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VR pioneer Edward Saatchi: VR films aren't the future of storytelling
As one of the founding members of Oculus Story Studio, Edward Saatchi has spent years exploring how VR can be used to make narratives more immersive. But with Fable Studio, his latest virtual reality outfit, Saatchi has come to a surprising revelation: The future of storytelling doesn't lie in VR movies. That's an odd but interesting stance for someone who's devoted years of his life to the potential for VR narratives. Instead of trying to mimic the experience of films through virtual reality, Saatchi believes there's even greater potential in designing realistic characters for AR and VR. Imagine a virtual companion that can learn over time and interact with you and your family naturally.
Oculus Story Studio alum return with a new cinematic VR company
Last year, Oculus shut down its award-winning Story Studio, which was dedicated to creating bold new cinematic VR experiences. Rather than drifting apart, though, members of the team stuck together, and today they're announcing their new outfit, Fable Studio. It'll be making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival tomorrow with a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls. The studio has four additional projects in the works, but even more importantly, it's hoping to do something new with cinematic VR: Break even.
Oculus shuts down its VR film studio
Oculus Story Studio won't be making any more award-winning VR shorts. Jason Rubin, the company's VP of content, has announced in a blog post that it's shutting down the film division. It's only been a bit over a year since the studio was launched, but the Facebook-owned company has apparently "decided to shift [its] focus away from internal content creation to support more external production." Rubin says Oculus will focus on funding third-party filmmakers' VR projects instead. It will even carve out $50 million out of the $250 million funding it promised to give out to developers for non-gaming virtual reality experiences.
'A Moment in Time' shows the charming potential of art in VR
Quill, like Google's Tilt Brush, is an artistic tool that lets you paint in virtual reality. Designed for the Oculus Rift, it's a liberating way to draw and view art in 3D space. The next step? Animation. Goro Fujita, art director at Oculus Story Studio, has created a small but beautifully detailed street which you can explore with the Rift. It's all hand-drawn, and positional audio means you can hear birds chirping in the trees, as well as cars rushing by and a nutty engineer building robots in his store. He's uploaded a guided tour to YouTube, which I highly recommend checking out.
How one illustrator forced Oculus Story Studio to redraw VR
During preproduction on its latest virtual reality short, Dear Angelica, Oculus Story Studio found itself in a peculiar situation: The chosen art style, illustration, had necessitated a design pivot. Rather than scan and rebuild the drawings of illustrator Wesley Allsbrook in CG -- a time-consuming process the studio felt would dilute her artistic voice -- the team needed a brand-new tool, one that would let Allsbrook draw directly within VR. And so engineer Inigo Quilez created just that. The end result is Quill, a new VR illustration tool that's evolving along with production on Dear Angelica and Allsbrook's needs and pushing the medium even further.
'Henry' is Oculus' first, emotional step to making AI characters
If you've ever spent time in the company of young children watching colorful and cartoony TV shows geared to their innocence -- say something on Sprout or Nick Jr. -- then you'll know what it is to live in the world of Henry. The computer-animated virtual reality short about a lonely hedgehog is only the second to come from Oculus VR's newly founded Story Studio, an innovation lab of sorts for VR. But whereas most recent gaming- and entertainment-focused VR works have relied on cheap thrills, suspense and fear to dazzle viewers, Henry instead engages with empathy. "That was the big question for me: How are people going to connect with him?" says director Ramiro Lopez Dau of Henry's emotional bent. "So we came up with this character who has an obvious problem: He wants to hug people and he's super spiky. So that was the connection because everyone deserves a friend. And Henry doesn't have a flaw. He's just like that; he's a hedgehog. ... So it's more about, okay, there's some meaning here. You will find someone who will accept you for who you are, which is a very universal message. ... There's going to be a very strong point to feel empathy for this guy."
This is 'Henry,' Oculus Story Studio's second VR film
Oculus' big push into cinema began at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it introduced its VR filmmaking endeavor, Story Studio. Back then, the company debuted Lost and revealed a list of other shorts it had plans for -- though it didn't go into much detail about them. Today, however, we're getting to know Henry, the second film from the virtual reality studio. Directed by Ramiro Lopes Dau, who previously worked on animation for Pixar's Brave and Monster University, Henry tells the story of a cute hedgehog that has trouble making friends because of his appearance. Oculus Story Studio describes it as a heartwarming comedy.
Oculus Story Studio is the Pixar of virtual reality
Moments before Oculus Story Studio's new virtual reality short Lost reached its satisfying climax, I found myself in a compromised position. Sequestered in a private demo booth, I was involuntarily crouched down, covering my head in a defensive position and, I should add, squealing with delight. Lost, the first computer-animated work to come from Oculus VR's new film-innovation lab, is unlike any form of interactive entertainment I've ever experienced. And it succeeds in one very crucial respect: It's endearing. "I want to create emotions that are very appealing," says Story Studio's Supervising Technical Director Max Planck. "I want you to come out of virtual reality and have a smile. Or [experience] something very touching emotionally, just like Pixar films do."
Here are the first films from Oculus Story Studio
Look out, Hollywood, because Oculus VR is coming for you. Earlier today, the Facebook-owned company introduced its new film division Story Studio, as it looks to broaden its horizons and experiment with narrative through virtual reality. The first short film to come out of Oculus VR's in-house movie lab is Lost, which is making its debut at Sundance. In addition to that, Story Studio has revealed that it's already working on more shorts with a VR twist to them, all expected to appeal to different audiences. Along with Lost, there's also going to be Dear Angelica, Bullfighter and Henry, plus two other films that haven't been announced yet.
With Story Studio, Oculus VR embarks on its Hollywood takeover
Around the time Oculus VR began experimenting internally with the creation of tech demos, investor Marc Andreessen, impressed with what he'd seen, urged Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR's CEO, to show them off to Hollywood. Andreessen believed the medium was a perfect fit for that industry. Iribe, in turn, showed his company's prototype Rift technology to an unnamed, major Hollywood director. That director, responding the way most do when they first encounter modern-day virtual reality, enthusiastically implored Iribe to join forces and create a feature film with it. Iribe immediately balked and shot down the offer. "I don't know the first thing about movies," he says of that initial conversation. That was then. Today, Oculus VR plans to figure out the entertainment industry in a big way. With Story Studio, an in-house innovation lab focused on exploring and sharing tools and techniques to craft entertainment experiences within VR, the Facebook-owned company is embarking on a different path. Outside "guest directors" will be brought in to work with the studio and lead Creative Director Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar director, in what is essentially a VR workshop. And along the way, Oculus hopes to refine what it means to inhabit VR on a cinematic level, beginning with its first animated short, Lost, which will debut at Sundance.
