Monday, February 02, 2015

TECHNOLOGY - Virtual Reality at Sundance

"Virtual reality bursts through the movie screen at Sundance" PBS NewsHour 1/26/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY: What if watching a movie was more like being inside the movie?  With virtual reality, your brain can be tricked into believing that you’re flying or in a different country -- a powerful creative tool for storytellers.  Jeffrey Brown visits the Sundance Film Festival to witness how filmmakers are beginning to use the burgeoning technology.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  I am flying through San Francisco.

Yes, it’s true. I’m a bird soaring among the buildings of the city by the bay.

I crashed.

Well, I sure felt like I was flying.  But I’m actually stretched out somewhat awkwardly on a contraption called Birdly.  And I’m in Park City, Utah, at the Sundance Film Festival, where one of the main attractions this year is an exhibition called New Frontier, showcasing a new world filmmakers are now exploring, virtual reality.

Shari Frilot served as curator.

SHARI FRILOT, Curator, “New Frontier”:  In terms of what’s coming out of the storytelling community, we’re really starting to see the first steps, the first baby steps of what is to come, but I do think it’s going to grow very big.

JEFFREY BROWN:  One of the leaders is Chris Milk, who’s made a name for himself as a director of music videos that push the envelope of technological effects.

Here’s how he describes the virtual reality, or V.R. difference.

CHRIS MILK, Filmmaker/Founder, VRSE.com:  We always are watching the visual stories, the moving picture stories that we watch through these frames.  It’s always a frame, it’s always a rectangle, whether it be your television set or your computer screen or a movie screen.

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