48) describes as “fully spatial.” In short, this requires ubiquitous visual information, the ability to alter the field of view, and a visual illusion of depth, for example, stereoscopy (LaValle 2017, pp.145-156 Ryan 2015, pp. To achieve these sensations, the virtual environment needs to be what Ryan (2015, p. This again can lead to a sense of being transported into the virtual environment that is, a sense of presence, a term originally derived from Minsky’s term telepresence (Calleja 2011, p. 124) has its origin in the feelings we experience when our body descends into water – the sense of being totally enveloped by alternative surroundings. This is often referred to as immersion, a term that, according to Murray (2017, p. How can film style be used to tell stories in VR movies, and do these uses differ from cinema?Ī distinctive feature of VR is that the spectator can get the impression of being encircled by virtual existents. These are part of a film’s technical and aesthetic devices, which is often referred to as film style (Bordwell, 1985 Bordwell & Thompson, 2013), and are obviously experienced differently when watched through a VR headset, or head-mounted display (HMD). With VR, predefined framing is gone, and editing is usually kept to a minimum. Cinema’s predefined framing and editing positions the spectator as the ideal observer, or, how the film seeks to arrange optimal camera positions in relation to the preceding narrative (Bordwell 1985, pp. A 360-degree field of view upends many of the stylistic features that cinema has historically relied upon.

When I initially encountered short films for VR and the 360-degrees view, some of my first thoughts were regarding the limitations of the medium. In recent years, filmmakers have started to look at Virtual Reality (VR) as a platform for cinematic storytelling (Bucher 2018 Opam 2016 Melnick 2019).

John hope cinema picture style