Ultimate Beginners Guide to Virtual Reality Storytelling
Tip 1: Ease it in
The first goal we have to achieve with the viewer is making him feel comfortable. Oculus Story Studio recommends 30-second introduction video. This will give the viewer time to adapt to the headset first and familiarize themselves with the new medium.
Tip 2: Guide the Viewer’s Attention… Or not!
You will have to decide beforehand how do you want to treat your viewer. Would you like to guide him through the story and lead her where to look? Should we discourage a viewer from looking somewhere else?
Tip 3: Presence
Total immersion is often the end goal of VR storytelling. The first obstacle you need to overcome is a functional technology. This means you have to prevent or repair the stitching issues; use the highest quality picture possible and the right sound equipment. The last thing you want is to cause headaches or nausea to you viewers and thus ruining the chance to show him your world.
Tip 4: Pacing
A sudden shift from flat screen frame to a 3D immersive world can be confusing and overwhelming at first. If you’ve done a good job with settling in your viewer and making him or she feel comfortable you’ve completed the first goal.
Tip 5: Conditional Storytelling
In “Mass Effect”, a popular Sci-Fi Role Playing game, we are put in the role of Commander Shepard’s point of view. We are responsible for our spaceship, the SSV Normandy, its crew members, and choosing which mission to tackle. As we progress through the game, we are forced to make difficult decisions. The decisions carried huge consequences?—?a death of a crew member, genocide of a certain race, even the destruction of the whole planet.
Tip 6: Experiment
VR is an exciting sandbox where we find endless tools and tricks to play with. The tips so far are not the rules of filmmaking, but rather suggestions. However if our tips were the rules, we should break or bend them any way you can.
Tip 7: Test, Test, Test
Product and services are always tested before release into the public. So should your VR creation. Since we have established a developmental l relationship with our work, we are not the right person for testing our design. We might be too critical or forgiving of our creation.