Why I don’t believe in “cinematic” VR
I like to tease my silicon valley friends by stating that filmmakers have been augmenting reality since editing was invented in 1903. That’s because, beginning with editing (which is how filmmakers augment time and space, among other things), and on through the adoption of technologies like color, sound, and visual effects, we’ve gone to greater and greater lengths to augment every aspect of the reality we’re constructing so that we can tell our story in the best way possible.
By controlling what you see and hear, how you move, which people exist, how they look, the words they say, time itself… (Believe me, if David Fincher could tap directly into your nervous system, he would.) we craft a reality that’s not at all about arbitrary control or egomania; it’s about achieving perfect immersion. We call this suspension of disbelief.
In other words, the entire point of cinema is to lose yourself into another reality that you temporarily accept as your own. This sounds a lot like the goal of cinematic VR, if not the goal of VR in general.
Perhaps virtual reality is the future of video games. And perhaps having a screen on your face is totally awesome (your friend who bought a 3D TV will probably agree). But if virtual reality really is the future of cinema, it’s not just a departure from everything we’ve seen before in games and a millennia of storytelling, it’s a reversal of what we know works best, and it’s lacking in what we know is most important — all while supposedly striving to achieve the same goal.
See the full story here: http://pando.com/2014/10/24/why-i-dont-believe-in-cinematic-vr/?curator=MediaREDEF