Virtual reality may be coming your way, and when it hits, it
could hit big—as if all at once. The explosion of computers and cell phones
provides two precedents. “Technologists say virtual reality could be the next
computing platform, revolutionizing the way we play games, work and even
socialize.”[1]
Anticipating virtual reality as the next computing platform does not do the
technology justice. I submit that it could revolutionize “motion pictures.” Even
though the impact on screenwriting and filmmaking would be significant, I have
in mind here the experience of the
viewer.
Whereas augmented reality puts “digital objects on images of
the real world,” virtual reality “cuts out the real world entirely.”[2]
As a medium for viewing “films”—film itself already being nearly antiquated by
2017—virtual reality could thus cut out everything but a film’s story-world.
The suspension of disbelief could be strengthened accordingly. The resulting
immersion could dwarf that which is possible in a movie theatre. Already as
applied to playing video games, “such full immersion can be so intense that
users experience motion sickness or fear of falling.”[3]
Imagine being virtually in a room in which a man is raping a woman, or a tiger
is ready to pounce—or eating its prey, which happens to be a human whom you’ve
virtually watched grow up. The possible physiological impacts on a viewer immersed
in stressful content would present producers with ethical questions concerning
how far it is reasonable to go—with the matter of legal liability not far
behind, or in front. Watching, or better, participating
in a film such as Jurassic Park could
risk a heart attack.
On the bright side, the craft of light and storytelling made
virtual could enable such amazing experiences that simply cannot be experienced
without virtual reality being applied to film. To be immersed on Pandora in a
nighttime scene of Avatar, for example,
would relegate even the experience of 3-D in a theatre. The mind would not need
to block out perspectivally all but the large rectangle at a distance in front.
In short, the experience of watching a film would be transformed such that what
we know as going to a movie would appear prehistoric—like travelling by horse
to someone who drives a sports car.
1. Cat
Zakrzewski, “Virtual Reality Comes With a Hitch: Real Reality,” The Wall Street Journal, February 24,
2017.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
