In June we were invited to present our documentary at VRTO conference here in Toronto
Keram Malicki-Sanchez, VRTO's creator and executive director, asked us to expand on the subjects we talked about at GDC - making interactive documentary and its challenges, and talk more about our creative choices - what is the user's experience, what is the goal of the project, how will the audience feel like after watching it, as well as talk about our tips, tricks & budget decisions that have lead us to current technical solutions - and our own stereoscopic volumetric capture tech, that is so unique. We also talked about our very specific collaboration - while Joanne is making creative decisions based on what is the message and the goal we want to achieve, Tom keeps finding technology that will help with sharing this message, which is sometimes challenging, as VR is still a very young medium.
We have analyzed and watched many VR experiences to identify what is working in them, what is not - and why, and how to make The Choice more engaging, without making it gimmicky - also pretty common thing, as some creators think "the more - the better", and try to "immerse" the viewers as much as possible... We think that too much stimulation can take your focus away - and you can loose the main point, get lost in gamification, and elements popping out from the screen/space. So yes, we definitely want to avoid those, but also - use VR in its best, meaning: using this new language and the space in a best way possible. How are we planning to do it - jump on the video and hear for yourself ;)
This talk was for sure our best one - we were given almost an hour to present all aspects that are important for us, and the audience here in Toronto is amazing - mix of VR filmmakers, game developers, both creative and focused more on technical aspects - all of which we wanted to cover, as all these aspects are important for our project.
You can watch our talk here:
Let us know if you have any questions - always happy to answer them!
And here is an article by What's Your Tech, bringing closer all the new capture technologies presented at VRTO: New Technologies Capture and Combine Emotion, Reality and Storytelling. It describes our capture tech, as well as A Curious Mind with Dominic Monaghan from Cream Digital in Toronto, with slightly different approach, and also some promising results.