VR THE WORLD
Bollywood toys with virtual reality to give viewers a surreal experience
A YOUNG WOMAN GETS LOCKED in a bathroom. She is not alone. You, the viewer, are with her. Suddenly, water starts flowing from the tap. Blood spills into the bathtub. The shower curtains snap shut. The lights flicker and the screams begin.
The scene’s spooky enough. But the fear is magnified when viewed through the burgeoning new technology of virtual reality (VR). The only way out is to remove the headmounted device.
Made by Meraki VR Studio, one of the few that specialise in VR content, the three-minute horror short demonstrates the appeal of VR. With a smartphone, a VR headset and earphones, not only does the viewer get a 360-degree perspective of an imagined space (a movie) or reality (live sport coverage) but also control on what he or she wants to see. “A lot of people are picky about holding the audience’s attention,” says Sairam Sagiraju, one of the founders of Meraki Films. “There is a lot of unlearning needed from 2D. In VR, there is no blind spot. It is a lot about letting go.”
Illusion of Grandeur
VR has caught the imagination of the Indian film industry. Both the Mumbai Film Festival last October and the Film Bazaar in Goa the following month had a VR lounge. If cinephiles recoiled at a train coming straight at them at breakneck speed in Chris Milk’s Evolution of Verse, they found themselves participating in a 12-year-old Syrian girl’s life in a refugee camp in Clouds over Sidra. Filmmaker Shakun Batra (of Kapoor & Sons’ fame), curator of the VR sidebar at the Mumbai film festival, says, “VR
is not a fad or a gimmick. It’s not a substitute for movies but a new platform for storytelling where you can create immersive worlds and soundscapes impossible in 2D or 3D.”
Bollywood is all set to ride the VR gravy train. The Baahubali series is among the first to hop on. “Baahubali has so much FX and digital assets that the idea of VR made perfect sense,” says Raja Koduri, senior vice-president, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD, which collaborated with Arka Media Works and Baahubali director S.S. Rajamouli on two VR films: a set visit of the much-anticipated Baahubali: The Conclusion and the in-the-works Sword of Baahubali, which will be unveiled weeks before the epic’s release in April. “VR going mainstream is a function of cost and time,” says Koduri. “Just like high-end PC performance has come down in price over the years, so will accessibility to VR technologies.”
Koduri was echoing a January 2016 Goldman-Sachs report on VR/AR (augmented reality) which said it would be a $80 billion industry by 2025. “VR/AR has the potential to spawn a multibillion-dollar industry, and possibly be as game-changing as the advent of the PC,” it said. From video games, live events and movies to healthcare, real estate, retail, education, engineering and military, the potential of VR is endless. “Watching an event in VR will make a user feel like they’re physically attending the event with the best seat in the house,” it said. In the United States, the CNN did VR streaming of the first US presidential Democratic debate.
VR for everyone
Breaking the fourth wall, VR helps you become audience and participant simultaneously, living the experience playing out before you, such as the waiter in VR Mad Studio’s short who is catering to an indecisive young couple out on a date. One of the many perks of VR, according to studio head Madhusudhan Balasubramanian, is that the viewer can access a realistic experience sitting at home on his phone.
Gautam Pandey of Riverbank Studios in Delhi is using the medium to capture India’s scenic beauty. He developed his own camera rigs to document Ladakh on his bike and has now been commissioned to shoot the 100-acre forest land of the Jaberkhet Nature Reserve in Uttarakhand. Even the real estate industry is taking to VR. Smart Vizx, a studio in Delhi, is making VR footage for builders who want to give buyers a virtual sense of the space. In April 2016, Tata Motors sent out two million DIY cardboard
VR headsets in three editions of a leading daily for readers to experience a virtual test drive of their car Tiago via an app.
Anand Gandhi, national awardwinning filmmaker of Ship of Theseus, is also bitten by the VR bug. His Memesys Culture Lab produced its first VR documentary, When Land is Lost, Do We Eat
Coal?, on the Korba mines in Jharkhand, bringing alive the visceral landscape and providing a first-hand experience of the devastating consequences of mining on the Kanwar adivasis who have lost their houses and access to drinking water and electricity. The Lab recently launched ElseVR (pronounced Elsewhere), both a website and an app, which publishes essays and stories that incorporate VR/ AR to enable readers to experience “the immediacy of film with the intimacy of VR”. So far, it has covered the women’s agitation for entry into the sanctum of the Trimbakeshwar temple in Nashik, the impact of the floods in Bihar and the lives of Dalits. The film Caste is not
a Rumour leaves the viewers shaken as they find themselves inside a manhole a Dalit man is cleaning, and again has them flinching at the lynching of four Dalit youth in Una. “It is forcing the way you look at things and changing the way you engage with stories,” says Shubhangi Swarup, executive editor, ElseVR. “It is a breakthrough not just in technology but also in storytelling. It is both an opportunity and a challenge for filmmakers.”
A new perspective
“VR is essentially a new storytelling format that will require different writing and producing techniques than traditional movies and TV,” says the Goldman Sachs report. The director has to consider the very specific grammar of VR. “The frame is a sphere as opposed to a rectangle or square,” filmmaker Michel Reilhac said at the Film Bazaar in Goa. Reilhac, who headed the VR NEXT sidebar at Cannes 2016, recommends writing spatially, focusing on the design of the film and building audience interaction through the story. “VR filmmaking is closer to theatre than cinema,” he says.
Indian cinema has just begun flirting with the medium. However, Oscarwinning composer A.R. Rahman’s Live-in-VR Vande Mataram concert film, shown at the Film Bazaar in Goa, offered nothing more than a 360-degree view. Filmmakers need to concentrate on the design of the film—from the sets to the location. “The landscape is the primary protagonist,” says Khushboo Ranka of ElseVR. “The visual spectacle can’t be ignored. You have to think more visually and then ensure it translates well cinematically.” Also, since wearing a clunky headset with a phone placed so close to the eyes can cause dizziness, fatigue, even nausea, filmmakers are advised to keep to the 15-minute mark.
Next up on ElseVR is filmmaker and writer Sooni Taraporewala’s film on Amir and Manish, two ballet dancers from Mumbai, who overcame all odds to win scholarships to study at the Oregon Ballet Theater, US. “When she started, their US visas had been rejected twice,” says Shubhangi Swarup. “It’s an emotionally compelling narrative.” More such stories need to be told. We are game for VR.