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EL FIN DEL MUNDO: Posthuman aesthetics and Inspirations for project 2

EL FIN DEL MUNDO is a dual-screened film exploring questions about the future. Will today’s social systems still be relevant in the future? EL FIN DEL MUNDO is divided into 2 separate screens: one for the man and the other for the woman. This design explores the different divisions of labor of different genders after the catastrophe. Although this film is not a Mixed Reality Work, it helps me a lot in developing the idea, the shooting plan, and the aesthetic style of my project 2.

First of all, the film has no lines, no clear storylines to express the meanings. This sense of ambiguity is also the form of ideography that I want to use. In project 2, I will use more audiovisual techniques (maybe a little bit of voice-over) to express emotions rather than relying on very heavy story content and the clear three-act structure in traditional story-telling.

Unlike EL FIN DEL MUNDO, I don't intend to show the differences between different genders on split-screen. The imagination I made for my project 2 is that the differences between genders will not exist in the future. So, in terms of casting, I found an actor with long hair and an actress with short hair.

The props and costumes in EL FIN DEL MUNDO also inspire me a lot in designing the costume style of my project 2. Since my project 2 is a cyberpunk-style sci-fi short, I want to create a sense of doom and futurism through costumes. Inspired by EL FIN DEL MUNDO, I will rent/make some white-based clothing with metal ornaments. In addition, since both of my protagonists are genderless, so the costumes will also be in a neutral style.

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A Review of HELP: How Virtual Reality is changing film

HELP is a live-action 360 monster movie produced for Google’s Spotlight Stories. This VR short film is made in collaboration with Justin Lin, the director of The Mill and Star Trek 3. HELP combines live-action and CG to create a shocking and cinematic experience. It is notable that there is no editing in this film. In my experience of shooting 360 VR short films, I found that VR films cannot be edited through traditional ways of editing films. 2D films, especially action films, often use a close-up shot between a long shot and a medium shot to make sense. However, if this is done in a VR movie, the audience will be confused and physically uncomfortable due to the rapid change of perspectives. HELP consists of a single shot, similar to the long take technique in 2D films. However, the difference is that in HELP, the audience gains more autonomy and can choose the scenes they want to watch. I've watched this movie three times as I am not able to view all things in one go.

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Beat Saber: The exergaming character of VR gaming

(RoadtoVR, 2018)

Beat Saber is an immersive rhythm game. In a futuristic world, players use the sabers to slash the beats as they come flying at them. The game is one of the profound examples of exergaming in VR.

As we can see in the video, one of the great features of this game is exercise, it gets players to move and exercise while dancing and slashing the beats. Besides Beat Saber, there are many such VR games that employ the features of exergaming. I am interested in the reason why exergaming is especially booming in the medium of VR, so I did some research.

What is exergaming?

Tuomas Kari (2019) defines it as a form of digital gaming that requires physical effort from the player in order to play the game and which determines the outcome of the game.

Why Beat Saber?

Beat Saber provides “a heightened experience, a higher degree of flow, a richer engagement with passive game elements, and a deeper immersion” (Kari, 2019), which may create a better brain-to-muscle link that can help for a more effective workout.

In addition, in this game, players can choose from easy level to expert level and collaborate with others. These features satisfy players' needs for a sense of belonging and achievement when doing exercise.

New Frontier

VR gaming can also be considered as a potential way to boost exercise motivation, and promote an active lifestyle by fighting the problems of the sedentary lifestyle, which are becoming increasingly widespread in society. Also, it has the potential to erase the stereotype of gaming as a sedentary activity.

REFERENCES

Kari, T. (2019). Virtual Reality Arcades: A Study on Usage Habits with Emphasis on Digital Gaming. In Zagalo, A. I. editor. Veloso, L. editor. Costa, Ó. editor. Mealha, & SpringerLink (Online service) (Eds.), Videogame Sciences and Arts 11th International Conference (pp. 179–194). Springer International Publishing.

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Mixed Reality Production Project 2 Proposal

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

I am planning to make a 360-degree VR narrative short film in the sci-fi genre.

Background of my story:

5,000 years ago, humans immigrated to Mars since air pollution and overexploitation have made the earth unsuitable to live. After 5,000 years of development on the new planet, the environment of Mars has also been destroyed by human activities. The inhabitants of Mars have started an "Earth Immigration Plan", intending to return to the earth.

What is the story about?

The film tells the story of a Martian immigration agent who could virtually enter the Earth by wearing some brain-connected devices, the agent introduces the Earth to the Martian inhabitants by walking on the earth and doing live streaming. His work is providing information to help humans on the Mars immigrate to the earth (fleeing back to earth as refugees). To be more specific, he may talk about how to apply for a "refugee" visa and where the intermediary agency will build refugee camps in the live streaming.

The intermediary walks through deserted cities, through barren rock piles, through ruins, through jungles and seas. Following in his footsteps, the inhabitants of Mars once again knew the earth and learned some of its history (such as the outbreak of Covid in 2020, etc.).

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Tone & Style:

Dark humor, Dystopia

Concept:

This film aims at raising the awareness of environmental protection. It can be seen as a metaphor for the refugee crisis today, revealing the identity anxiety of immigrants.

Shooting plan:

1. A space like a cabin is needed to hypnotize the intermediary and let his brain enter the earth. I can find an empty room and some pipe-like props to stick on the actor's forehead for filming.

2. An actor (immigration agent) holds a 360 camera, walking around the scenes, speaking to the audience watching the live streaming. The audiences’ voices are presented through the voice-over from the walkie-talkie.

This short film is very feasible, just needs an actor and a 360 camera. I will look for some interesting scenes in Sydney, for example, ruins, to create some kind of futuristic, sci-fi, and retro atmosphere through lighting and color grading.

---------------------------- Edited on 26/05/2022 -------------------------------------

When I developed my project idea further, the story I want to film changed. Here is the latest version. The protagonist wakes up in a sleeping capsule on Mars, ten thousand years have passed, and he has lost his memory. However, he can often hear a line from a poem in his dreams, vaguely foreshadowing that there was something important to him in the memories he had forgotten. Thus, he prepares to return to Earth to find the meaning of that line from the poem. During his journey to Earth, he gradually finds the meaning of the poem, which is about a past love experience that had been washed away by the torrent of time.

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A Review of Space X Girl: Insights on how to create a dreamlike experience through MR work

A few weeks ago, I created my first MR work, which tells the story of a girl’s dream. I shot some dreamlike scenes using a 360 camera based on the idea of “psychogeography”.

After making this film, I watched Minhyuk Che's work Space X Girl (https://www.with.in/watch/space-x-girl), which is also about a journey through the spaces and dreams of a girl. I love Space X Girl, and it inspires me a lot to make some progress in my next VR work. Here are a few ideas I got from this film.

1. Backlighting is a useful technique to create a sense of dream.

2. Tacking shots in VR may make the audience feel a little bit dizzy, but is an interesting way to lead the audience to explore the space and the inner world of the protagonist. However, since we are working on a 360 video, how photographers don't get into the frame will be a challenge. Maybe wear the camera on top of people’s heads?

3. The innovative use of sound can provide added value to the picture, such as enriching the narrative, conveying emotions, etc.

When the adult heroine sits in the cradle, we can hear the cry of the baby.

No one was eating, but the audience could hear the sound of a family sitting at the dinner table eating and chatting.

4. Some editing principles commonly used in 2D films, such as 180-degree system, eye-line match, etc. are still applicable when editing 360 videos.

cuts to...

5. The use of special effects allows the scene around the protagonist changes as she walks, which is amazing.

Che experiments with this short film on extending the emotional and psychological weight that virtual reality as a space can convey.

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Clouds Over Sidra: The power of VR

With the development of technology, VR (virtual reality) has become a powerful tool in storytelling and has been increasingly used to tackle social issues in visual artworks. Clouds Over Sidra, a 2015 virtual reality film about the Syrian refugee crisis, is one of the great examples.

Virtual Reality: Ultimate empathy machine

As Nash (2018) suggests, virtual reality produces the illusion of “being in an environment”. The disappearance of the screen in VR deepens the connections between humans and makes people more likely to be compassionate and empathetic. When watching Clouds Over Sidra with VR glasses, the audience experiences standing in the Za'atari camp in Jordan with child refugees, which makes their roles change from strangers sitting in the cinema to observers inside the story. In this film, VR plays an important role in making the story more powerful and letting the refugee crisis get more attention. Chris Milk said in his Ted Talk about virtual reality in 2015 that virtual reality was potential to be the ultimate empathy machine that can change people’s perception of each other and even change the world.

Good thing or Bad thing?

Although VR helps documentaries reach a higher level of representing the real world and has shown its ability in expediting the resolution of some social problems, the idea of VR as an "empathy machine" remains controversial. As Nash (2018) suggests, VR’s mode of address tends to produce a certain form of moral risk. For instance, the risk of the improper distance between viewers and “others" that is represented in the film. In my opinion, it may not be a good thing to use 360 VR optionally. Today, the use of VR technology in documentaries has not yet become a mainstream way of storytelling, and many viewers watch VR films simply for curiosity and the enjoyment of the immersive experience. Thus, indiscriminate use of VR as an "empathy machine" may cause secondary damage to the "others" shown in films.

References

Nash, K. (2018). Virtually real: exploring VR documentary. Studies in Documentary Film, 12(2), 97–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2018.1484992