Journalism in the era of virtual reality
Posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 by ATC in Industry News with No Comments
Clouds over Sidra © VRSE Works
The production studio for the modern era seeks to reinvent films and documentaries and place spectators at the heart of real events.
By Cyril Fievet for AllTheContent News Agency.
‘I think that virtual reality holds the potential to fundamentally change journalism’, says Chris Milk. ‘One of the areas of virtual reality we are excited about is documentary and news, to create the experience of being there in the middle of events that are happening’, adds Spike Jonze, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Her’.
Which he richly deserves. The two filmmakers, in partnership with the Vice News, have produced a film which has two be a world first: a documentary that immerses viewers in a public demonstration which happened last December in New York, in response to the death of Michael Brown, the young Afro-American shot down by a police officer in August 2014, in questionable circumstances.
The film, entitled ‘VICE News VR: Millions March’, follows a news correspondent in the middle of a crowd of 60 000 protesters, and viewers can follow the march, hear the voices, and move with the action as if they were there themselves. The film allows the viewer to ‘feel the news’, explain the creators of this innovative experiment. They think that virtual reality could be a good way of ‘stirring more compassion amongst people for one another’.
In actual fact, the films are shot with special equipment, particularly 360° camera system that was kept in constant motion and omnidirectional microphones. Ideally, for viewers to fully benefit from the immersive effects, they need a virtual-reality headset like the Oculus Rift device. However, along with the presentation of film a special app was distributed, for iOS and Android, so viewers could watch the film on their smartphones.
While the directors insist that their first documentary was just an experiment, they have no lack of future ambitions. Milk has teamed up with other veterans in the audiovisual industry to open a production company called VRSE Works dedicated to virtual-reality films.
The company has also shown another documentary, ‘Clouds Over Sidra, which made its debut in Davos last week, produced in partnership with the UN. The viewer can follow the story of a 12-year-old Syrian girl in a refugee camp in Jordan. Here too, the intention was to immerse the public in the reality of a situation taken from the news, through a film that was shot in a real location, in a camp crammed with more than 80 000 refugees.
The launch of VRSE betokens an unusual marriage. Chris Milk has made large numbers of commercials for world brands such as Nintendo, Nike and Google, and produced music videos for U2, Kanye West and Gnarls Barkley. Several film directors are clearly interested in advanced, and even futuristic technologies, like Spike Jonze, whose last film, ‘Her’, tells the story of a romance between a 40-year-old woman and an intelligent computer operating system. The web and computing giants are also naturally interested in the promise of virtual reality. Last year Facebook absorbed Oculus Rift, and Samsung announced the launch of a streaming channel for virtual reality films. This week Microsoft announced the HoloLens, connected eyewear for virtual and augmented reality apps.
Somewhere between entertainment and news, between reality and fiction, between Hollywood and Facebook, is where tomorrow’s journalism lies.
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