Oculus Launched Its Own Movie Studio
Oculus recently announced its own movie studio: it’s called Oculus Story Studio. It is composed of a small team that focuses on “VR cinema”, a term they use to describe the potential usage of Oculus Rift for immersive movie experiences.
Highlighting the launch of Story Studio, they have announced their first short film, Lost during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Lost is an interactive project that is computer-generated in real time for the Crescent Bay prototype. It is directed by former Pixar animator Saschka Unseld, who also made shorts entitled Angel afoot and The Blue Umbrella. The movie’s running time is 5 minutes, but according to Unseld, the duration changes according to the action of the viewer due to the film’s interactive nature.
The creation of Story Studio is rooted in the various fields of its team members, who were former artists and creators of computer animated films and story driven games. Having the idea of the Rift’s potential for films, Oculus took the chance to show off Rift to Hollywood filmmakers, but they never knew how to collaborate further with the film industry.
Oculus is pulling out its own creation in the form of the VR short, creating potential for filmmakers to take a different path. According to Nate Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus, the initial focus of the company was to take virtual reality into games. He added that the potential for virtual reality to be taken in the form of films is here, having the fact that the Rift and virtual reality in general are maturing in terms of technology.
According to Unseld, storytelling in VR is a complex thing because there are multiple dimensions going on at the same time. He added that the possibility of films in VR are larger than they initially thought; the viewer is significant to the story compared to a conventional film being watched. Edward Saatchi, a producer at the Story Studio, explains that the best way to develop VR for films is to make films.
The Oculus Story Studio is composed of a small team of 10 members, and this is to keep them stay low-profile, yet having a goal to shift to a larger scale in the next phases of the project. There are five films to follow Lost, including Bullfighter and Dear Angelica. Story Studio has a lot more of short films to come, and Lost is just the beginning.
For more information on Oculus Story Studio, please visit the following websites:
https://www.oculus.com/storystudio/
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/26/7896179/oculus-vr-story-studio-original-movies-sundance
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/26/oculus-story-studio-vr-films-sundance/
