NEXT BIG TECH TREND
Film studios gear up for VR
I’m watching a video of a skateboarder on a half pipe — up and down, up and down. So far, so good. Then the filmmaker reminds me to look around.
Suddenly, I realize there’s a lot more going on than what’s directly in front of me. There goes the skateboarder off to the right, doing some tricks in a corner; there he goes skating by on the left. Look up and there’s the ceiling of the industrial building; look down and there’s the floor.
Where I’m actually standing is an office boardroom on Toronto’s Queen Street West. I have a Samsung Gear virtual reality headset strapped to my face, which looks like a pair of ski goggles with a Galaxy smartphone mounted to the front.
J. Lee Williams, co- founder of the Toronto company Occupied VR, is the filmmaker reminding me to actually, you know, look at stuff and try things instead of staring straight ahead like a zombie the way I would normally watch TV.
The Samsung Gear Innovator Edition will be available in Canada starting Friday. Big- name electronics companies like Sony Corp., HTC Corp. and Facebook Inc. are all set to release VR headsets over the coming months, but there are still some kinks to work out before anyone expects them to truly hit the mainstream. The technology is developing rapidly, but filming for virtual reality is currently an experimental, painstaking process.
But it’s easy to imagine the potential: Video games that immerse the world’s 1.2 billion gamers in virtual worlds, training for soldiers and surgeons, a whole new way to make films where the viewer participates in the story. A report released on May 12 by BI Intelligence estimates the VR hardware market will be worth $ 2.8 billion US in five years, up from an estimated $ 37 million US this year.
Canadian companies like Occupied VR are getting ready to provide the people who buy those headsets with the games and films to play and watch on them. Occupied started as a side project that grew out of the film production company We Are 1188, but Williams said he expects virtual reality projects will become a bigger part of the company’s focus as time goes on.
Currently, Occupied’s virtual reality experiments are funded through a combination of profits from We Are 1188’ s more conventional commercial work, and corporate commissions. The company has so far resisted investors who want a piece of the action. Occupied’s co- founders said they believe it will be more profitable in the long run to focus on the product, not impressing the venture capitalists who are “trying to throw money at us,” as Williams puts it.
Montreal’s Felix & Paul Studios has benefited from that big studio interest. The company has made promotional virtual reality films for the movies Wild and Jurassic World, putting the viewer on the Pacific Crest Trail with Reese Witherspoon and in close proximity with an Apatosaurus.
Co- founders Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael became technologists in addition to filmmakers after realizing virtual reality’s potential, using profits from making commercials to develop a 360- degree filming system. Over the course of a year and a half the company has grown from the two co- founders to about 25 employees.
Lajeunesse said he’s confident virtual reality will become mainstream, with adoption widespread enough to sustain the company for the next 25 years. But he also said he’s willing to be patient, focusing on the potential for the art of filmmaking rather than the potential for making huge amounts of money.
On the west coast, Destination British Columbia recently became the first tourism organization in North America, and one of the first in the world, to make a virtual reality promotional video. Vision7 International’s Vancouver- based creative agency Camp Pacific shot the video, which gives people considering a visit to B. C. a free sample of the landscapes and experiences they can expect.
The video has limited reach for now, with Destination B. C. making use of it at trade shows until headsets hit the consumer market. For now, the developers and early adopters who already own virtual reality headsets have to make do with the limited selection of content available through distribution channels like the Oculus Store.
The movies made by studios like Occupied and Felix & Paul will be limited to short films until those headsets get smaller and lighter. Right now, it’s hard to imagine wearing one for an entire threehour Lord of the Rings epic.