I decided to do a VR movie for many reasons. First, I wanted to challenge myself, I wanted to use a different medium to tell a story, one I haven’t tried before. I chose to do it in VR specifically because it’s an emerging technology. Almost every college I visited during my college search was starting a VR program. Most of them had just bought some headsets and were letting students experiment with them, there was no clear objective. When I learned that Freestyle had purchased an Oculus Rift and didn’t know what to do with it I immediately decided I was going to use VR in my Zenith. I don’t know how to program so I wasn’t going to make a game, so I decided it would be a movie. This worked out because Freestyle had just purchased several 360 cameras.

My research was primarily focused on applications of VR and how it can be used as a tool to help people. Since it’s an emerging technology people are still trying to find the best ways to use it. The research helped inform me on how I was going to utilize VR. Reading through different articles I found the main reason people weren’t using VR more was the lack of good content. The lack of good content is a result of the small amount of creators making it.

I collaborated with others throughout the process. First I bounced story ideas off of my friends and family to find the right one. This was helpful for me to figure out what types of things people would want to experience. Once I finalized the story and began filming I had to collaborate with my actors. This was a new challenge because of the nature of filming in VR. Since the viewer can see in 360 degrees and focus on whatever they want there is no reason to have multiple shots and cuts. So the shots tend to be longer. In addition to longer takes the director can not be in view of the camera. So I had to clearly communicate with my actors since I could never tell if they messed up.

As it turned out the internal microphone in the 360fly camera was straight garbage. I discovered this early in my film testings. This made it so that I was going to have to replace every sound in the film. This presented a challenge because audio in VR needs to be spatial. Sounds need to stay where they are in relation to the viewer turning their head as well as sound like there coming from specific distances away. Before I started the project I figured someone had made a software that would allow me to do this. After I had gotten all my footage assembled I started researching how to do audio. Luckily for me, there was a free plug in for pro tools that allowed me to create spatial audio. I was able to place sounds in a 3d space and even move them around to follow footsteps or what not.

If I could do the project over again I would like to have a better camera and an actual microphone. I did the best with what we had, however, if I were take VR filmmaking seriously I would need better gear. The 360fly is pretty low resolution and is not a true 360 camera. It limited what I was able to do for a film. It also made the final product suffer. One of things people said to me after the film was how poor the quality was. Granted, that may have had to do with the setting on there phone, but a better camera would have made the video much more professional. A microphone would have been nice. An ambisonic microphone, even a cheap one, is absolutely necessary for future vr filmmaking. I couldn’t even get good reference audio from the internal 360fly microphone. A ambisonic mic would make post production go much smoother as I wouldn’t have to find an audio file for everytime a chair moved across the ground. I think freestyle should look into getting one if it is serious about kids using VR in their products. The last thing I would do differently is the story. I would have liked to something more profound, once I found out that I couldn’t record audio it became much more difficult to do that. Still, I believe I could have come up with a better Idea.

I improved my tech literacy the most. I learned how to use pro tools, 360 camera, edit spatial audio, and foley. Because this was all new to me I had to learn how to do all these things to be able to finish the project. The least was probably civic and social responsibility. I wasn’t able to add that into the completed product. My story had to be dumbed down due to technological constraints. At the very least I hope I inspired other to try out VR.

In the future I can take the lessons I learned and apply them to multiple fields. Obviously I can use the stuff I learned to work on more VR stuff. I can take the problem solving skills I learned to anything I do. Thinking creatively to come up with a story, etc.

I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do. The final product isn’t perfect but i’m still proud of it. I learned a lot of new skills and was challenged in new ways.

What I want people to take away from this is to try new things. VR is an emerging medium and people are going to have make content for it.