philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Man Selling Virtual Reality to China

That rapid rate of consumer adoption gives Geiger a better opportunity to push VR in interesting directions in China than he would have in the U.S. where adoption has been slower, says Eric Hanson, who teaches at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, and develops VR content at xRez Studio in California.

One of his first projects is a planned VR short film called Four Dishes and a Soup. Its simple storyline — a foreigner having dinner with his Chinese girlfriend’s family — provides a way to discuss Chinese concerns about accommodating foreign culture while maintaining a sense of unity. Early in 2017, before writing the script, he will have the actors actually have dinner in a Chinese family setting and record the improvisation among them from the foreigner’s point of view using a stereoscopic camera.

And there are cultural differences he has found one needs to be sensitive to that will impact his VR work as well. Whereas a Western screenwriter might (as Calder Willingham and Buck Henry did in The Graduate) have the hero express his love by bursting into the church when the heroine is about to marry another man and declaring his love in front of a roomful of strangers, a Chinese screenwriter would have the hero challenge the man who’s about to marry the heroine but never tell her his true feelings.

There are business differences, too. The Western convention is to take out insurance to compensate investors if a film is not completed, but Chinese producers see this as unnecessary, says Geiger.

VR arcades are already doing brisk business offering shooting games and short videos for around $7 (50 yuan) per person. These could become a place to roll out exploratory content, says Eric Shamlin, executive producer of Secret Location, a studio based in Toronto and Los Angeles that won a 2015 Emmy for a VR experience it created, and who has traveled to China to explore potential partnerships.

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603218/the-man-selling-virtual-reality-to-china/