Digital Storytelling

An archive of creative inspirations and thoughts.

[michaelbeets-blog]

Bridging the gap.

Great idea to bridge the gap between the virtual and outside world when in an experience, and just looks damn cool. 

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3064260/googles-latest-tilt-brush-feature-should-be-a-ux-standard-for-all-vr

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Monument Vally

Finally got around to playing this mobile game. The design is gorgeous, and no surprise why it’s won so many awards. I love how simple the game play is, and how you always move forward through the world. It constantly surprises.

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LION KING 360

One of the most engaging YT 360 degree videos around. Captures the spirit of the performance and gives us up close insights into some of the intricate mechanics of the staging and puppetry. This in VR would be awesome, and perhaps shows the potential of watching theatre in a VR setup. 

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TOP VR EXPERIENCES (so far)

A quick list of my favourite VR experiences so far, experienced either on Google Cardboard or the Oculus. 

THE EVOLUTION OF VERSE 

A spectacular experience, with a strong visual narrative. By far the strongest of all. Directed by Chris Milk

check out vrse.com, for more info. 

EARTH ENCOUNTER

A nice little experience of an animated Alien Djing in defiance of the police. 

jauntvr.com

BEWARE: CRIMSON PEAK 

A promo but cool nonetheless. A short freaky little experience for Guillermo Del Toros upcoming film of the same name. 

THE EXPANSE 

Float in space watching asteroids and ‘The Canterbury’ space ship pass you by. 

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ZERO LATENCY

Nice one Melbourne, leading the way for VR experiences. These guys were on it before Oculus started their kickstarter campaign. Stalwarts!

Laser tag for VR. A completely immersive experience, with guns and all. Kill some zombies and feel good about it. 

CNET article on their arrival: 

http://www.cnet.com/news/zero-latency-vr-entertainment-revolution-begins-melbourne-australia/

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LIGHTBEARERS

Via Creators Project. 

This beautiful interactive firefly experience in Montreal's Insectarium was created by artist Mathieu Le Sourd. Pointing at different spots on the glass field ignites the fireflies. 

Full article: 

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_au/blog/control-an-army-of-fireflies-with-your-fingertips

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One Act Fashion Play (Spike Jonze)

A one act play by Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill about the behind the scenes of a fashion show. Clever staging, loads of good actors and performed at the MET. 

A behind the scenes video about the behind the scenes play- from the Creators Project. 

and the Trailer, also from the Creators Project 

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Racer for Chrome (2013)

This is from 2013, but still one of cleanest multiscreen experiences I’ve come across. Audiences bring their smartphones, and tablets together to experience a racing game that is spread across their mobile devices. Created by Google Creative Labs and Active Theory. 

https://www.chrome.com/racer

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The Sonorans Valley

http://www.sonorans-valley.com/

Came across this little gem on Google Experiments by @Samsyyyy (twitter). 

The Sonorans Valley uses WebGL, and Google Street View to take your location of choice and turn it into a death valley. Below you can see my office in Melbourne. The project starts with a quote from Albert Camus "As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city”. Have fun exploring. 

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Colors of Motion

An interactive website, that aggregates the colours used in a film, and digitises it linearly as an interactive poster. Scroll on a colour and you can see screenshots from that moment in the film. You can also purchase and get a print of each film. Great fun, but also an interesting exercise in the use of colours in film. 

http://thecolorsofmotion.com/films

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Dry Lights

In this beautiful pulsating video, Xavier Chassaing, from visual label Antiv brings us a CGI light show like none other. The lights travels though a desert like landscape, bending, cutting, and illuminating it’s surroundings. Xavier describes it as  “A world in an erratic state of flux that seems to evade any grasp of clear control plays host to constantly alternating physical and mental landscapes. Moving without a destination in the dead hours of night, mesmerising, intermittent apparitions illuminate their surroundings, allowing personal narratives to breed."

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Google Spotlight Series

If you have an android device, check out this app from Google where you can watch a series of interactive 360 degree short films. The latest short ‘Help’ is directed by ‘Fast and Furious’ serial Director Justin Lin. Apparently works on some android devices, but google say they are "working hard to support all capable devices."

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.spotlightstories

In this video,  Jon Klassen, writer, illustrator and production designer of Windy Day and Buggy Night describes his experience creating for Spotlight Stories. 

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Bla Bla by Vincent Morisset (2012)

If you haven’t seen work by Vincent Morisset, you’re in for a treat as he has been on the forefront of interactive content for some time. This is a great little one from 2012. 

BLA BLA is an interactive animated film for computer created by Vincent Morisset with Montreal studio AATOAA, and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.[1] The online work has been described as exploring "the principles of human communication," and follows Morisset's collaborations with Arcade Fire on Neon Bible, considered the first interactive music video.[2][3

The characters in BLA BLA were designed by Caroline Robert using stop-motion puppetry and traditional animation as well as computer animation methods such as ActionScript animation and real-time 3D mapping. The work is designed to be principally non-linear, with users constructing the story through point-and-click choices.[3][4][5]

The music by composer Philippe Lambert and characters' speech was broken into short clips and distributed randomly throughout the programming, which was created by Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit. As an added bonus, BLA BLA users can also access classic NFB animated films, including works by Ryan Larkin, René Jodoin, Michèle Cournoyer and Norman McLaren. BLA BLA was produced for the NFB by Hugues Sweeney.[3][5]

BLA BLA was featured in spring 2012 at a month-long live interactive presentation in Paris.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://blabla.nfb.ca/#/blabla

http://vincentmorisset.com/

[michaelbeets-blog]

HBO’s Voyeur (2007)

This is one of my all time favourite theatrical multimedia experiences. A true transmedia experience where “content related to the characters is scattered online in fictional web pages, in photo and video clips on media sharing platforms such as Flickr and YouTube, in blogs and social networks, on the HBO channels, and through mobile content”- wikipedia. It plays out (and probably took inspiration) similar to that of Hitchcocks ‘Rear Window’ where the audience substitutes the character of LB Jeffreies (John Stewart).  

Multiple stories take place in a number of apartments across a skyline, and for the most part they are engaging, and are timed exceptionally well, to encourage the viewers to skip and browse at their own pace. 

They even took it to the streets, and created a live projected experience on a building in NY. It looks great, and a perfect companion to the live experience. Good on HBO for funding a non linear experience like this. 

[michaelbeets-blog]

Straight from the phone.

Like Picasso’s ‘Painting with Light’ these are unedited photos from the new Huawei P8 smartphone. It has a new feature called  “Light Painting”  that bundles multiple images to create long-exposure photos. From Malaysian photographer Keow Wee Loong 

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‘Evolution of Verse’ VR Review

(Full of spoilers)

As the sun rises on green pastures, and snow tipped mountains, I find myself in the middle of a lake listening to birds wake, and watching clouds softly drift by to a slow but progressive piano piece. I’m wondering what will come next, and where do I look and whether or not I am missing something. Just at the point, before I think “OK I get it, it’s a beautiful landscape’, A train breaks the silence, and now I am in search for it. I twist my neck in both directions, but I can’t find where the noise is coming from. The music is escalating and I know from a film cues that this is coming to a point, a changing moment, an ‘inciting incident’ that will set the experience on fire. The music is vital, and without it, I think the moment that is about to occur would of been lost on me. The combination of me seeking out the moment, and the music cuing me up for the climax is what makes the ‘inciting incident’ so impactful and holy crap was it. 

I turn 180 degrees, and see a train in the distance, curving around the lake, but suddenly it veers off track, and smashes into the bank and into the lake, and I know it’s coming straight for me. This is an interesting point in the experience, and one which psychologically messes with you. I know it’s not real, and I kind of laugh at the situation, but when the train smashes into my face, I involuntarily say ‘Woah’, and my wife thinks I’m talking to a piece of cardboard. I love Chris Milks ode to the urban legend of ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’ (1896), but I’m not running anywhere just yet, as I watch the train dissipate into thousands of birds fluttering in complex formations around me (a nod to his previous work, ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ perhaps?). For a moment, I wonder if the birds are actually forming based on where I am looking, but I can’t tell just yet because they are now dropping from the skies in beautiful coloured streamers. An explosion of them fall down on me and I notice that I am floating towards the sky. 

I found this moment a bit hard to swallow and it was the first moment where I truly felt the experience was a bit forced. I tend to think it’s because this is an obvious choice made by the creator to take me somewhere, whereas before, I was choosing my path, discovering, and trying to figure out my place in the world. Whilst I’m rising, the streamers form a dark liquorice coloured tunnel and I am now whistling through it, transported into another dimension. I could of actually stayed longer in this moment, it was a bit of a rush, but perhaps, motion sickness would also kick in.

Through the tunnel and I’m veering towards the sun? an orange ? a pastelle dot in the black abyss? This figuring out what object lay ahead of me was well drawn out, because only when I saw the giant ear in front of me, I realised I was looking at a baby, a big one, and that I was a tiny dot in a womb. I watch the baby as I float slightly further from him, allowing me to look at him in all his baby splendour. The graphics here are its best, where the landscape seemed artificial, and the tunnel surreal, the baby actually feels quite real. I find it calming, and I enjoy looking at the oversized baby, it’s soothing, until it starts turning its head towards me, and now I’m thinking, ‘this is creepy’, and my wife asks me ‘What?’. I think about explaining, but don’t. The baby smiles, I’m not reassured, he extends his hand towards me, I fall in his giant palm and he slowly closes it, and I fade out to black. 

Overall, this is one of best VR experience I have had on my little google cardboard. It works, however, I felt some of the scenes could of been drawn out a bit more, allowing me to soak in the imaginative scenery. The floating felt forced but that darn baby drew me back in as he closed his hand on me, or crushed me to pieces? or took me with him gently him on his way into the new world ? Anyway, check this out if you can. Pick up a google cardboard for under 10 bucks, download it at http://vrse.com/, and look into the future of where we can take storytelling. 

[michaelbeets-blog]

This weeks VR News

My ‘VR’ google alerts is going nuts, daily. Here are a few of the best ones this week. 

Chris Milk’s new VR work ‘Clouds over Sidra’.

http://vrse.works/clouds-over-sidra/

VR Watch: Can Stanford's approach work for film?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-vr-watch-stanford-bailenson-zuckerburg-tribeca-20150424-story.html

Virtual reality company Oculus VR is investing in films. Here's why.

http://fortune.com/2015/04/23/oculus-story-studio/

Oculus’ Founder on the Pros and Cons of VR for Social Good

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/palmer-luckey-social-change/

Australian based company making VR for the afterlife- a bit scary.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/04/project-elysium-wants-to-use-vr-to-revive-deceased-loved-ones/