VR Playhouse's slate of summer classes kicked off this past weekend with a 2-day 360 Boot Camp, held at our studio in beautiful Los Angeles, CA. The class covered a...
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Lauren Ludwig, the director of our upcoming 360° narrative short, Girl, got a nice shout-out in LA Weekly’s year-end roundup. The immersive dance theatre dinner-party piece she directed, And The Drum, created with her company Capital W, was listed as one of the best and most innovative live performances of the year. See the list here.
Filmmaker Fifer Garbesi wrote a wonderful blog post on her efforts to bring VR to the artists and thinkers of Cuba; efforts that our very own co-founder, Ian Forester, had the opportunity to help with. They were recently in Havana shooting 360 footage for an upcoming documentary and hosting the island’s first VR Festival. It was, by all accounts, pretty amazing, opening the door for some great creations and collaborations to come! Read all about it here
Christmas came early for the good little boys and girls of VR Playhouse! We got the fancy toys!!! First up, the GoPro Odyssey: 16 synchronized HERO4 Black cameras, all controlled from one remote, for high-resolution capture. And it is, of course, compatible with… The Google Jump Assembler: This bad boy stitches in a matter of hours to create perfect stereoscopic 360-degree video. This means no more audio sync worries. No more color matching worries. No more mismatched settings. No more days spent cleaning all that stuff up. It potentially saves our clients thousands of dollars in post-production costs and saves us thousands of dollars in Red Bull and aspirin costs. Finally, Sennheiser’s virtual reality microphone, which allows for simultaneous high quality capture of ambisonic audio via four-channel, XLR output and plugs into any existing four-channel recorder. Audio tracks can be brought into audio software seamlessly. So sweet! I should…
It was with great delight that we teamed with Jaunt VR, the Latin Grammy-nominated all-female mariachi band Flor de Toloache, Leyenda Dance Company and the beatboxer Musical Mammal to create “Fuerza Imprevista,” a cinematic VR experience celebrating Mexican heritage. This was shot at the jaw-dropping Vibiana’s in downtown L.A. using the Jaunt One camera. Thanks to everyone who contributed their talents and technology! You can download the full virtual reality experience here
A few months back, we got to work on a 360-degree music video collaboration with Honda, the production company m ss ng p eces and singer/songwriter Moses Sumney. And now, that video, “Music From Every Angle,” has hit the interwebs! We’re really proud and excited for this one. Technically, we got to take on some new challenges and perfect some new solutions. And we got to work with a tremendous musician and some amazing partners to create something truly unique for Honda. So give it a look! Watch Moses seemingly multiply into a whole army of soul singers, moving throughout the space, banging on Honda Civics like they were drumsets and using all 360 degrees to give us a truly memorable experience!
This is a guest post from VR Playhouse’s beloved Head of Production, Derin Turner. Sometimes he gets frustrated. Over the past year, we have been hard at work here at VR Playhouse, experimenting with virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, astral-projecto-realities. Some things have worked, others not so much. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve gone on spiritual journeys to rediscover ourselves and the meaning of life. We’ve broken a lot of things. All thanks to the wondrous world of VR. And through all of this, we have learned a lot. Things that we now want to pass on to you, so that we may spare you some of the pain that this gloriously sadistic medium inflicts. The first thing we’ve learned is this: At it’s core, the idea of VR is to transport your brain-noggin to alternate planes of existence. It is an illusion. And an illusion must be flawless….
Check it out! It’s a pretty great compilation of the work we’ve been doing. Big shout-out to VR Playhouse editor/legend/tha Gawd Derin Turner, who put it all together. Enjoy!
The concept of presence, of being virtually and magically transported to a place, real or imagined, and having the feeling of truly being there, has always been and will continue to be, one of the chief selling points of virtual reality. But that concept of presence, and the value that VR gives to it, becomes much more complex when we’re talking about a place and an experience that no one would want to be present for. Such is the case when it comes to “[08:46]”, a new VR piece that recreates the events of September 11, 2001 from the point of view of an office worker in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. I can only guess as to the motives behind the creation of “[08:46]”. Whatever they may be, it is ultimately the prerogative of its makers. It’s a free country and, as with so many controversial works of art, if…
There are rare and beautiful places in this country, places filled with an inimitable natural majesty and grandeur, places that people come from all over the world to see and experience. These places are so special, in fact, that they have been set aside and protected as our national parks. Within the boundaries of those parks, the world moves at a different speed, unhindered by the pressures and stresses of modern living. If you’ve ever spent time wandering through one, away from all the lights and sounds and tumult of daily life, you’ll recall the distinct sense of peace and relaxation that washes over you. There is a stillness and a tranquility there that cannot be found anywhere else. VR Playhouse, along with experienced outdoorsman and spherical filmmaker Jay Whittaker, has set out to capture that amazing diversity in a series of short, virtual experiences. Jay has traveled across the…