Pioneers Break the Mold of Traditional Storytelling

How a bi-national creative shop is rewriting cinematic language to invent new types of narrative and interaction

In the world of entertainment tech convergence, there are few nuts harder to crack than live-action virtual reality. The medium presents seemingly endless technical challenges, starting with how to shoot with a camera rig that can see everything all around it, or digitally create the illusion that it can.

Even more daunting are the storytelling challenges faced by filmmakers raised on cuts, close-ups and dolly shots, working in a medium in which edits are considered to be too jarring, camera movement can be nausea-inducing and the viewer’s gaze is free to wander away from the action.

For those VR newbies, Felix & Paul Studios chief content officer Ryan Horrigan has some advice: check your baggage at the door.

“If you’re coming in thinking it’s cinema, it is a little bit, but not really. And it’s a little bit like theater, but not really,” says Horrigan. “I like to say it’s like literature: you’re placing the viewer inside the subjectivity of a character, or you can be in someone’s dreams, memories or hallucinations. What we’re finding is there are a lot of different narrative shells we can put you in where you feel like you have subjectivity, but we can still give you a narrative story.”

For last year’s “Miyubi,” a co-production with Funny or Die co-starring Jeff Goldbum, Felix & Paul used a straightforward device: it put the viewer inside a 2-foot-high Japanese toy robot given to a boy on his birthday in 1982. Instead using straight-ahead edits, Miyubi runs out of power or is shut down at the end of a scene, then reboots in a new setting, months later, so the transitions are organic to the story.

“Our studio’s work com-

Robot’s POV

In “Miyubi,” a co-production with Funny or Die, Felix & Paul put viewers inside a toy robot received by a boy at his birthday party.