Who you gonna be? Ghostbusters!
The themed VR experience makes its Canadian debut in the Void at the Rec Room
If Cineplex’s new Rec Room is the video-game version of Canada’s Wonderland, then The Void is its Leviathan.
This virtual-reality experience is a Ghostbusters- themed thrill ride that makes its Canadian debut at the new Toronto bar.
Costing $24 for about 15 minutes, The Void has the backing of Ivan Reitman, the legendary Canadian producer of Ghostbusters and other films, who is clearly excited about the storytelling possibilities of VR as a new medium.
“We are at the point of The Great Train Robbery in terms of where this is, when you compare it to the history of film,” Reitman said at a media preview Tuesday, referring to the milestone1903 silent movie. “From a film-writing and directing point of view, it really changes all the rules how you have to create new stories to make use of this technology.”
“(In terms of ) storytelling, if you’re the teller, how do you figure that out when you realize that your audience member can do whatever? They are the camera and they do all the selection. It’s figuring out how that stuff works. Look, we believe in close-ups and fast cutting, and is that possible in virtual reality?”
One of the big challenges of VR is finding ways to get audiences to look where they’re supposed too. Directors are finding the need to use audio cues or other means to point viewers in the right direction.
“For people who are trying it for the first time, you’re spending so much time looking up and down you’re not paying attention to necessarily the central story the storyteller wants you to go through,” Reitman explains. With room-scale VR like the Rec Room’s, “it’s easier because you have more tools at your disposal, and you can use the physicality of it as a way to manoeuvre your audience at least in terms of looking in the right place at the right time.”
So far, VR has mostly been a solitary, in-home experience, but The Void lets up to four people use it together simultaneously.
Users put on VR kits that include a headset, a backpack (which gives you the feel of a Ghostbusters proton pack) and a plastic rifle. Then they are led into the experience, which consists of several rooms with experiences based on the films.
The less known the better and more enjoyable, but let’s just say you will be virtually slimed. It is a neat mix of VR and a real-world environment, and uses sensory effects like smells to transport you.
The Void is a stand-alone experience that has partnered with the Rec Room and Reitman says Toronto is serving as the pilot for planned VR installations all over the globe. Once established, they will likely eventually offer different experiences. Reitman hints there may be more Ghostbusters storytelling at some point.
Despite his excitement about VR, he is also aware of some the challenges, yet he believes it can have the same emotional impact as film or television.
“Oh absolutely, but it will be different. Look, no one knows if you can sit there for 90 minutes and sit through a long story, because this is about 12 minutes and you’ve had enough. You want to go right back, but you sort of want to sit down for awhile first,” Reitman said.
“And most of us don’t want to be the storytellers. We want to sit back and be swept away. So I think there will a series of new experiences, ones where you sit back, get taken for the ride, but in a more realistic or more interactive way than you’ve ever had. And there’s stuff where you become a partial storyteller, but the real storyteller is manipulating you to go on the ride that they want you to.”