First person was born from a desire to experiment with intimacy inside the Rift. Can one feel like he or she is sitting with someone and having a conversation? Will the conversation trigger real emotions?
We had the pleasure of working with Mattie Hawkinson as our lead actress, and the Playhouse’s own Ian Forester as the voice of you, the viewer. The style is like Being John Malkovich– you see through his eyes and experience his experience. Each “episode” is like a moment in this guy’s memory bank.
There are, as most things in the current 360 video world, many challenges to making it feel as close to real life as possible: It is difficult to stitch either close and/or moving subjects. The camera operator must be hidden. And if you’re shooting from one person’s point of view, that actor must also be out of sight. Our makeshift solution was this:
Duct tape an iphone to the tripod. Hide ourselves within view at a distance from the scene. Turn on a Wifi Hotspot. We then facetime to Mattie from a laptop. So Ian is somewhere staring at Mattie his laptop, and Mattie is hearing and seeing Ian on the iphone. Production on later episodes became more sophisticated, but this system did manage to work.
Here’s a quick look behind the scenes: