A story about two estranged brothers facing off on a Civil War battlefield might seem like a strange fit for a virtual reality film, but My Brother’s Keeper isn’t your typical VR movie. The PBS film, which premiered at Sundance last week, uses its period setting to show off several new filmmaking techniques, including the first 120 fps slow-motion recording in VR and the use of a customized action camera rig. But most important, it uses all of that technical wizardry to craft a genuinely moving story.
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I wasn’t as big a fan of the film’s use of 180-degree framing, which basically just blurs a large portion of the image to focus on what’s in front of you. It feels a bit like the shallow-focus trend we’re seeing in TV shows and films today (like how the show Louie is shot), but it’s needlessly limiting in VR. I actually thought something was wrong with the Daydream headset I was wearing the first time I saw the blurry effect.
And as Wilcox tells us, there are still plenty of challenges for shooting in VR: “There is no ‘fourth wall’ since the camera can see in all directions,” he noted. “This creates challenges for the crew, who need to get out of the shot. This required us to hide behind trees, haystacks and cornfields to stay out of sight.” Actors also have to be more mindful of their own performances, since they can’t be closely monitored by the director.
Wilcox describes VR postproduction as “significantly” more complex than traditional films. “Camera rigs must be painted out, visual effects have to be rendered multiple times to fill the surround format and stitching together the different camera views takes skill and precision,” he said.
In My Brother’s Keeper, we can see glimpses of where VR filmmaking is headed. As a medium, VR is still very much in an early stage, and there are bound to be issues as artists explore new technology and techniques. But that just makes the successful attempts that much more exciting.
Source: Engadget