Cover Story |
[ would ] allow the creative industry to run wild and explore the possibilities. I genuinely think that VR can work in just about every genre,” says Cowan.
“ A genre that seems to be a perfect fit for VR is horror. It’ s one of the genres where you’ re wondering what’ s happening behind you, or around a corner. We’ re likely about to experience another major evolution in storytelling. The early days of radio and film saw stage plays acted out,” notes Rodriguez.
Plunkett describes VR as“ a radically different” medium to traditional forms of filmmaking.“ Creatives will need to learn how to understand and exploit its potential, abandoning proven techniques and experimenting with the format. Genres that benefit from placing the viewer in more direct control of their field of view, such as nature and sports, will probably drive early productions but we just don’ t know yet how other forms of narrative and storytelling will embrace the medium,” he admits.
“ We need to define the right technology for production, encoding, networking and rendering,” states Fautier.“ The best quality will be 8K capture, tiled with a 4K transmission to a 4K display. Expect this to be in production in 2018. The genre best suited to the medium are Live production and postproduction of concerts and documentaries. Most importantly, the content must be produced in a way which is not possible with classical 2D. VR video will only succeed if it is uniquely shot for an immersive experience,” he suggests.
Viewers
“ It is most important for creatives to both understand what viewers desire from VR and AR content, and the opportunities that these technologies provide operators,” stresses Oggel.“ VR provides an alternate reality for consumers to experience 360 video, and it presents the opportunity to enhance the personalisation of how a consumer experiences the content. With personalised data and analytics, VR and AR could enrich the content that operators are providing to deliver an experience tailored to each user’ s unique preferences. Tapping into personalised data and analytics will allow creatives to take personalisation to the next level to meet a broad range of consumer demands. In turn, the creatives and operators will benefit from the monetisation that personalised and advanced advertisements bring.”
“ That depends on which type of VR we’ re looking at,” suggests Verbesselt.“ It’ s really a mixed bag and the challenges will differ depending on how immersive and interactive the content is. If we’ re talking about completely reimagining the process of storytelling, that’ s not going to happen overnight. The challenge with 360-degree filming is quite a disruption in terms of how you position the scene and guide
|
the viewer’ s eye. For a coherent storytelling process, studios have to give users the right audio cues so they don’ t miss out on the action,” he notes.
“ These changes will happen but it will take time. A fully-immersive environment is likely to be gaming led as the games industry is further ahead than Hollywood in the development stage. For now, there’ s low-hanging fruit that can be explored in terms of 360-degree TV which can be non-immersive on a big screen or fully immersive using a headset.”
Live
“ Sports and other live events like concerts and shows are great for VR,” enthuses Wagner.“ We’ re already experimenting with many new ideas to enhance the experience for sports fans interested in watching live VR 360 experiences. A great example is‘ the best seat in the house’ experience where you could put a VR360 camera on or above the best seat in a venue for watching that event and stream it live in full VR 360. What is as important as the video experience is the ability to sell a VR digital ticket to these events, giving rights holders an infinite number of tickets for the VR experience.”
According to Cooper, on one hand, any serious creative will find ways to harness opportunities and overcome challenges to create compelling immersive content for ANY genre of content.“ On the other hand, artists are already coming to the conclusion that not every story needs to be told using immersive media. Sometimes, the best way to deliver an artistic vision is to produce a movie... or a TV series... or a book. I guess my answer is that genres of content – whether we are talking about feature narratives, documentaries, live sporting events, etc. – are not what will determine whether something lends itself to immersive treatment. I think that the vision of the artist is what will take care of that decision.”
Nockles suggests that companion pieces for traditional broadcast formats seem the likely direction for the next couple of years as we wait for technology and content to catch-up to the anticipation of early adopters.“ We know that people love immersive technology, and with VR there are so many avenues and genres that can be explored. The key is to develop a creative which includes the intimacy of the technology,
|
rather than ignore this, and shoot from the side lines,” he says.“ We believe that if you’ re going to get involved in producing VR content, you have to fully commit to the experience. You need to ensure you take the audience into the heart of the action. For example, in our Formula 1 experience, you’ re right there with the team – the audience can float over the driver as they get into the car, all whilst the buzz and excitement of the team goes on around them.”
Quality
“ One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is lack of VR / 360 content,” admits Nochimowski.“ The quality of VR / 360 content needs to be exceptional, meaning UHD / 4K, and bandwidth-acceptable in order for operators to monetise it. Viaccess- Orca is helping operators solve this challenge with its Virtual Arena solution, which includes pre-integrated Tiled VR Streaming technology that enables VR streaming with up to five times the resolution of other solutions, at comparable bitrates, over today’ s networks using existing devices,” he claims.“ Live content, such as sports, has a lot of value for VR, as a 360-degree view makes people feel more immersed in the game. Last year, there were some significant developments in VR deployments for sports. Of course, VR is not just limited to sports applications. Other big-ticket live events are perfectly suited to the medium. Music concert broadcasts is another domain that could benefit from this technology. But we also see some less expected live streams. USA Today live streamed Donald Trump’ s presidential inauguration as the first live stream event featured on its VRtually There channel.”
Monetisation
As to how broadcasters can monetise VR / AR content and what business models will succeed, Rodriguez says that if you think about any form of entertainment there have fundamentally been four models of monetisation: 1. Advertising. 2. Transactional( buying or renting). 3. Merchandise. 4. Subscription.“ While each has its strengths and weaknesses, they all still apply in VR. Transactional might be the most challenged, in that rental and purchase prices tend to be associated with long-form content, and VR has yet to define what long-form content will be like for viewers. There’ s still a lot of short experimental content out there. I’ d say what Bjork did recently with her VR albums highlights great use case for premium / transactional VR, but we still have to wait and see how feature films transition to VR.”
“ The ad model, though, represents an opportunity that’ s fairly unique to VR. Consider that VR is, similar to games, an entirely user directed medium. Where traditional ads rely on the position of a billboard on a highway, or an ad above a specific article in a magazine or blog,
|