BBC Taster is the experimental site for the development of digital content and emerging technology, and it is chock full of both 360 degree videos as well as true VR experiences, which are well worth exploring. In my mind, the difference between the two is interactivity; if you can click on icons to change the presentation in different ways it is VR, if not it is a 360 movie. As a single instance of what is on offer at BBC Taster, The Kraken Wakes 360 started with the radio play and musical score they created from John Wyndham’s science fiction novel of the same name. They layered the 360 degree video on top of a piece of that and made it available for public viewing, with the request that once you watch it (or any of their VR/360 pieces) you rate it. They are trying to get an idea of what works and doesn’t work for people with different kinds of presentations before they crank it up to full production mode, and unlike all the developers using focus groups and test audiences in secret or restricted environments, they are making the public part of the decision making process right from the beginning. They are also taking it on tour across the UK to events like the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016 which begins today, setting up VR presentation areas complete with the hardware and headsets, so people who don’t have the gear at home can give their feedback. Nor are they the only ones; the Alternate Realities: Virtual Reality Arcade at the Sheffield Documentary Festival has a range of presentations, including the ones from BBC Taster, organized and implemented by Site Gallery and supported by the Arts Council of England. As the year progresses there will be more and more of these kinds of organized public VR gatherings all over the world, so keep your eyes out for the ones happening in your neighborhood.
This is Alf Lovvold’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Zombies And The Killer Plants On Some Serious Acid, a tasty trailer done by just one guy. Check out his interview in 3DArtist for an idea of how he went about creating this.
From the band Cocoro Auction comes the song Outburst of Crickets Chirping, which is pretty much a coming of age movie compressed into a few moments and given a light, J-Pop soundtrack. The next song is Summer of Phantom, a variation on the same theme, and equally worth watching/listening to. The final track gives us their 2012 release Nazonokusa, back when they were more rock and less pop.
This time around we are going to check out a few tunes from the band Good On The Reel, who released their 7th mini album just a few weeks ago. The first track is The King that was not accustomed to Shichiyo, posted this past May, the second is from last November and their 6th mini album, while the third is from their 2013 4th mini album Marivuron of Four Seasons. Then just one more, older still, from their previous record company and released in 2011. I think this band shows a lot of promise, so I wanted to make you aware of them so you could make up your own mind.
Have you been planning how to make your movie, but can’t afford all the location crews it will take to get the filming done, let alone at the quality level your vision requires? Then perhaps what you really need is a drone, not a film crew. With this kind of technology at your fingertips, you can reduce your total production costs by an order of magnitude, and the control interface is simple enough for anyone to learn. OK, I admit that this video of the LilyCam is basically a commercial, but it is also the best introduction I have yet seen to help everyone understand the potential such toys have to help you create your own masterpiece. In my mind, this is one of those Paradigm Shifts in the way we can do things that no one expects, and everyone wonders how we ever got along without after they saw it in action. Thanks to The Great Dismal for the heads up on this one!
There are a lot of great apps to allow you to do video production for TV, Movies, or other purposes, and the folks over at the BBC have put together a video about their favorites. Using these resources might allow you to create something quite unique, and there were one or two I had not heard of before watching this. I have to also mention this is my first use of the new BBC EMB, the BBC Video Embedding interface they have just made available. It takes up a much larger screen footprint than any of the other embedding structures I like to use, including the previous Greedy Gus winner, Vimeo, but I consider that a small price to pay for the right to include their quality productions on my pages.