I haven’t paid for a VR movie before; I felt no need to as most experiences were free. But when a big name Hollywood pioneer like Robert Rodriguez jumps in with a VR film, a $5 ‘ticket’ would be worth the price… or so I thought. A 4gb download later, I have an opinion. TL;DR, this won’t be a flattering review.
Those who can’t… criticize.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard the line, I’d be rich enough to well… fund a big budget VR film. There’s no point easing in, so let’s get down to it:
Mini Review: Samsung Pilot Season
I checked out, briefly, all 6 episodes in what could be called Season1 of Samsung’s VR Pilot. A commendable initiative by Samsung to promote cinematic VR films. I was particularly interested in this, as I’m currently working on a similar episodic anthology series, titled: Latent Reality.
My thoughts in brief:
Anaglyph images – A Stereographer’s swiss knife:
This will be a slightly more technical article than what’s usually found on the RealVision site, and will seek to equally learn and answer questions as we move from traditional “Framed” Stereoscopic movies to what can be considered the minimum to qualify as video based “VR”: recording the ‘depth channel’
But first, a disclaimer, acknowledgement and notice: Footage, screengrabs and imagery is from the InstaPRO 360 site, freely available for download :here: The footage used, was noted by the manufacturers as being from a pre-release camera, but now [...]
NETFLIX WON’T PAY RANSOM – STREAM AWAY!
…is the bold stance and headline that made news recently when Orange is the new Black got pirated, and a ransom demand made. That, was indeed a bold move by Netflix to not give in, and as streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn of Frost & Sullivan stated on Wired:
The joy of binge-worthy TV hinges on knowing that other people also binge. A water cooler that only the Pirate Bay gathers around defeats the purpose.
Graduated Stereo falloff in 360 – How to do it right:
As far back as 2014 (that’s like 10 in VR dog years), I’d described how graduated stereo falloff, could be used as a narrative storytelling tool for Cinematic VR. It’s safe to say that in 2014 everyone was learning VR. Even then, what I specifically had in mind is – you fade to black or cut to the next scene as your on-screen talent moves toward the 180 degree mark.
In the opening scenes of “My Brother’s Keeper” what we get is not even 180 degrees of stereoscopic VR while the rest of the scene is completely flat. This goes a lot against [...]
