intimacy Archives - VR Playhouse Immersive Content for VR and AR

Apr 13

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What It’s Like to Work in Virtual Reality

By jordanh | Storytelling, Technology | No Comments

Let’s be real. Virtual reality is having a moment. Headsets are shipping, people are talking and VR is popping up all over pop culture in weird, interesting ways. It feels sweepingly omnipresent all of a sudden, like there was this plan in place to make VR a part of all of our lives and now that plan is in motion. And so people ask me what it’s like to work in the virtual reality industry. This is a hard question to answer in an interesting way. It’s difficult? It’s exciting? It’s crazysexycool? Yes. But also: Working in virtual reality is like being a first year resident on a primetime medical drama Not that I ever watched “Grey’s Anatomy” because for sure I never did but somehow I know that the pilot episode covered the first 48 hours in the residency of Meredith Grey and friends, just like the pilot episode…

Feb 04

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VR Playhouse is going to SXSW!

By jordanh | Festivals Conferences MeetUps, News | No Comments

Here’s a piece of news that we’re very excited to share: “The Surrogate,” a narrative, virtual reality experience VR Playhouse co-produced with Peter Flaherty and Logan Brown, is a finalist in the VR/AR category at SXSW’s Interactive Innovation Awards. Melding 360-video with a computer-generated explorable environment, The Surrogate immerses viewers in the consciousness of a female protagonist whose point of view they control as they explore the photorealistic passageways snaking behind the walls of a modern house. The viewer can see into the rooms of the house through a series of portals in which live action, hemispherical videos offer an immersive vantage point. The viewer is able to choose how they experience the narrative by moving through the passageways autonomously, deciding how they follow the action, and which rooms they look into at any given time. As the story begins, we learn that our protagonist suffers from an anxiety…

Jan 27

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VR Playhouse is at Sundance – Days 4 & 5: Party On!

By jordanh | Festivals Conferences MeetUps | 3 Comments

Monday and Tuesday were sorta open-ended days for us. We knew there was going to be a lot to do but we didn’t quite know when we would do them or how we would do them or even if we could fit it all in before we dropped dead from exhaustion and malnutrition (an outcome still very much in play). So, in the interest of my own sanity and longterm health, we’ll fire off some quick highlights from days 4 & 5: In The Eyes of the Animal: This is a VR experience from the fantastically named Marshmallow Laser Feast offering a kind of impressionistic take on life from the perspective of an animal. It’s a great example of the kind of reality that the VR industry is increasingly trafficking in, one that doesn’t adhere to any kind of naturalism but rather tries to capture the inner life of its subject….

Jan 19

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Journeys Into And Out Of The Remarkable VR POV

By jordanh | Storytelling | One Comment

I saw “Death Of A Salesman” for the first time at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1997. I was 16 years old and just starting to stumble into what it meant to be an adult and as I watched Willy Loman, crumbling under the weight of so many different familial and societal pressures, miraculously, I started to recognize myself. I saw myself in that 63 year old salesman and in that 50 year old play. And so even though the play is a tragedy, I didn’t walk away sad. I was instead reassured because I knew that the same fears I was just then facing lived in everyone else too. I knew I wasn’t alone. One of the great joys of interacting with art of any kind is the journey you take to find yourself in it, to uncover your own reflection there, as hidden as it may be, and…

Jun 02

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Adventures in VR Storytelling, Part III

By jordanh | Storytelling | No Comments

PART III: SWAG, OR SCIENTIFIC, WILDLY AIMED GUESSES There’s always been a kind of implied power dynamic that exists in visual storytelling, a power that the storyteller is meant to have over his or her audience. And it’s more or less defined by the frame in which the story plays out. Because there’s always a frame. And the existence of that frame means that the storyteller has the ability to locate the components of his or her story in the space that the frame prescribes. He can compose a shot or a moment on stage and he can then juxtapose that with other shots, other moments. However you may or may not interpret the things you see, what, in fact, you are seeing is always up to the storyteller. Except not in VR. With immersive, 360 content, the frame is the entirety of the user’s field of vision which means, at any given moment, they’re creating their own frame…

Apr 16

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Adventures in VR Storytelling, Part II

By jordanh | Storytelling | No Comments

Part II: There Is No Third Person We’ve already discussed the distinct, dreamlike presence one feels inside a VR narrative; that feeling of being intimately present up until a point and then definitively detached. It’s a very special kind of presence and it can potentially lead to some very special kinds of stories. But frankly, the quality of the presence one feels in VR is secondary to the simple fact that you clearly have presence and that this presence is unavoidable. “Clouds Over Sidra” is a virtual reality short film that takes us to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. We meet a young girl who describes for us both the harsh difficulties and small joys inside Sidra as we immerse ourselves in scenes of daily life there; school, soccer games, family dinners. It’s one of the more emotionally arresting VR films to have come out, mainly because of the subject matter (a homesick little girl quietly crying in…

Nov 05

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First Person: a series about life’s spontaneous moments

By jordanh | Storytelling | No Comments

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:…

Jul 18

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Immersive Experience vs. Screen Watching

By jordanh | Storytelling | No Comments

I love movies, and probably watch 3-4 per week via the usual portals: Netflix, Hulu, VUDU, and Amazon Prime. Don’t even get me started on the TV shows. I don’t anticipate that immersive VR experiences will ever change the appeal of watching a movie play out in front of me, especially since I can watch while also doing work on my computer. Much of the work I do involves tedious laptop editing, etc., and having something playing on the TV is pretty much the go-to for getting it done. But obviously, we over the Playhouse have fallen head over heels for VR. So let’s not say that VR and Oculus are going to make movies obsolete (we still listen to radio, right?), but what you get from the VR experience is different and deeply satisfying. The first thing I feel inside the Oculus is privacy. I feel like I’m in my own little…