New Yorker
STUDIO 360: The Pioneers Who Are Making The First Virtual Reality Narratives. By Andrew Marantz.
SELECTION:
One afternoon, at the Wevr office on Indiana Avenue, three young filmmakers—Blessing Yen, James Kaelan, and Eve M. Cohen—arrived for a preproduction meeting about a V.R. experience they were making, called “Memory Slave.” Wevr was providing equipment, staff, and technical support in exchange for the exclusive right to show the experience on its platform, Transport, which was released earlier this month. One of Wevr’s long-term goals is to be a V.R. equivalent of Netflix or Hulu—both a producer of original V.R. experiences and a destination for watching such content.
Yen and Kaelan, who are dating, have collaborated on many projects, and Cohen often serves as their cinematographer. “It’s a very different job in V.R.,” Cohen told me. “You position the camera, you do light direction, and then you disappear.” The three had worked together on a V.R. short called “The Visitor,” an existentialist piece in which two characters discuss the subconscious. Hoping to limit viewers’ options and orient them toward the action, Cohen had placed the camera rig in the corner of a large room. The rig was at a reasonable distance for an establishing shot, but, without the option of intercutting closeups, it was too far away for viewers to read the actors’ expressions.
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The next morning, Cohen and Galle set up the camera rig in the theatre’s balcony while Kaelan and Yen worked on blocking.
“Wait,” Yen said. “If Caitlin sits here—actually, never mind.”
“What?” Kaelan said.
“I was, like, ‘She’ll be off center.’ But, duh, the viewer can just move their head.”
Kaelan laughed. FitzGerald sat on a plush red seat in the front row of the balcony, and Cohen readied the cameras for a test shoot. “Everyone clear the set, please,” Kaelan said. Then he ducked down between seat rows. “I want to hear their performance, and this is the only way without being in the shot,” he explained. Lying on his back, he yelled, “Action!”
They did a take. Afterward, FitzGerald said, “It feels weird, performing for just this robot thing. It’s less intrusive, in a way, but it’s the only time I’ve ever acted without being able to see any other human beings. I never thought about it, but I guess I’m always performing for an audience, or a crew, or someone.”
Batt said, “We’ll do a quick, dirty stitch, so you can get an idea of what it looks like.” Cohen removed a memory card from each GoPro—delicate work involving tweezers—and a Wevr engineer uploaded the footage to a Samsung Gear. Yen, standing in the balcony, put on a headset. “Whoa, this theatre looks amazing!” she said. “In this thing, I mean.”
“Can I?” FitzGerald said. “I don’t usually watch myself, but—” She put on the headset and gasped.
“Everyone does that the first time,” Batt said.
“Oh, guys, is this the future?” FitzGerald said.
“It’s certainly a future,” Batt said.
“Let’s go again,” Kaelan said. Everyone cleared out, and he lay down on the floor. This time, I stayed, lying foot to foot with him. I looked up at the ornate cupola on the ceiling, quieted my breathing, and listened. “Action!” Kaelan said.
Kelleher entered from the rear of the balcony, walking slowly toward FitzGerald. He began speaking about the V.R. technology that the fictional company was planning to unleash on the world. “It’s going to be beautiful, it’s going to be hideous,” Kelleher said. “It’s going to bring joy and sorrow and lust and pain and wonder and pleasure. And it’s a fucking miracle!”
The theatre’s house lights went down, and a spotlight was trained on FitzGerald’s face as her character practiced her impending speech. “For all of human history, art, music, storytelling, religion—those have been our modes for communicating the incommunicable,” she said. “But what if there were a way to know not an abstract version of my experience but what I’m actually feeling?” She looked directly into the camera. “Under your seats is a headset that will change the very nature of what it means to be human. Under your seats is the end of your individuality. Put it on and you’ll never want to take it off. Good luck.”