the narrative of traditional movies, VR movies have changed from a two-dimensional plane space limited by the scene frame to a real-time dynamic three-dimensional space that is not limited by the scene frame. The 360-degree panoramic visual space built by VR movies breaks through the time narrative of a single clue, uses space to narrate, and places the audience in the space.

For example, the VR movie "Love is Weightless", which was shortlisted in the XR Immersive Image Unit of Cannes 2022, shows the strange scene in the kitchen when couples quarrel. The emotional state of the girlfriend is highly related to the vision in the kitchen. With the collapse of the girlfriend's psychological world, the knives, cups and plates on the dining table, kitchen cabinets and shelves floated and shattered on the ceiling. The audience's field of vision is at the same level as the table, observing the couple on the spot and feeling the weightlessness in the house.

Moreover, unlike traditional film editing, VR film narrative generally uses dynamic objects in space to guide the audience to complete the switching between scenes and convey the content of the story.

In the VR movie "Dear Angelica", the audience enters the little girl's room and finds that she is still asleep. Just as the audience looks around in a daze, a streak of ink extends from the notebook next to the little girl and floats behind the audience , the fluttering ink caused the audience to become curious about the scene behind them and turn around accordingly, finally fixing their eyes on the TV.

Use smooth motion design to transform in the three-dimensional space, so that the audience can naturally enter the next scene, which is a common narrative method for switching scenes in VR movies.

The new narrative method brings a new audience experience. In traditional movies, the audience can only follow the narrative rhythm of the film, and the screen images they see come from the camera angle selected by the film creator. In VR movies, the audience has part of the right to choose and become a participant in the movie world.

In the VR movie "Heartbeat", the audience will encounter a static rusty robot. The audience can choose to put their "heart" on the robot, and the robot with the heart can start to stand up and express their emotions.

The robots will form friendships by exchanging hearts, and when the robots don't make friends and look at the audience with aggrieved eyes, the audience feels like they are in a space with them. Driven by the plot, the audience's emotional investment continues to accumulate, creating a sense of intimacy with the characters.

In addition, when watching a VR movie, the audience can choose to watch the main plot, or focus on other places in the movie, or find a viewing angle by themselves. This allows the audience to break away from the main narrative line of the movie, and thus diversifies the narrative of the movie.

The suspense film "Killing a Superstar", produced by iQiyi and winning the Grand Prix in the VR Competition at the 77th Venice International Film Festival, tells the story of a star before his death, and the audience can solve the case according to their own ideas.

Six suspects who have had contact with celebrities are in the same room, and they are active in five spaces including the living room and bedroom at the same time. The audience can choose to watch different spaces in the thumbnail of the house, observe the dynamics of the characters and make inferences.

VR movies imitate the feeling of people browsing around in life, providing audience with sensory experience . Not only is it immersive, but the audience can also influence the plot development in the film to a certain extent, and even influence the ending of the story, and experience the metaverse in the story created by themselves.

For such a novel experience, the audience's evaluation is actually mixed.

Some viewers feel that when watching a VR movie, they can get a deep sense of immersion and a sense of space in the movie story, break away from the state of passive viewing, and interact with the virtual environment created by the VR movie, which is both dreamy and real.

Different actions of the audience in the film will trigger different plots, which often prompts the audience to explore the entire content of the film through repeated viewing. This feature of VR movies will effectively increase the review rate of movies.

On the other hand, some viewers still have difficulty understanding the narrative characteristics of VR movies, or think that some movies do not have a good cooperation with VR technology in terms of content, which makes VR slightly redundant in movie presentation.

At the same time, some viewers feel dizzy when watching VR movies and feel uncomfortable when wearing VR equipment. These conditions may cause audiences to resist VR movies.

It is precisely because VR movies are very different from traditional movies, and the inertial thinking that traditional movies bring to audiences may conflict with the new form of VR movies. As a result, the various advantages brought about by technology during the development of VR movies may also become the bottleneck of their own development.

Cultivate audience habits, improve film quality, improve equipment conditions, etc. There are still many aspects of VR movies that need breakthroughs and growth.

Growing VR movies will not be the final form of movies, nor will traditional movies be eliminated. Through the continuous improvement of VR movies, the expression forms of movie art will be greatly enriched, and traditional movies may have more possibilities for development in VR in the future.

As far as art films are concerned, traditional art films are often characterized by lengthy shots and dull rhythms, which require more feelings and thinking from the audience. VR, on the other hand, can enable audiences to self-explore space and meaning in long shots and slow rhythms, which is more conducive to the expression of ambiguity and imagination in art films.

Moreover, under the influence of VR, there will be new developments and changes in the performance skills and language of long-shot movies. The long shot is originally intended to express the continuum of time and space inside a single shot, and VR will strengthen this continuum. The breaking and deconstruction of the "strengthened space-time continuum" will also have more expressive tension.

In addition, the interaction and multi-clue story triggering realized by VR technology will also provide film creators with more innovative ideas for narrative. From the time narrative of traditional movies to the space narrative of VR movies, a narrative method that "makes the audience experience better" may evolve in the future.

With the continuous advancement of technology, the operation mode and viewing form of movies will continue to develop, and movies will continue to meet people's new art appreciation needs and shine brightly in the art metaverse.

References:

[1] Tian Yang, Qian Shufang. Spatial Narrative Features and Methods of VR Movies [J]. Media, 2022, (4): 45-47.

[2] Jin Zhang. On the Boundary of Movies and Games in Virtual Reality [J]. Zhongzhou Academic Journal, 2022, (2): 143-150.

[3] Li Ziyang. Research on reality reconstruction and narrative logic of VR movies under the background of 5G [J]. Sichuan Drama, 2021, (12): 14-18.