We are finally back after an exciting week at GDC 2019!
It was great meeting so many of you! Especially those who came to our talk on Monday. This was the first time we were talking about both the creative and technical aspects of our volumetric video documentary The Choice VR in front of such a diverse crowd of professionals.
We greatly appreciate the kind words of support and definitely will keep you all informed on our progress as we work this year to finish the project. It was really great to meet people from such wide fields as AAA Games to VR healthcare and we've gotten some really great feedback not just about our project, but also uses of our volumetric video technology.
We didn't conceive of our stereoscopic volumetric camera system as anything other than a tool to film our interviews, but since GDC we've meet with so many companies and people who are interested in applying it to their projects. We've had people suggest things from recording personal therapy sessions to filming celebrities as they walk down the red carpet. Compared to the 5 digit price per minute of several leading volumetric video solutions, our process is substantially less expensive! And yet provides a much more life-like images through the combination of 2.5D depth and stereoscopic imaging. This opens up a huge new world that otherwise would not be able to afford volumetric video. We are working on finding the best way to service these multitude of uses and hope to have more to announce soon!
For those of you in Toronto who didn't see our GDC talk, we will be presenting it again at VRC meetup (formerly TorontoVR) this Tuesday April 2nd. If you are around definitely RSVP and we will see you there!
'The Choice VR': Volumetric Documentary Filmmaking
Documentary film is an art-form as old as cinema itself. It continues to evolve as technology pushes visual media into new frontiers. 'The Choice VR' (in-development) is an immersive volumetric documentary exploring the diverse reasons people choose to have an abortion.
Originally conceived as a traditional film, the advent of consumer virtual reality presented opportunities to fundamentally change the relationship a viewer can have with the subject matter. While balancing the finite resources of a documentary art project, the scope grew from a simple 360 video into an internally developed stereoscopic volumetric 6-DOF capture process. Leveraging “person presence” over traditional world presence, the volumetric subjects break down the abstract barriers between them and the viewer in a way never before possible.
During this talk, Director Joanne-Aska Popinska and Producer Tom C. Hall will cover how as filmmakers they are approaching the on-going challenges of adapting documentary into the virtual realm, using technology, documentary traditions, dynamic narratives and guerrilla filmmaking ingenuity.
Tom & Joanne