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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Thank you, CG Channel, for promoting our work and event next Wednesday, 12/7 in Hollywood. Click here to read the full article and RSVP for FREE, or see a link...
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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
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…
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!
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:…