What can the storyteller do for the audience in a VR story? This is something that we have been looking into for class. There are clues that can direct the viewer, but it's impossible to entirely direct their attention. I think it's important that this is accepted when starting to make a story in VR. In the d.school post on designing for VR, one thing that really jumped out at me was that with user centric design concepts in mind, it's important to have repetition in the story so that the viewer just familiar with the way you are trying to tell the story and when they see a specific queue multiple times, they will learn how to react in a scene.
In the second reading, I found this paragraph focusing on why documentary VR has been successful:
"The documentary genre has certainly flourished in 360 video. It clearly feels tremendously affecting to be in a refugee camp. And as soon as you hear a omnipresent voiceover booming, the viewer is comfortable in the format. Nothing is being asked of them. They can just look around and witness. You could argue this takes away some of the magic of the true documentarian artiste, who will build the mise en scene for maximum effect, but there’s no denying it’s a powerful empathy hit. But it doesn’t require us to HAVE to see something happen, like linear narrative might. I might miss something by looking left rather than right in a VR Docu, but the voiceover can ultimately save me."
I think the interesting point here is the last couple of word "...the voiceover can ultimately save me" reducing the FOMO the viewer might have and as a result be looking around so much and ultimately miss the important part of the scene.
This poses something interesting... would a narrater in a narrative film help to ease the mind of the viewer?
Another interesting quote from this reading is the following: " The rear 180 adds to immersion, the front 180 tells the story." Something to think about when creating scenes moving forward.
I definitely don't have the answer to whether or not storytelling in VR will work, but I'm excited to find out.
Here is our assignment for the week ( I worked with Alex and Lauren to cut together this homage to Woody Allen's film, Manhattan):